At Grandmother & Granddaddy's house

Today was a pretty laid-back day. We spent most of the day at Jeremy's parents' house again. I did laundry and caught up on my coupons, and the kids played mostly happily. It was a nice day of just spending time together and practicing with my camera.

Ian loves his new Elmo backpack. It's hard to get him to ever take it off.

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Rinnah carting around their new blocks

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I tried to get shots of them together in their coordinating pjs today. As you can see, I was less than successful.

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Rinnah tickling Ian, backpack and all

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They're playing and singing "Deep and Wide" here (click on the 'latest videos' tab for a video of the same song)

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Rinnah on her new bike from Grandmother & Granddaddy

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He's going to love this picture when he's older, don't you think?

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My handsome little man

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I took Rinnah outside for a couple of pictures with the new lens my mom gave me for Christmas. I love this lens! It focuses so much faster, and blurs the background so much more smoothly. These aren't photoshopped-this is how they came out of the camera. Even her eyelashes are in focus in some of them!

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And one from indoors that I did a color conversion with

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I'd like to think it's all my photography skills improving, but my successful shots have gone up dramatically since I put this lens on my camera. I'm so thrilled with it!

Discovery Museum

Today we went to the San Jose Discovery museum again. I really wanted to take the kids there one more time before we left, so today was the day. Somehow we managed to be lucky enough to stumble across some sort of special event/publicity/fundraising day, so there were a crazy amount of people there. It was completely packed. Still, the kids had a great time and I was really proud of Ian. He did a great job sharing and taking turns patiently.

Rinnah playing in the water-her favorite thing and this museum has by far the best water exhibit we've seen.

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Ian played with just about everything today. Here he is sitting in a Vietnamese boat.

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At the sand table

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Rinnah had a ball in the art room. Here she is pouring colored water on a block of ice. Her favorite part was the salt shaker full of glitter. She carried it around and poured it on everything.

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She also loved the big paint wall.

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I'm really glad we had a chance to visit once more this week!

Christmas train ride

For Christmas this year, Jeremy's parents gave Ian a train ride. He still talks about his birthday and riding the train in Salt Lake City, and as we've seen the trains go by he's said numerous times that he needs to "get more birthdays" so he can ride the train again. So his gift was that we all got to ride the Caltrain together. He loved it!

True to form, we were late for the first train, so we ended up going an hour later than originally planned. Eventually we did make it to the station platform.

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The kids watching the train approach

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I know he doesn't look that excited, but believe me, he was! Ian's kind of a strange kid in that he doesn't seem to show much emotion during the experience, but he will talk about it and get all excited later. This was about as much of a grin as we got at the time. He was concentrating on taking it all in.

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Rinnah also loved looking out the window

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After watching the train depart, we walked to our destination:

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Round Table pizza is so delicious! This was a huge treat for us since we almost never go out to eat. We really enjoyed it, and the kids were pretty well-behaved, considering we had them out an hour later than we originally intended. Jeremy and Ian had fun playing the arcade games.

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The guys

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A little playing around at the station waiting to go home

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It was really a fantastic day!

Christmas cookies!

We have been having a lot of fun with the kids getting ready for Christmas. Ian helped me decorate and both kids love turning the light on for the tree. Both kids, but especially Ian, enjoyed picking out toys to donate for Toys for Tots and putting them in the giant wrapped box at the store. Ian has been helping me wrap gifts (we bought him his very own set of scissors to use), and yesterday and today I let the kids decorate sugar cookies with red and green frosting. They had a blast! I think it was one of their favorite things we've done.

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Sleep battles

This has been a challenging week with the kids.

Both kids have been very resistant to naps lately. And I find it nearly impossible to wrestle both of them to sleep at the same time. Admittedly, this is compounded by our small space here, but I think we'd be having similar issues even in a big house. Ian is at the age where he wants to stay up past naptime, but when he does he has complete meltdowns by 5pm and it's a major test of our sanity to make it to 7 or 8 when we can get him in bed. Rinnah is only 17 months old, but it's getting harder and harder to make her nap. She is clearly nowhere near outgrowing naps-in fact, she may still need two naps and not just one, but lately nothing works for getting her down. Even car rides (our last desperate resort) have failed this week.

