Monthly Archives: November 2015

In hopes of getting some rest last night I was in bed early.  Really I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.  

However no real rest came, dreamland was not nice to me.  I dreamed that I over slept by an entire shift and could not find my cell phone or binder with contact information for the hospital to notify them that I was sorry and it was an accident and I was coming as fast as I could. I kept searching and searching.  I’m not sure if I fell asleep again but before I knew it I was late for my next shift.  Half the shift was over and still I was not there, ready, or have any way to contact them.  

Bad. Bad. Bad dream.  I so don’t feel rested this morning. 

Is it wrong that I got off work at 4:00pm and was in bed by 5:00pm?  I didn’t feel anxious and still I tossed and turned all night last night.  Looking at the clock every 15-20 minutes, knowing the time of the alarm was drawing nearer and nearer. 

Today after asking the valet I was able to find the right building with the Human Resources department, the lifetime fitness building.  I would not have found that on my own.  Then I was directed to Emplyee Health where they went over my immunization record including this seasons influenza then I was directed to lab where they drew all my titers and did a urine drug screen. 

The rest of the day was spent on health stream and doing competencies, watching a few videos and this light reading material.  

 I guess in L&D here we draw all of our own labs which is not any different than Northern Navajo Medical Center, but the big bulky packet of reading material and test are a little different.  At least I will feel more prepared and qualified.  I always have wanted to take a phlebotomy class.  I think it would make me a better nurse.  

I also was able to meet the interim director of the OB department and some of the staff.  One more half day with the clinical educator for hospital wide things then on to the OB clinical educator and my two day shifts and two nightshifts of orientation.  Thank you all for your prayers I have felt them.  Thank you mom I know you are always praying for me and your text came through this morning when I was in the middle of a nursing medication competency test that had only one OB med question.  Many of the meds on it were not even available when I did medsurg 10 years ago. I just barely squeaked by with an 84% (needed an 80% or above to pass).  

Chad and the kids did their school work today, explored some back roads, and made it to Target they have had gift cards burning a whole in their pockets for half of this last week ever since we let them open their goodbye cards from Louanne. (Thank you Louanne they have thoroughly enjoyed the gift.) 

I can hardly hold my eyes open and have a whole night of sleep to catch up on, so I had better go. Goodnight ❤️

Last Tuesday afternoon I took my last walk on the beach in Newport Oregon.  Half a week of cleaning, sorting and packing and a week of driving later and we are there.  

We really had planned to rest all day.  I had imagined sleeping in, we have been in four different time zones this week.  7:00am here is 4:00am in Salem so if we keep the curtains pulled the kids will sleep in and I can feel rested for my first day of work tomorrow.  I’m sure the kids are behind a few hours too.   Yeah, that was just a pipe dream.  At about 7:00am the kids were all three up and had the bright bathroom light on and the door wide open to light the room.  Seriously.  We tried to keep sleeping, but by 7:30am we realized how futile our efforts were and so Chad suggested we drive to Charlotteville where we will actually be living.  About a 30 min. drive from the hotel where we are staying until our apartment will be ready on the 10th.  We showered and ate breakfast, straitened up the room a little and then piled into the car.  We found our apartment easily enough.  It looks like a nice community with in walking distance of a lot of amminities and entertainment.  The kids are most excited about its proximity to Toys R Us.  We need to do more research, but it looks like from our drive by at least the church choices may be limited to Lutheran and Methodist.  We did see a Baptist church yesterday (a long way from Charlotteville) so we are hopeful that there will be another.  With it being still so early in the day we noted that it was only three hours to Virginia Beach and the Atlantic Ocean.  Three hours seems like nothing these days, a good Sunday drive.  So we set out in that direction.   We drove past the first Shenandoah Valley overlook and decided if given another opportunity we would pull off and take in the view.  I have a feeling the first overlook might have been better.  We will check it out next time we go by.  But isn’t it just breath taking?!?

    
 http://youtu.be/0NmKp5A8i3M this link is to YouTube and an A Capella version of the song Oh Shenandoah that I heard for the first time today, so amazing.  We saw a ton of signs for things that we can’t wait to go see.  But for today we had the sight of the Atlantic waves as our only retinal craving.  

