Surprise Shower

Group Shot before dinner at the Gulfstream Cafe.

I just got home from a fantastic weekend with some girlfriends at our beach house in Surfside Beach, SC. It was actually a group of 8.5 (.5 being one of the girl's little adorable 2 year old, Addie) of my dearest high school girlfriends and we really had a blast. Before we left for Surfside, I watched the weather channel and thought, oh no, its going to rain the whole time and no one will get to go on the beach, ahhhh, what will we do instead!! Little did I know that the 'little rain' predicted in the forecast was actually Tropical Storm Christoball and the one weekend we picked for our trip was his welcome to the shoreline party right onto the Grand Strand. Fortunately for us, it was mostly rain and cloudy skies, it could have been muchhh worse. But what did my great friends do instead of going to the beach? We went to get pedicures (one girl buying mine for me) and threw me a surprise baby shower!

You may be wondering, how did they pull off a surprise shower in your own beach house? Great question, well on Saturday afternoon, we all kinda took a few hours to do our own thing, some people read, some played with Addie, etc. I chose to take a nap, of course. A short while into my nap I get a knock at the door and my sweet friend Becca says, Haley there is a major plumbing problem downstairs you need to come look at. Ok, so I'm thinking, and what am I supposed to do about it? I know nothing about plumbing problems. As I walk down the stairs half awake I am greeted by the flashing of cameras and all of my friends standing around a table beautifully decorated with tons of presents! How I missed all of this stuff being stored in my own beach house, I still dont know, they are very clever for sure. So we had a wonderful shower and Molly got tons of cute stuff. I was a little sad that my team lost the Baby Trivia game we played. But looking at it objectively, we only had 3 players to their 4 and they had Jessica on their side who is literally a new mom, so shes got some expertise on me ;)

Thank you guys so much for being so thoughtful. As Bryon will tell you, I am not easy to surprise. I usually can pick up on a plot without much difficulty but I was totally shocked. And, I cant believe I'm actually posting these pictures of me, fresh out of the bed, looking great for sure. Love yall for it! :)

Trip to Timbuktu

Welcome to Timbuktu sign taken from Bryon's car.


These pictures were taken on Bryon's recent trip to Timbuktu. And, yes, Timbuktu is actually a real place! I guess when you go here you really have been to the far end of the Earth.

Bryon out seeing the many tourist attractions in the Sahara desert :)

Nomadic villages in Timbuktu

Sahara desert

Plane seen from the Bamako airport and beautiful rainbow. So majestic.

Billboards in Timbuktu.

Greene family adventure

I took this adorable picture yesterday of Casey, Collin and Elizabeth while they were on their golf cart adventure. Notice Casey's Army shirt (courtesy of Uncle Bryon).. and Liz and Collin's Clemson gear. Sooo cute! It's hard to believe Casey will be TWO in just a few days and little Collin is already 5 1/2 months! Oh and Happy Anniversary to Elizabeth and Chris today, 4 years and counting! What a beautiful family you all have!

Love Birds

Bryon took these pictures from the window of his house.
True love indeed, my sweet romantic husband

Great News!

Bryon and I found out some fantastic news this past week. We have been praying since we found out Molly was on the way for the Lord to consider working in an early re-deployment for Bryon into His plans. His official re-deployment date was November 15th and Molly was scheduled to come October 10th. As you can see, that calculates to a month where Molly and I are here and Bryon would be away. While many military families have experienced this type of situation and while I knew it was very likely that this was the boat in which we must sail, Bryon and I felt in our hearts, that this was not the Lord's plan for us.

So we prayed and asked everyone we knew to pray that in some miraculous way, the Army would decide to let Bryon come home early. For those of you who are military families, wives, you know that negotiating with the army is futile so for most of the deployment I didn't allow myself to get my hopes up. We knew Bryon had a week of leave to take while he was in Mali, so we scheduled an induction date for October 3rd so that maybe he would be able to schedule his leave around that date and not miss her birth. (Fingers majorly crossed).

Well, the process of getting approval to come home early first started when Bryon's new boss arrived in Mali and scheduled a meeting with him. HE SAID (Bryon's boss) that he felt like Bryon needed to go home early and stay. That it was to Bryon's best interest and to the army's not to have to fly him home for leave, back to Mali and back home in a few more weeks before going home for good. Answer to prayer #1. I had secretly prayed that the idea for him to come home and stay would be suggested by someone other than Bryon. As much as Bryon wants to be here and knowing he was going to ask anyway, it was still a little hard for him to ask to end his assignment early. Military men have such a sense of duty and responsibility that none of us understand. I certainly didn't and I don't know if I still do understand it completely, but I'm definitely learning. So the Lord already blessed us beyond imagination by not only moving in Bryon's boss's heart to allow us to come home, but he heard my silent prayer, uttered only to the Lord, that it would be someone else's suggestion.

