How Tall is Your Country and Riley-fest

How tall is your country? I can tell you that my country takes about 22 hours to drive from top to bottom. (I’ve done it four times in the last 18 months. Yikes!). This isn’t the longest side, either. It would actually take 35 hours to drive from the top of the east coast to the bottom of the east coast. It would take about 25 hours to drive from the top of New Zealand to the bottom (not including the ferry that connects the north and south island). England? Not very long. But I’ll round up and include the whole UK and its about 14 hours. And finally, Australia wins because it’s 35 hours easy, and that’s not along the coast, which would make it 45 hours. I knew Australia would win. And no, this isn’t science.

 

Anyway… wow. That was off topic.

So, we embarked on our journey with great haste to try and make it from Seattle to Medford before too late. Oops. BAD traffic. Oops, major pouring flood-type rain storm. Oops, had to pump oil from a Chinese restaurant in Portland and forgot the jumper cables for the pump and had to run around looking for Home Depot.  Oops. Pulled in at 3 am.

But it was SO good to see Gary and his kids. He moved to Medford from Saint George a few months ago and it was so good to see them all—we hadn’t seen them since they came to visit us on Maui at Thanksgiving. The kids fell right back into their old camaraderie.

Not the most well-composed photo ever, but it’s all I’ve got.

We had to leave too soon, but Gary was probably glad to be rid of us so he could get a decent night’s sleep after we work him and all of his neighbors up with our noisy early morning arrival. We got to see the cute little town of Jacksonville where he lives, listen to the music fest going on a few blocks away, and of course play at the park. We got back on the road to try to make is asap to San Diego. We tried to find a campground or somethin’ to stay the next night, but ended up just sleeping in the car at a rest stop. NBD. It worked out fine.

 

On the road, we found a pot o’gold—a teeny little potty at Walmart. My other kids got to use these in New Zealand all the time and loved them, but Po was not amused. It just didn’t seem right to her.

 

On the road shots. Here’s our 1981 Diesel Mercedes Station Wagon that took us safely and happily the 3500 mile journey this summer. And it ran solely on used veggie oil. We only had a couple bad fixes, and they both actually happened in Seattle, so they weren’t too bad. AND, we drove the whole way with plates that expired in 2010 (shhhh…), but we finally got a trip permit for the last three weeks of driving, just to be safe and legal.

 

We uncharacteristically hurried just so we could get down to San Diego in time to see my brother’s daughter Riley and her mom Sara and my grandma Noni before they had to go home. Can you believe it?—I had never met Riley before. Sara lives in Scottsdale and I just haven’t been down there since Riley was born. Boy have I been missing out because she is the most adorable, cute, nice, kind, wonderful, smart, strong, funny and best little two year old girl I’ve ever met. We all couldn’t get enough of her. We fell for her completely. So, get ready for loads of photos of her and my kids and Sara and Grandma Noni… and they all happened in 24 hours.

We were so glad and thankful to Sara for making it happen and getting there, and thankful to Noni for coming down and for my dad and his wife for providing a place for it to happen. We love Riley!

…to be continued…

 

 

**hopefully I will get on to the rest of the San Diego visit soon! Have to go to Girls’ Camp this week (just got called into the Young Women’s* last week) and won’t be able to access computer. Will do what I can…**

 

(*Young Women’s is the 12-18 year old girls ministry/group in our church. It’s a volunteer job and I was working with the children but the volunteer leader/minister (we call him the bishop) of our congregation asked me to switch jobs and I said yes, but I’m still getting used to the idea (especially since all of my kids are in the children’s group and I’d kind of like to hang out with them the most) but this will be good (and Ana will be in there in a year anyway). This Girls’ Camp that I’m going to is a yearly overnight three-five day camp where the girls learn camping skills and other outdoorsy stuff and there’s a spiritual aspect as well. I just found out about it on Sunday, but luckily the camp is only 15 minutes from my house, so I may come back up here to shower as needed, which I’m sure will be often.)