I kind of can’t believe we made it! 😊 there were no tears but there easily could have been.  I am humbled but the opportunities we have been given to see so many beautiful places.   
    
    
   Caleb wrote our name in the sand ❤️
  
 It is kind of chilly.  I didn’t look at the temp while we were there, but we had to dig our coats out of one of the tubs.  It was 36 degrees out this morning when we headed to breakfast, brrrr.  We stopped and looked at a gift shop in an old coast gaurd building built in 1903.  We will have to do the museum another day.   

    
 We walked along the boardwalk for a while then walked the shops on the way back to the car.  With it being off season everything was discounted.  I found some cute shoes for $3. 

 One of the shops (a few actually, but the first one we saw) was selling hermit crabs. They had cute shells that were all painted.  The kids were amazed.  They spent quite a while checking out the hermit crabs and all the cool shells.  

 We have talked about getting an ant farm or something for the kids to have a travel friendly pet.  This was perfect.  We picked out a hermit crab and a smiley shell one size bigger than his current shell so when he grows he will have a new home ready for him.  We named him Trip for the adventure we are on.  Virginia just didn’t seem fitting since we already had started calling it a him.

    
   We headed back down to the beach and got him a little sand.  Then back to finish the row of shops.   We also enjoyed the National Aviation Monument.
    
    
    
     
    
    
    
    
  We had fun playing a card game on our way out of town, a travel I Spy game from Grandma Sherman.  The sunset was beautiful and as we were still a ways from home it has me wondering if we pushed a little too hard today on our “day of rest”.  Much prayers would be appreciated as I stick my foot out there, my nose too, tomorrow on the first day of this assignment.  

    
 Oh, and in case anyone here was wondering.  We took pictures of our odometer in our drive way and in Virginia Beach.  We have traveled a whole whooping lot of miles this week.  

It’s was raining and pouring this morning and vacillating between spitting and a steady beat most of the rest of the day so bear with us.  The pictures are not very clear.  We turned north just before Charlotte this morning after sleeping in and taking time to enjoy the continental breakfast.  Our kids can pack away the groceries and for some reason eat more than any normal adult when it comes to continental breakfasts.  

    
    
   We drove through South Carolina in the dark, but I’m sure it is similar to Georgia and North Carolina in its beauty.  At the first good rest stop we used the bathroom and then used the oportunity to clean up the whole back seat.  The kids ran hills and Chad and I packed out a few bags of trash, put all the colored pencils in a bag, and organized the blankets and books.  Yay.  So much nicer.  Since we had to do the kids work that they had been told to do for days meant they each had to pay each of us a dollar.  Score, now I have money to buy a treat.  Actually we were gifted some travel money from both Chad’s parents and mine in our early family Christmas and it has some how miraculously covered all of our food for the entire trip including our one meal in New Orleans that alone cost $100 we have balanced our fast food with a few nice sit down restaraunts and have been continually thankful for those gifts.   
    
    
   We loved to see the mountains, the beautiful green valleys with cute farms in them.  Each boardered by the colorful woods in their yellow and red fall fashion.  We only had 5.5 hours to drive today but still it was getting dark by the time we got into Fishersville.  I took a few pictures of the new hospital I will be working at starting Monday.   
    
 It is pretty good sized for the area, it must service an area a lot bigger than Fishersville alone.  I know it will all work out so I am not fearful of what is to come just a little anxious to get this first week over with.  We will check out the area more tomorrow but mostly what is on the agenda is rest.  I don’t think we are going to try to be up early enough to find a new church.  We are all so wiped and are just going to rest. The kids are a little nuts-o and have been entertaining me since we pulled in here.  

    Dont worry I didn’t let him stay up there he was just trying to stay out of the girls’ way as they played their game.  They had made “thrones” for themselves and were some kind of royalty. 
 

