Resting, Resting

When we planned the trip,

I told Tate it was

90% about relationships, and

10% about tourism.

Well, the awesome Choates and Hibbards planned

all kinds of fun and interesting adventures for us!

By Sunday though, we were happy to take the activity-level down a notch.

Jesus, I am resting, resting...

We (Choates and us) drove down to East End to attend church with the Hibbards,
at Doug's/their church, East End Baptist.

Which means that besides being in the Lord's house, with the Lord's people, on the Lord's day,

we had a cross-cultural experience ;D

Because when you're from a fairly conservative church

in a heavily Dutch-Reformed-influenced community,

and you go attend a Southern Baptist service,

where "Brother Doug is gonna bring us the Word"...

well, things are just a little bit different!

And I'm so thankful that all God's family didn't come out of the same cookie cutter :D

We felt right at home,

especially since they put on a pot-luck after the church service.

And then, of course, there was football.

Sadly, our Seahawks... well... we won't speak of that.

But we had a lovely, relaxing time hanging out at the Hibbard's house.

Can you just hear Tate, in his best David Attenborough voice, saying,
Here we observe the Southern Baptist minister in his natural habitat,
resting after a strenuous morning of feeding his flock,
tended by his mate and watched over by
other members of the tribe.
Or something like that ;D

How a cello player plays a violin ;D

As the Hibbards prepared to go back for evening church,
we headed north up to Conway.

Note that Katherine is very excited to be wearing her new long-sleeve dress,
because it is fall.  So says the calendar, anyway!

Joanna was preparing to mobilize the troops to prepare dinner -
and let me tell you (again),
they fed us well, abundantly, and deliciously
the whole time we were there!
But she let me persuade her to take a night off
and let us do one small thing for them.

But I'll tell you what, finding a restaurant open on a Sunday evening
in a small town in Arkansas was no easy task!
(Hmmm, sound like Lynden, much?)
But we finally landed at China Town.
(No, there's not a China-town in Conway, but there's a Chinese buffet called China Town.)

The food was tasty and plentiful,
though Olivia was sorely disappointed to find that the "vanilla" pudding was actually banana flavored.

Other than that, I have no photos of the actual feeding frenzy dining,
but here is Katherine, trying to open her fortune cookie.

The fortune cookies were... unusual.
More like proverbs.
Along the lines of
For the fine day, be giving of thanks in the evening
or
The glass of drinking is not half-full or half-empty,
but twice too large.

Until, BENJAMIN.

Look at Aaron's expression.
We thought he was making it up...

... I mean, he does have a quick wit.

But, no,

his fortune cookie actually said this:

SAVE THE COOKIES!

The restaurant owners were nice to us,
in spite of how boisterous we were :D

Wouldn't you like to see all these happy faces?!

Zero to freaky in six seconds or less.

And thus ended Day Four of our Arkansas adventure :D