Vacation is over....

Well, as I write this my vacation will be over in just under 6 hours.  "So what did you do?", you ask.  Well....

1)  On Sunday we helped to host a group of International Students from Taiwan, and after taking them to attend our church service, we went to our local Japanese Garden to let them see the butterfly house:

2) On Monday, we "kidnapped" two of those students, and took them to Silver Dollar City. The park is open until 10PM for a week, so we took advantage and went down during the evening. Unfortunately it rained on us and some of the rides were shut down because of the lightning risk for a while. But they had lots of fun nonetheless.

3) On Tuesday, we had them over to our place while we babysit our granddaughters. We cooked chicken on the grill, then roasted marshmellows over our man-made 'fire pit' a.k.a. burned out tree stump:

4) On Wednesday, I attended our church's "Summer Arts Festival" ending celebration program, where my wonderful, beautiful, 5-yr old granddaughter sang with the Pre-K choir.

(She's the 2nd from the right on the top row.)

Earlier that day, I did submit some peanut butter/chocolate fudge to our county fair in hopes to get a ribbon:

Later that evening (REALLY later), Billy & I drove to Rolla to attend a Campus Missionary training. We were there until Friday afternoon. I got to spend some quality time with my hubby, as well as the other wives who attended.

5)  Once we returned from Rolla on Friday, we then met up with some of the Taiwan students at the fair for their last night here in America.

And found that my fudge had.....

...placed 2nd!!  I was out to beat my sister-in-law this year (all in good fun!!), and she got 3rd with her candy:

I was also proud of my daughter who entered chocolate chip cookies and placed 1st!!

Way to go Ashley!!!

We walked around the Exhibitors Hall and the students became very interested in the Beekeeping booth:

Then we met up with an old high school friend who is now a DJ on a local Christian radio station:

So he let them talk live on the air!  Bet they had never done that before in America!!

I think they all had a good time, but were sad to leave.  We met up with the group at the airport the next morning to see them off:

Both girls started to cry when they had to leave us to go through security.  Some times I think we just don't realize how good of a life we have here until someone from another country visits.  Although we usually take them and do a lot of things we might not even do ourselves, they are always such a blessing in our lives. 

So I can say that my vacation was good, and even though I took no major trips this time, it was good to stay around home and relax.