We woke up extra early this morning so that we could sneak in a drive out to Pensacola Beach for sunrise (30 min. drive in the opposite direction than we needed to go) it was dark and the mist was visible so heavy in the air.  The AC in our room kicked on at 5:30 am when we opened the door to our room to take the bags out to the car and discovered how warm it was outside already.  As we turned to drive out over the water towards the Pensacola Beach Sandbar it started getting light. The fog was so thick I was sure we would not be able to see anything.   

 When we arrived it was starting to have patches of better visibility and when we turned to find a parking spot amongst the hotels the fog was completely behind us, and we could see the white sand in the distance.  It looked beautiful, but it took us longer than planned to get out there and so once we got out of the car we had a whole four minutes to get to and enjoy the beach before getting back on the road if we were going to be on time for our breakfast date with Matt and Katrina Wilson from our First Naz Sunday school class.  Needless to say we did not get back in the car in enough time to be on time but we were able to give them enough warning that we weren’t setting them up later and now we can say we have seen the Gulf of Mexico.  We probably saw it last night but it was too dark to tell.   

  It was AWESOME!!! Beautiful white sand and the shells were different than the ones on the Pacific coast or Hawaii.  We piled back into the car and Chad tried to make up some time, but it was inevitable that we would have to stop and get gas.  We messaged our friends our new ETA so they could take their time and not stress. Getting out of the house with two littles is sometimes a challenge.  We remember those days.  We arrived at our destination 10 min. after our original meet up time which we count a victory.  We spilled out of the car which you can imagine by now is like a dumpster in the back seat.  We try to keep the mess to a minimum, but we can not always stop for meals and the kids got the brilliant idea to crumple up half a ream of paper into little balls and throw them at eachother.  We have taken out grocery bags full of papers and wrappers every few stops, but it doesn’t keep paper and colored pencils from spilling out when we open the doors.  Add to this that at least our littlest never keeps her shoes on so she has to sort through the mess to find her shoes and then she throws them out of the car, climbs out, then puts them on.  In this particular time the shoes rolled under the car.  At that point all you can do is shake your head.  As any parent anywhere knows that you can’t can’t control your kids actions sometimes we wish we could or at least be able to anticipate what they might do.  This one leaves me speechless all too often.  We made it in the diner to discover our comrades already there and seated.  We joined them.  A year and a half is a long time.  Nathan was a baby last time we saw him and Olivia is a new addition.  Plus that, these kind of experiences that they are going through as a family changes you as a person and as a family.  They seemed to be doing so well. It was apparent that our kids, namely Eve, needed a chance to burn off some energy as we have put about 60ish hours in in our car seats in the last week. 

   Matt offered to drive our car to base if I could ride with Katrina to the Aviation museum.  We were so thankful that we had planned to take these last few days a little slower.  Not only did it cover our butts when our alternator decided to give up the ghost, it has allowed us to take some time to visit longer with friends along the way.  I enjoyed the drive with Katrina, it wasn’t very far at all.  The ID check and look over at the check station was a little disconcerting, but the man was friendly.  I couldn’t believe those boys, we didn’t see them pass us but some how they beat us in.  The Aviation museum was awesome!  So so cool! I missed the trip to the air museum in Tilamook so it was all new to me, and with Matt who has been studying helicopters half leading as a tour guide for our small group he could add a lot of history, facts and tidbits about a lot of the aircraft in the museum that we would not have learned otherwise.  

    
  Who wants to send their loved ones into war in a hot air balloon?  
    This is the Wright Brothers flyer model first marketed to the military. 
     Sikorsky is the “Wright Brothers” of the helicopter. 
    
 Presidential helicopter above.

   
    
    
    
    
    
    The first helicopters used in the military at a time when they were still learning when and how helicopters would be most useful in warfare. 
    
    
    
  I wish I had the two above pictures in one frame and maybe the sound recording of Nathan’s giggle.  😘  
 Above is the cockpit of the Wright Flyer 😬below a Piece of the Berlin Wall.    
    
