The Modern Nomads

Well…it’s been 3 months since we were blessed with our little angel, Makaylan, so we decided we would introduce her to our nomadic lifestyle.  Chris and I have had a VERY busy summer filled with school and studying, so we decided to reward ourself with a two week road trip out west.  Chris has several aunts, uncles, and cousins in Colorado that I have never met, so we are headed out there to visit them.  We plan to stop along the way to visit with friends of mine and introduce MJ to people along the way.  We are excited to see how she will do…especially being in her car seat for 5-6 hours a day.  So far…so good (as long as Chris keeps driving).

Tonight is our first stop in Mansfield, TX.  We will stay with Jerry and Lacy Ritchie, who are Chris’ uncle and aunt (his mom’s brother).  We are excited to introduce them to their new niece and spend some time with them.  Tomorrow we will head on to Amarillo, TX.

We will give daily updates of our travels, so be looking for new posts.  I’m sure there will be many memories to share as we head out to the wild blue yonder.  Pray for Makaylan that she will feel safe and comfortable as we stop along the way.  It’s SO good to be back on the road again! 🙂 🙂  

She loves the sites 🙂

Our fearless driver 🙂

Yes…I DO realize that it’s been two months since I last wrote a blog.  Life has been a bit hectic for the Modern Nomads, but I hope to keep up with it a little more.  So why has life been crazy?  Well…I’m busy being Mommy to a precious little girl. She is almost three months old, and I can’t get over how much she is changing.  She can “talk,” roll to one side, smile, play, poop 🙂 , eat, and bring so much joy to her Daddy and me.  I love that I get to stay home with her and watch her grow.  She has gone from being a cute person who doesn’t do much to an even cuter person who interacts with us.  I love how her face lights up when I walk in after she wakes up. I love how she talks to me while we play.  I love watching her talk and coo at her stuffed animals, especially Violet–her stuffed puppy dog.  And most of all, I love just watching her figure me out.  I never knew that I could experience so much joy, wonder, love, and excitement all in one day.  Everything is new for her, so life seems new for me.  For example, today she discovered herself in the mirror and talked to herself for ten minutes.  It was precious watching her interact with herself.  I think she cracks herself up 🙂 🙂  I can’t get over that God has allowed us to raise this little girl.  Most days I feel the incredible responsibility of it, and my prayer is that we will raise this next generation to love and serve Him.  So far, Makaylan seems to have a pretty feisty and fun little personality, and I can’t wait for God to get ahold of that personality and use it for HIS glory.  But until that time, I will enjoy all the coos, talks, playtimes, snuggles, and even poops 🙂 🙂

Enjoy some of the fun pictures from the past few months.


Makaylan and Landon–She was actually “smiling” and not crying 🙂



MJ with her favorite toy, Violet




Baby Dedication…Makaylan 1 month Already cutting her eyes 🙂 🙂  Girls!! And there’s a smile 🙂



Yes, I know…it has been a couple of months since we last updated our blog. Life has been pretty crazy for us, and on April 28 it got alot more crazy.  We are excited to announce that our little Makaylan Joy arrived on April 28th at 8:02 a.m.  I can hear several of you wanting to hear the story (well…mainly the female readers) so here it is in bullet points.

Wednesday, April 27

— Amanda goes for coffee with a friend. I’m feeling a little pressure and I hurt some, but nothing out of the ordinary.  Chris goes to the doctor because he’s fighting a sinus infection.

— We both stay home from church because I don’t feel like sitting in pews, and Chris is feeling crummy.  He also has an accounting test the next day, so I help him study.

— About 10:00 p.m. I have this urge to vacuum our house. Apparently, this should have been the tale-tale sign, but I’m clueless to all these signs.

Thursday, April 28

— 12:00 a.m. Amanda encourages Chris to take a Tylenol PM so he will sleep. He really needed to do well on the accounting test, and he hadn’t slept in a couple of night.  So Chris takes the medicine, and we go to bed.

