Monday, 29 June 2009
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Last Monday Ray gave a career talk at Vanderbilt. He thought it would’ve been helpful for him while he was a student, so wanted to do something for the current students and post-docs. He met with one of his classmates who works in the career department then gave the talk. The kids and I went to the Tysons where we waited for Ray. It was the first time the 4 of us adults had been together in years. It seems like there’s always at least one of us missing. Rich is always there, though. We had a fun evening catching up, laughing hysterically at some incidents in our pasts and enjoyed being together…till we all got too tired. Tuesday we had a full day of friends visiting. Kimbell, an AACF student from my IV ministry days at Vandy came, then Bruce, my IV supervisor. We spent the afternoon catching up and hearing about transitions in progress then headed to the Sullivans for dinner. The highlight (besides each other) was s’mores. The kids used Matthew’s father’s day gift, a fire pit, to roast marshmallows. Afterwards Jessica caught a bunch of lightning bugs. She was very happy about her efforts. We brought them back and released them at the Gross’. In her half-awake state on the ride home she was able to see them glowing in the white yogurt container. It was impressive.
Wed. morning we packed up, said goodbyes and headed out to Elk City. This trip was a 2 day trip heading east, but we made it a one day trip. We didn’t stop much, just for necessities. Ginger packed us a lunch so we ate in the car as we drove. Thanks to the time change, we got in around dinner time. Kim had made about 4 meals worth of food (literally—we ate off it the rest of our trip) so we wouldn’t have to spend time cooking. We had tamales for dinner…they were excellent! The kids got an hour or so to play till we made them go to bed. They were disappointed but tired. It’s amazing how tired you getting sitting in the car all day!
Thursday we went to the park with the local homeschool group. Lots of the children bring lightsabers, so Kim hooked up the kids. Jessica went with 2. They had a great time running around with new friends. They never even went near the playground. I was amazed at the talk about bread. The ladies grind their own wheat and were comparing different types of wheat from different locations. I used to make my own bread, even without a bread maker, but always with store-bought flour. I can’t conceive of grinding my own wheat. These days I can hardly imagine making my own bread! We went home for Kim’s homemade lasagna then headed to a beautiful pool. It’s owned by Kim’s friend’s in-law’s parents. But nobody was home. The pool and yard are beautiful, clean and had everything you could want to play with in a pool! It was a great day for swimming. It was around 100. Whew! We chilled out at home, ate and then Kim and I went to see The Proposal with some ladies Kim knows while Michael, Ray and Michael’s brother stayed with the 6 kids. Lots of video games were played, I’m sure. Kim and I stayed up til 3 talking. She had to get up and pack for their weekend trip.
I slept till 11…in time to say good-bye to them. We spent the day hanging out and relaxing. Ray worked. I got an oil change on the van and we ate more of Kim’s great food. Saturday was our next travel day. We only had about 6 hours to drive. We stopped and looked for 3 letterboxes, but only found ONE! It was at the Cadillac ranch, a famous landmark near Amarillo. We stopped for lunch at Rosa’s Café for fresh tortillas. The tortillas were amazing and we bought 2 dozen to take. We watched them make some tortillas in the cool machine and even took a picture. The employee making tortillas got a kick out of that. The trip seemed endless, but we finally made it in to Raton! The last hour the kids were beside themselves with excitement. They couldn’t wait to get there!
Sunday the kids got to pick what we did and they chose fishing. We loaded up, wondering if it would rain, but had a beautiful day fishing. Grammy and jessica each caught 2 fish. Joshua caught one big one and I did some reading. Ray got tired steering the boat (it was quite windy). For dinner we had trout, cornbread, lasagna and salad. Joshua loved the trout. Last time we went fishing neither of the kids liked the trout.
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