 Night vision display was closed for the day… Bummer.    
 Goofy kids!  It was sad to say goodbye already.  Matt showed us the best way north to the northern check station to get off base, saving us a lot of time that it would have taken to go around.  Thank you Matt and Katrina you have blessed us immensly you and your sweet boy.  Hopefully we will see you again before we leave this side of the Mississippi.  

We made really good time into Atlanta where just before we really got into town a rainstorm hit.  We had anticipated get into Charlotte NC around 7:22pm then we crossed the time zone that jumped to 8:22.  Then our whole route started turning red.  Because of the time change it was now 4:00pm and the start of rush hour.  Add to that a whole slew of accidents caused by the rainstorm and we found ourselves at a stand still.  We decided to grab dinner and maybe it would clear up as our current ETA was near midnight.  Well that didn’t help much.  When we got back on the freeway google maps recommended a side road that would save us two hours of practically stopped traffic due to several accidents.  We took the side route which was a fun little series of rabbit trails and we could watch the minutes drop off our ETA we were down to 10:00pm.  The traffic was still slow when we got back on the freeway but at least it was moving.  We decided then that we would go only to the next big town Charlotte would have to wait.   

    
    Alabama and Georgia are both amazingly beautiful.  The cotton fields above were like a beautiful paining.
    
   I should have taken a picture of the traffic after this….or a screen shot of the GPS and all of the accidents.  We were so thankful for all your prayers they are working, as we were not a part of any of those many accidents. 

Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. I can’t say we saw any of it well like we do when we have an assignment near by but we saw what we could with our time constraints.  I really wanted to take the kids to Natchez because I remember loving it when we visited when I was in Highschool, but it was an extra half hour out of our way and we felt the French Quarter of New Orleans was more important to make it to.   

 Northern Louisiana, starting to feel like we were in the south.  Gas prices were low which was nice. 

 The kids cheered from the back seat as we crossed into Mississippi.  They exclaimed how glad they were that we travel and told us thank you for traveling for the first time ever.  Mississippi was exactly how I remembered it with the miles of trees closing in on the freeway, although this time it felt less clostraphobic and I could appreciate the beauty more.  Everything is so green it out the national forests in California, Arizona, and New Mexico to shame.   

    Hannah is working on her drawing skills.
    
    
 Caleb thinks this looks like a chicken doing the back stroke through chicken noodle soup.

   Hannah had this strange little tooth piece come out of her mouth it looks like an underdeveloped molar.  Since there looks like another one is starting to push up through the gums I’m not going to worry about it. 
  From top to bottom, Jumbalaya, Red beans and rice, and shrimp creole for lunch.  The fam split a oyster po-boy everyone except for Hannah was all over it.   
    
 The kids made smushed pennys while Chad bought some beignets for himself and the kids and coffee for me. 

    
    
   They were a powdery mess but worth the experience.  The French Quarter is nothing like it was when I was a kid, but it has come a long way post Katrina since we were here in 2006.  I miss all the beautiful hanging flower baskets.   
    
   

  We enjoyed the steer performers and artists.  Before we left New Orleans we had to drive through the Lower Nineth Ward.  I wish we had our 2006 pictures of it on FaceBook but at least for me it was pre FaceBook.  It has come a long way. I thought they might not rebuild that area because of the vastness of the destruction and the risk of it happening again. 
    

   There were a few foundations here and there but most of the debris has been removed and new houses are up in their places. Several places have boarded windows, but evidence that they are being worked on and and a few like the buildings above are ones remember from our previous drive through that survived the storm (I’m sure they had to be redone on the inside).  The drive down the coast was uneventful.  It grew dark before we crossed into Alabama so I have no photos of that but the clouds were amazing before it became dark.  
   We stayed the night in Pensacola Florida…warm and humid.  Stoping at 7:30pm.  We stayed in a fairly nice hotel and still making our selves at home included killing a cockroach on the bedside table.  Those little guys are fast.  