— 1:30 a.m. Amanda wakes up for her normal potty break. I had some really bad “cramping,” but thought it was other issues.  I go back to bed.

— 1:35 a.m. Amanda feels like something is about to “happen” so I get up again.  The minute my feet hit the floor, my water broke, and I immediately have severe contractions. I call the on call doctor who tells me I need to go to the hospital.  I decide to wait a bit because I didn’t want to drive 30 minutes just to be sent home. I lasted 5 minutes, and told my “drug induced” husband that I thought I was in labor and my water had broke.  You should see a man who’s under the influence of Tylenol PM try to comprehend his wife’s in labor…hilarious!!! 🙂 🙂

— 1:50 a.m. We are on our way to the hospital.  I was really praying that I was in labor because if I wasn’t then something was terribly wrong.  On the way we timed the contractions, and they were 2 minutes apart. I knew something HAD to be going on.

— 2:30 a.m. We enter the hospital and were greeted by two very sweet but very skeptical nurses.  They take their time processing me, told me to go to the bathroom, and then they would see if my water had indeed broken.

— 2:45 a.m.  The nurses “check” me, and I am 6 cm dilated and 90% effaced.  They immediately go into high gear, call my doctor, grab an anesthesiologist leaving the hospital to put in my epidural, and I am whisked into a delivery room.  Chris calls our parents and tells them I’m in labor.  Cindy and Tommy (Chris’ parents) were in Dallas, TX, and I think they go into extremely high gear.  Marc (Amanda’s dad) was in Pineville, LA at a meeting and couldn’t come), and Buttons (Amanda’s mom) got dressed in record time. Needless to say, this was a HUGE shock to all of us.  Here it was April 28 and she wasn’t supposed to arrive until mid May. 🙂 🙂

— 4:00 a.m. Amanda gets the epidural, and I feel SOOO much better. I could actually relax and enjoy it.

— 6:00 a.m. Amanda is ready to go, but the doctor is in the shower at home. Cindy and Tommy weren’t there, so they continued with the drip so I wouldn’t feel the urge to push.

— 7:30 a.m. Amanda’s doctor arrives, and I can officially begin the process of having our little girl. At some point Cindy and Tommy make it (YES, they drove 4 1/2 hours and made it!!).  It was one of the hardest things I’ve done, yet the drugs made it great!! 🙂 🙂

— 8:02 a.m. Makaylan Joy Walker makes her grand appearance!!  She is SO beautiful, and we fell in love the minute we saw her.

This was one of the crazies but joyful days of our life.  It’s been amazing to have her here and love on her. Chris and I are learning a whole new concept of love, patience, and grace through this little girl. Most days we just stare at her in awe, wondering how we got SO blessed with the responsibility of raising her.  The Modern Nomads have now added another nomad to the world 🙂 🙂  Oh, the journey we have ahead of us…we can’t WAIT!!!!

Enjoy some pics her Aunt Cara Beth took…

Here is the rest of the story from our day trip to Natchitoches.

228 Henry Blvd. – my great-grandparent’s house where my grandmother (Frances Thomas Walker) grew up.

My Dad said he remembers staying here as a little boy when his family would visit for the weekend.

 After driving around Natchitoches for a while, we decided it was time to hit the “Old Cane River Road” and see all the countryside and all the beautiful, old plantation homes that line the river.  Here are a few of the sights we saw.

We never could figure out what the name of this place was….but it looked like it came straight from the history books.

One of several old church building we saw as we drove.

One of the slave’s houses on the Oakland Plantation grounds.  Over twenty-two original building still stand,  some dating back to the early 1800’s.

A side view of the Oakland Plantation main-house.  It had an awesome wrap-around porch that was probably 12 feet deep and 10 feet off the ground and had rocking chairs!

Melrose Plantation, also known as “Yucca Plantation,” was a mecca for visiting writers and artists in the early 1900’s, including Clementine Hunter, who lived and worked at Melrose for most of her life.  She died in 1988.

