3 Weeks without Jim

For the next three weeks the blog will be a little more detailed. I'll be posting more information than normal so that Jim will know what is going on at home without having to say it all during our short phone calls and I'll have information about Jim's trip for family and friends.

Jim left yesterday for Japan and will be gone 3 weeks. He is due home on March 4th. He emailed me last night to say that he got there safely. We called him this morning and talked for a few minutes. He was getting ready to go to bed. He has to get up at 5:30am tomorrow (which is 3:30pm today here) to take the bullet train from Tokyo to Yonezawa. He is visiting some Milliken plants and employees this week. Then next week his classes start. It is a 14 hour time zone difference. He said he had a good flight, but didn't get much sleep. The flight was 14 hours long. When he got into Narita he had to take a taxi 90 minutes to the hotel where he was to meet the Milliken people. He only had about 45 minutes to shower and change. He had dinner with them and then went back to the hotel to hopefully get a good short nights sleep before his early train ride in the morning.

Alex, Kellie, and I went to baseball practice with Blake last night. We were going to try to stay for the whole practice, but Kellie got tired and cranky about 8:30pm so we came home. Coach Robert brought Blake home after practice. This morning Kellie has been saying mamamama repeatedly. I thought I had heard the sound before, but she would not repeat it. Now she will. Everytime she heard one of the boys coming down the stairs this morning she would look around to see if it was her Daddy. And yes, I could tell that is what she was doing. She would have a big smile on her face and then when she saw Alex or Blake she would just turn her head. Of course after they came over to talk to her she was glad to see them, but you could tell that it wasn't who she was looking for. Kellie learned how to play ball a few days ago. It was actually Mommy who taught her and not one of her brothers. When I roll the ball to Kellie she will roll it back to me. We play ball for about 10-15 minutes at a time. Its now Kellie's nap time, the boys are at school, and I need to go fold about 10 loads of laundry.