Well, I didn’t mean to take such a long hiatus from blogging, but these last couple of months were packed pretty full–most particularly by a nearly month-long trip back to the US for Max, Elly and me.

We arrived in early August after surviving two long overseas flights (one of them was 15 hours long!) and a short flight from Dallas to Omaha. Max and Elly are actually really good travelers, perhaps because they’ve been flying since they were 8 weeks old (by comparison, I was 28  years old before I was ever on an airplane).

The trip was a great chance to reconnect with family and friends after two years since Max and Elly were last back for a visit. For this week’s 5 Photo Friday here are a few highlights of our trip:

Aunt Connie and Uncle Cheryl took us to Chuck E. Cheese’s for a belated birthday party for Max and Elly.

Sweet corn is hard to find in Tanzania so we ate a lot of it at Grandma’s house.

We spent a few days playing at the swimming pool with cousin Tanna.

And we went with Grandma on a Nebraska-style safari to see the buffalo and elk.

I have been part of a Facebook group for moms of twins born in the summer of 2011 since just after Max and Elly were born. Four of those moms drove with their twins from Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa and Arkansas to spend the weekend with us in Omaha. It was so great to actually meet these moms and their twins–I had previously met one of the moms last year when I was back in the States, but otherwise have only known them online. (This group of women is awesome and merit a blog post dedicated just to telling about them, which I promise I will write someday soon!)

And we spent a fabulous Sunday afternoon with Max and Elly’s godparents Kelvin and Wendy, and their super-cute new puppy Shiloh.

This trip was so special and fun, but also left me feeling a little sad as we arrived back in Tanzania. It’s likely we won’t be back to the States until 2017. It will almost a year before we see any of my family again, and that’s assuming all goes well with plans for Mom and my sister Carla to visit us next August. That’s the hard part about being a “global family”–we are always away from people we love.