We woke up after the sun this morning, you don’t even know how nice and needed it was.  Our little man has had this problem since he was young where if he gets overtired he throws up in the night although he is not sick and in the morning again he feels fine.  When ever he would stay the night with anyone he needed a barf bowl because he would play and get over tired and almost always wake up in the night puking.  At the ripe old age of 10 he has been up late with no problems and we have all but forgotten this childhood issue.  It turns out he still has it and with our long hours in the car and frequent fast food he was up in the night last night puking.  We had left out of Phoenix at 0400 and had made it into Oklahoma City around 11:00pm it was a long day.  We had planned on a slower morning this morning anyway.   We were going to meet my recruiter for breakfast at 8:30 so there was no rush.  Everyone got a shower, and we even had time to fill up with gas before breakfast.  

We met Amanda at IHOP, it was fun to meet in person the person we have been talking to on the phone and by texts for the last four months.  We also enjoyed the unexpected suprise of Genesis buying breakfast for us.   

 We also took a little time to take a tour of the Oklahoma Capitol building.  There was a huge school group there, so their normal tour guides were tied up.  The man at the gift shop was very helpful and gave us a self guided tour book and gave us a few interesting tidbits before we headed up to the 5th floor to start it.  The Oklahoma Capitol building was built between the years of 1914-1917 then with WWI raging the money and supplies set aside to build the dome of the Capitol had to go to the war efforts.  A temporary roof was placed on the Capitol where the dome was designed to be and all attention was turned to Erope and the war efforts.  It wasn’t until 2002 that the $22,000,000 (the original building cost $1,500,000) was raised to put the dome on the Capitol building. 

Before 2002 

Now 2015 

    
 The indian guardian on the top of the dome is 22 feet tall and weighs 8,000 lbs.   

 The ring of flags is a tribute to each of the native tribes of Oklahoma. 

The inside of the building was quite colorful.  Beautiful, meaniningful paintings covered the walls. There was a purple line where the roof had been so you could see that everything above it was new since 2002 when the dome was completed.  

  This is are pluck of the guardian indian on top of the building.

     
    
    
    
    
    
    
 Very cool.  The kids decided to design their own Capitol buildings when we left.  They have been passing papers up to me all day with their ideas on the ideal Capitol building I may post some of them later.  After we left Oklahoma City they all fell asleep.  The landscape was hilly with deciduous trees in full color.  

    
  
   Lunch in small town Oklahoma was interesting, honey we are deffinately not in Salem any more. 

The kids loved the visitor center just over the boarder in Arkansas.   

    
    
   There was a car accident so traffic was at a standstill so, knowing we would not be making it to the Arkansas Capitol building we watched a YouTube tour while we waited for the traffic to pick back up.  With it getting dark at 5:30pm our view of Little Rock looked like this.  
 We turned south hoping to make it a ways towards New Orleans with hopes to make it further south before turning in.  I had an unbelievable headache and we had accidently taken the Ibuprofen out of the car in Salem.  We stopped at a gas station and got a bottle of Ibuprofen and coffee at dinner time…holding my head to keep it from exploding, my eyes shut to prevent vomiting I popped the ibuprofen in my mouth.  I meant to take four, but I count think strait and I remember popping one…two…three…four…five pills in my mouth.  Keeping my eyes shut with my head wrapped in a blanket on a pillow I realized what I had just done.  1000mg of Ibuprofen, I don’t think that is a safe dose…I have not had a stomache ache, and I pray that y kidneys and liver could take the blow with out any long term effects.  Oops I better not do that ever again.  The good news is eventually I fell asleep.  Chad decided to stop about 8:30pm way earlier than we have been stopping as we didn’t even get out of Oklahoma City this morning until 11:30am.  My head was significantly better.  We didn’t even grab our bags out of the car we just went straight from our car to the room and crashed.  