Another beautiful, smaller plantation home on the “Cane River Road.”  We’re not sure of the name of this one either.

Looking up the driveway towards Magnolia Plantation, which was already “closed” for the day.  Supposedly an elderly woman still lives here with a whole bunch of cats, and will only let people see her “clean” rooms.

Well….we drove south until we hit I-49 about 20 miles south of Natchitoches, so we figured it was time to turn towards home and find our way back to Ruston.  I always enjoy taking the “back-roads,” so we drove back through Ajax, Coushatta, Ringgold, Fryeburg, Bryceland, Arcadia, and finally made it to Ruston.  All in all, we had a great day of seeing some of our beautiful home state, Louisiana!  Hopefully we’ll have a few more journeys to write about soon!

Well, our latest little road trip wasn’t as exciting as Dorothy’s following the “yellow brick road,” but we definitely enjoyed last Friday’s excursion to Natchitoches, LA, where we saw an old fort, ate Natchitoches meat pies, toured a plantation, and found a few Walker-family houses.  The day was absolutely gorgeous with sunshine and a high around 75F.  We left Ruston around 9:30am and headed south on HWY 167 to Winnfield, where we got on US 84 west to Natchitoches.  We arrived a little after 11am, and made a quick drive thru beautiful, historic down town Natchitoches, with its brick paved streets, and French/New Orleans style architecture right on the banks of the Cane River.  We decided to spend some time before lunch at the Fort St. Jean Baptiste museum and really loved the 15-minute video, the exhibits inside the building, and then walked around the rebuilt fort.

Me, in front of Fort St. Jean Baptiste….we were pretty sure an Indian would have had no trouble scaling that wall.

There was a short walk from the museum to the fort.

Amanda, posing in front of the prison…notice how cute she looks with her awesome baby bump!

Next, we went to find some local food.  We had heard how good “The Landing” was, and we were not disappointed.  We ordered some world-famous Natchitoches meat pies, a shrimp po-boy, and crab-cakes with fried green tomatoes!  Yummy!!  We even got to talk with our waiter, who is planning on attending Southern Seminary next fall in Louisville, KY.  When we told him we were fellow seminarians and that we recently returned from Africa, he talked to us for a while about ministry and family and the future of missions.  We enjoyed meeting him and left with a smile on our face from the good food and fellowship.

My beautiful wife, inside “The Landing” restaurant….trying to decide between the Shrimp Po-boy or the Blackened Catfish Opelousas.

Brick streets with the Cane River just below

traffic was a bit congested on the narrow streets, but we enjoyed walking around

A typical building front found on Front St. in downtown Natchitoches, LA

After lunch, and a little shopping in downtown, we decided to try to locate a few of my family’s old houses, where my grandmother and great-grandmother grew up.  My dad’s mom (Frances Thomas Walker) grew up in Natchitoches, and we had the address of the house where she spent her childhood.  We also had the street names of a few other houses where relatives lived and where my Dad remembers spending time as a kid.  We used our handy-dandy GPS and in no time had located them.  We took some pics, and enjoyed showing them to my Dad and hearing his stories of what things were like “back in the good ol’ days.”  He wants to give us a personal tour of Natchitoches one day soon….that would be fun to hear all his old family stories.

(to be continued….in “part 2”)

Well…yet another LONG gap in updating our blog.  But have no fear…these last couple of months have been quite unusual for the Modern Nomads.  People kept asking us if we would change the name of our blog once we returned to the States, but I think we have been more nomadic in the last two months than we ever were in Africa. 🙂 🙂  We are blessed to have parents who love us and allow us to stay in their home for a week or two at a time.  We have affectionately deemed our moving times as “Moving Bridges.”  And we have had some fun along the way…