Soon thereafter, the idea was proposed back to the powers that be at Bragg and did not meet with any resistance. They simply took note of the request and would get back to us. Weeks after that (were up to last week now), we were told that Bryon was approved to come home and stay. We are still waiting to know the exact date of his re-deployment but we have total confidence in the Lord who has brought us this far will continue to see this through until the end. So often in the almost 6 months since Bryon has been gone, I have felt myself teetering on the line separating dispair and coping. Almost as if one little thing would push me over the edge. But through it all I have felt the presence of the Lord on an almost daily basis in may different ways (which I wont share here today). My prayers are still that the date Bryon comes home will be in time to be here for Molly's birth and that I wont have any problems which would make her have to come early. I will continue to pray those prayers knowing that I have nothing to worry about and that I am being looked after.

This week I've been scrapbooking our wedding from last December. I realized I had better get myself into gear before little Molly arrives and I want to scrapbook her birth and life. As I've been scrapbooking, I've realized in a powerful way, that when you are a child of God's you have nothing to worry about in this life. Truly, I don't know how people who don't know the Lord make it through this world with any sense of peace and purpose. 100% of my confidence in my future, my safety, Bryon's safety, our future plans, finances, our health, Molly, etc, all comes from my knowledge that I'm not in charge and that the One who is in charge has my best interests in mind. I am so thankful to you Lord, I don't know language sufficient enough to express my feelings so on my knees I beg for you to see my heart and know how much you are praised, loved and worshiped.

Thank you all for sharing in our exciting news. Three months or less and counting!

News Update

Bryon sent me this link today and said it is a good in-depth article about what he is working on right now. It outlines some of the terrorist activity, past and present, that threatens the US out of Western Africa. These are issues and threats most of the world does not know about but true and dangerous threats. Be safe sweetie...


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/world/africa/01algeria.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

Sirakoro Trip

These pictures are from Bryon's recent trip to Sirakoro, Mali. On this trip they were delivering bookbags and school supplies to schools that were started through the US government. You can see in the pictures that they were given the grande welcome. There was a ceremony to recognize the relationship between the school and the US and it was a big celebration. It's nice seeing how we are making a positive impact in countries around the world. Education is so important and I wish everyone had the opportunities to receive an education like we have in this country.

Alaska Trip

Home From Alaska!!!

These are some of the pictures taken on my cruise to Alaska last week. I went with my MawMaw Bettis (my mom's mom). We cruised on Carnival Cruise Lines on the ship Spirit. We departed from Whittier and disembarked in Vancouver, British Columbia and had a great time! The ship stopped in Sitka, Juneau, Skagway and Ketchekan and cruised the College Fjords and Inside Passage. We also took a train into the Yukon of Canada and bussed into the middle of no where into the town of Carcross. On top of all that, we had a beautiful balcony room and the temperature was in the upper 40's-low 50's, my perfect temperatures! Molly did just fine and enjoyed a lot of excellent food and R&R.

The train from Skagway into the Yukon Territory. Without a doubt, some of the most beautiful and majestic views and landscape in the whole world. God truly is great and generous to give us such wonders to look at.

MawMaw and I at dinner on formal night. I think this night we had Alaskan Salmon and Baked Alaska for desert! Yummy!


Me on the deck of our room on the cruise ship. What a great view we had!


I took this picture on the upper deck of the ship during one of my morning walks. The air is so clean and brisk, just the way I like it!

The still waters off of our ship.

Me attempting to push a dog sled. Don't worry I didn't try really hard. Just wanted it to look like I did.

On our 1.5 mile walk through the rainforest. Fortunately for us, no bears were seen. I did learn though that the majority of the 'soil' in Alaska is rock, so trees cant grow deep roots. What happens is that trees fall over, decompose and new foliage grows out of the decomposed brush. You can see this in the trees to the right of the picture.


This is our room on the ship. Check out that view!

Me on the beach in Juneau, the capital of Alaska. On a side note, the jacket I'm wearing is Bryons. None of my will zip up anymore! Molly is poking out too much now! It was great with me wearing Bryon's jacket, like my dad said, it's like having a big hug from him every day.

Off to Alaska!

Just wanted to let you all know that I'm headed off tomorrow to the most beautiful state in the US, Alaska!! I will be going with my mawmaw, and Molly of course and we will be gone until June 18th. I'll be sure to post pictures when I get home. Please keep us in your prayers. It will be an enormous relief to get away from this heat for awhile and get to experience God's beautiful countryside that is so unique to Alaska. We will be going on Carnival Cruise lines. I will post again in a week!

Oh and happy birthday to Mary Sargent, Diane, and my mawmaw, whose birthdays will be celebrated while I'm gone and Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there reading this. Especially to my and Bryon's dads, we wouldn't be who we are without you all!

love to everyone,
Haley

Soccer Match

Bryon sent me these pictures from his soccer matches the past two Saturdays. The match last weekend was between the US Embassy (Bryon's team) and the Malian Ministry of Health and the game this week was between the US Embassy and the Foreign Service Nationals, which are the Malians who work at the embassy.

My husband who doesn't even like soccer is a starter and has really started to enjoy it. It helps being one of the biggest guys on the team. Even the ambassador plays on occasions! Who would have known soccer was such an international sport? I'm sure you can pick him out, he's the tall guy in the blue shirt (and white shirt in two photos), with blonde hair. The other picture is of the city where the matches and runs are held and the opponent team last week as they greeted each other before the game.