A year and a half ago it took us a whole week to drive from Salem, Oregon to Farmington, New Mexico.  The kids were definitely not used to the travel and I can’t say we grown ups we good travelers either.  It amazes me that if we had not had our car troubles yesterday we would have made it to Texas at least maybe even Oklahoma in just two days.  The kids look forward to our long days in the car just like most people look forward to a day to just lounge at home on occasion.  This morning we headed out of Phoenix at 0400 when Matt headed to work.  We tried to say our goodbyes to the kids before bed since they were not up at 0400.  Chad said he was feeling pretty rested after our whole 7 hours of sleep so he took first shift.  The kids and I were out and didn’t wake up until we were about 30 min. outside of Gallup NM.   

    
 We were not able to detour through Shiprock or Farmington although God knows I really wanted to.  I wanted to stop in at the hospital, but especially wanted to meet up with my Valerie BlueEyes…she was so sweet to message me and say she was waving from a distance.  I don’t anticipate being able to come back through New Mexico for a long time so Val, you had better send me a graduation invitation.  If at all possible I want to crash your party.  I’m so proud of you for going back to school. We got into Albuquerque just about lunch time which made it perfect timing since we were planing to meet a fellow travel nurse family for lunch near San Felipe Pueblo for lunch.  No cell service made that exciting, but we did find each other.  They said our fully loaded car with Oregon plates was a dead giveaway.  We have met a lot of travelers, but we very rarely meet a family doing what we are doing which made meeting David and Alexandra extra fun! The food was pretty good as well.  

   Chad drove again when we got back on the road.  Infact he drove all day even though I often offered to drive.  He must have been feeling more rested.  We finally made it to Texas  
    
    
 The sunset was awefully beautiful although hard to watch through the mirrors.  I was glad we weren’t driving into it. 

We got another so early it’s dark start this morning at 0100 I didn’t sleep too well for our three hour nap so Chad took the first shift.  We had only to drive up the hill before we were ready for our first stop.  I couldn’t drive through Victorville and not stop in at Desert Valley.  It was 0200 and I guess that they had just finished a preterm SROM transport so when I rang the doorbell and they asked me how they could help me, my response of, “my water broke.” was perfect. I guess they all went scrambling even though they knew I was coming.  It made for some good laughs.  It was good to visit with them even if we only had 20 minutes.  It felt like I was home on the unit and with the people I spent three months of my time with.    

 We then filled with gas and headed east.  Getting into Flagstaff at 0900.  Our battery light hat been flickering on and off a couple times yesterday, and frequently between Victorville and Kingman we knew our alternator was most likely the culprit as the battery was fairly new.  After Kingman it was staying on solidly, but there was no towns big enough for an auto repair shop except for maybe Williams.  By the time we limped into Flagstaff the gauges were going haywire and we had unplugged anything that uses electricity.  Chad used his multimeter and it looked most definitely like it was the alternator.   

 As Chad started taking it out of the car a guy came up and asked if we needed any help, he said, “I just feel like God was telling me I needed to stop and help you guys.”  It looked like the guys had it under control so the kids and I walked down the street a few blocks to Barnes and Nobles for the bathroom and something to do while we waited.  It wasn’t too long before we were getting texts saying that none of the auto parts stores in Flagstaff have the alternator that we need the part is being shipped and would be in in the morning.  No! The day just started that deffinately would not do.  I called around to a few salvage yards discovering of the ones listed for Flagstaff all went to the same office in Prescott who did have one that they would give us a 9 month warranty on but it also would need to be shipped and could not be in until the next day.  I guess it is a forced rest period.  We were holding our breath that we would make it the half block to the hotel.  As we started the car up and pulled out we noticed that the light was no longer on.  We pulled off at the gas station across from the hotel and used the multimeter again…no way! It was working fine.  Well, what should we do now.  All morning I had recieved text messages…even before we knew this was going to be more than just a pit stop saying, 

 “Hi we hope things are going well i like to thinkhen i am forsed to stop god has someone who needs to see me or hear me you are his witness al the time.”

” ‘No worries. God has it covered,’ bumper sticker.”