When we are at my (Amanda) parents’ home, we get to wake up every morning to two little girls.  My mother keeps my nieces while my sister is at work.  There are days where we hear Taylor (the oldest) standing outside our door wondering if we are awake.  It’s all quite precious…sometimes!  🙂 Then I normally go in and eat breakfast with her while she insists on having exactly what “Aunt Mimi” is having.  She even drinks coffee on the mornings I drink coffee.  If I eat cereal, she eats cereal.  Then we say good morning to Makaylan, and I answer a million questions about how Makaylan is doing and why she won’t “come out” and play 🙂 🙂  I think God is giving us a little taste of what the future holds for us 🙂 🙂 

When we are at Chris parents’ home, it is quite different.  The house is normally quieter, but we enjoy them just the same.  I think my favorite thing about his parents is the “boyish” look his dad gets when we first arrive.  He always looks at us and says: “It’s way more fun having kids around.”  And of course, we are “the kids.” 🙂 🙂  Chris and my relationship was SO fast that I didn’t get to REALLY know his family before we got married.  These last two months have been such a blessing for me because it has allowed me the opportunity to sit and talk with them, hear their heart, and become just as comfortable with my new family as I am with my family of origin.  Last week we even had a visit from Craig, Nicole, and Landon.  We hadn’t been around them in a long time, so it was a blessing all being under one roof for a few days. 

Chris and I are SO blessed to have grown up in stable, Christian families with parents who model for us what a godly marriage looks like.  We are forever thankful for their outpouring of love and support for us during our nomadic period.  In years to come, we will definitely look upon these last few months with smiles and gratitude!!  We love you guys!!! 

YES, we do realize that it has been well over a month since we have updated our blog. Life has been a bit crazy for us, but that seems to be normal for the Walker family.  Since we last wrote we came back to America for the holidays, we went to Ft. Worth for Amanda’s doctorate seminars in Ft. Worth, we were advised to stay in the States due to some minor pregnancy issues, Chris contracted pneumonia, we celebrated our 1 year anniversary, we found out we are having a girl (Makaylan Joy), we have gone back and forth between Minden and Ruston living with our parents, AND we have begun the long process of getting physically ready for Makaylan to enter the world.  So…needless to say…the blog was one of the last things on our “to do” list. 🙂 🙂

God continues to remind us how little we are in control of our life, and I think we are beginning to learn to let go and allow HIM total access to our life.  This first year of marriage certainly isn’t how I always thought my first year of marriage would be (married, honeymoon, get pregnant, move to Africa, move back to the States), BUT I wouldn’t change one second of it.  Chris and I have learned things about each other and things about our God that we would never have learned without the journey HE has taken us on this year.  We have enjoyed every second of the ride and SO look forward to what HE has for us this year.  We definitely know that parenthood is in the plans, but even with that, it is still a mystery.  I love how God has taken us all the way around the world and back again to show us how to love, depend on, trust, and revel in each moment together. I love how HE has drawn us to Himself and consequently to each other through every change.  God is good, and we are blessed!!

Here are some pics from our time at home:

So the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about Christmas traditions.  Most families have them, and they are SO much fun and unique to each situation.  This will me our first Christmas together, and, as usual, it will be a bit different.  (We will be staying with the Walkers (Cindy & Tommy) Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and we are SO looking forward to it.) Chris and I laugh at the fact the we have yet to have a “normal” relationship and a “normal” marriage.  Today we celebrate our 11 month “anniversary,” and so much has happened in that 11 months.  We got married, Chris graduated from seminary, I moved out of a church staff position, we found out we were pregnant, AND we moved to Africa.  Yes…all in the 11 months of marriage.  So my thoughts have been:  What if this IS normal for the Walkers?  We will bring a precious little one into the world in 5 months, so I’ve been thinking about traditions…especially holiday traditions.

I have some very creative family members and friends, so I figured I could ask you guys.  What are some ideas for Christmas/holiday traditions that can be celebrated no matter where we are located?  Next year we could be in our own home, at one of our parent’s home, or we could be overseas.  We’ve quit guessing what God will do with us from month to month.  So if you have any ideas, PLEASE feel free to share them.  I am open to whatever.   I love the holiday season, and I’m excited to hear what you guys say!  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!