As well as a few calls from people who said they felt lead to pray especially for our car today. 

We decided wile it’s working now, we have AAA lets just see if we can make it to Phoenix.  They will for sure have the part and then we can bug Matt and Heidi (my cousin and her husband that, as you can imagine we don’t get to see very often) it just so happens to be Matt’s one day off and he offered his driveway and tools if we would like to use them.  Caleb set out to help Chad with his man project, Matt needed to go pick up Crystal from school so he got Savanna up from her nap she was playing with Eve Elsa and Anna of course.  So she stayed with us while Matt ran a few errands and took Crystal to dance.  Hannah and I watched “How it’s made” and tried to stay awake as you can imagine we were tired.  

   When Matt came back Hannah asked a question about dance and he offered to take us to the studio so we could watch her practice for her solo performance for Saturday’s competition.  She is a very good dancer it was fun to watch.   
  The girls were taking it all in.  I foresee them trying a few of these moves in the next day or two.  

After dance we picked up the boys from the house and Heidi from work and headed out to get some dinner.  It was so delicious.  

 These two generally hit it off together, but you never know when and if that will change.  Well it hasn’t yet.  They are so silly when they get together.  

Earlier in the day Matt had offered a bedroom for us to stay the night.  We didn’t know if we would want to try to get back on the road, but with 6:30pm feeling like midnight and the cumulative sleep we have gotten so far on this road trip we decided to take them up on their offer.  Besides that we were getting ready to cross the Navajo reservation and we know because we have been across it several times that if we changed our minds later there is no where to stop and you can’t just pull off and take a nap.  Our arrangements were quite comfortable (Thank you Crystal for letting us have your room for a night) the kids curled up in their sleeping bags on the floor I showered and hopped into bed next to Chad at about 9:00pm and we were out.  

Thank you Matt and Heidi we have enjoyed visiting you. Car problems are no fun, but I’ve never had it feel like a blessing before.  Love you guys.

Day light Savings time is a tricky time to set your alarm for 0100 hours.  Do you set the alarm for 0101 so it is after the second 0100? If you set it at 0100 will it go off twice?  We decided to set our alarm for 0045 and I’m so glad we did.  By the time we were pulling in to Aunt Liz’s house (the kids call our cousins aunts and uncles) 6 hours into our drive the kids were just starting to be awake.  My favorite quote of the day was from Eve as we pulled into the driveway, “it’s so dark today!” like it hadn’t crossed her mind that it could still be morning as we had been on the road for quite a while so the only possible conclusion is that it is dark today.  She is so cute!  I will be sad when she is out of the amazing quotes stage as the two older kids are pretty much out of that hilarious stage.  Like probably every other parent I wish I had been writing more of them down all these years.  

Liz and Tobias were already up and very shortly after we had greeted them another familier face came out of the back headroom, Aunt Susan! Bonus! We didn’t think we would get to see her and feel pretty lucky to have come through on just the right day.  Al was up shortly and started making waffles for the kids.  The kids settled down with Tobias on the floor to watch Wreckit Ralph while us grown ups visited.  

    
    
 We were in Redding from 0600-0800 then due to distance needing to be covered we headed south.  We were sad to drive through Sacramento with out stopping and hope our family in that area understand the time constraints. We love you all.  Of course we had to hit up In-N-Out for lunch. And after almost 1000 miles of driving we pulled into San Bernardino at 1804 (6:04 PM).   

We noticed a Japanese restaurant on our way to Great Grandma and Grandpa’s hotel  that would be perfect to walk to for dinner.  Grandma’s best friends growing up were Japanese and so besides that it is delicious it also has a special place in her heart.  

  A blurry picture, but still I love it!  
    
  
 After dinner the kids went Swimming.  We were going to get back on the road, but Grandma and Grandpa insisted we get a nap in so we crashed with them until 0100. Continued prayers for safe travels would be much appreciated especially since we are pushing so hard through the areas we have been so we can enjoy more slowly the new states we will encounter on this drive.