So now we're caught in a vicious cycle of overtired kids, who need sleep but are too tired to fall asleep without screaming for hours and making Jeremy and I want to pull our hair out. Ugh. This has been one of our most challenging and exhausting weeks as parents of two kids. One of those weeks where we think of our dear friends, many of whom we admire greatly, with 6+ children and have a simultaneous feeling of awe at their superhuman patience and bewilderment at how they haven't lost their minds completely.

We did have a few bright spots. This morning (before they were too tired again) we went for a quick trip to the children's museum, and that was fun. Rinnah has started saying, "Yeah!!!" excitedly when she wants to do something you suggest, and Ian has taken to doing the same thing, so it was a nice feeling when we'd offer an activity and they'd be all excited about it.

We do love our kids. I am so thankful for them, even during weeks like this. I'm thankful that sleep is our biggest issue right now. But still, hopeful that this coming week is better and we can figure out what we need to do to get them to rest so we can have our (mostly) happy kids back again.

Wonderful day

Today was really a great day.

We spent some time together this morning-the kids played games with Jeremy for awhile, and Ian helped me make bacon wrapped little smokies. After Rinnah's nap and lunch we rode the light rail out to a nearby mall. We spent quite awhile in a toystore, with the kids playing with the toy trains, cars, & marching dogs that were out. We walked around for awhile just stopping at whatever looked interesting. It was so refreshing to just be together again, not worrying about a schedule or meeting up with anyone or trying to be back by any certain time. The kids really loved it too. Ian didn't want to leave the mall-he kept saying, "I'm still having fun!" We took an extra long ride on the train home, thinking about hitting the children's museum (it's on the same train line) but Rinnah was getting tired and the museum was close to closing anyway, so we just came home.

Then we had dinner and a nice, long, relaxing bedtime routine for the kids. So many times lately we've pushed them too late and we get home and try to rush through everything. It was nice to do baths, and read stories, and have longer to talk about our day and pray together.

Not an overly exciting day, but a really wonderful day where we were just able to enjoy our kids and being together.

The kids

Since I've been unable to upload pictures for awhile, I thought this would be a good time to give an update on the kids.

Ian is three now, and he is learning so much so fast. He recognizes quite a few letters now and can say his ABCs. He is starting to sing songs. His memory is incredible (especially right after waking up when I bribed him with a promise of something if he would go to sleep). He is very logical and perfectionistic at times. It's really something to watch him park his toy cars with such precision. He parks his trike backwards, since that's how we park the truck, and is very good at steering to do so. He's very compassionate towards Rinnah 90% of the time and shares with her and is always making sure he knows where she is and that she has something to play with. He loves garbage trucks, trains, buses that bend in the middle, and any other large vehicles. He also loves it when we go over speedbumps. Even though he's starting to catch on to storylines in movies, he far prefers to have one on one attention playing a game, reading a book, or playing with his toys and insists on getting that attention. He loves to help me find the items in the picture on a coupon.

Rinnah is seventeen months. Her personality is just bubbling over right now. She loves to laugh, and to make other people laugh. For example, the other day Ian was being cross and grumpy at lunchtime, and he was whining about something or other. She was sitting there quietly, and suddenly places her lunchmeat square on her head like a hat and gives Ian a huge grin. He burst into laughter of course. She is talking now, probably about 100 words, and she'll mimic anything you say, especially if she thinks it will get her what she wants. She's learned to sing the "hey!" in Jingle Bells at the right time. She's very smart and is quick to jump in and copy/help you with whatever she can reach. Her favorite thing is to play in the water-sinks, bathtubs, puddles, hoses-anything she can find. She can entertain herself for long periods of time with just a few items, coming up with all sorts of ways to use them. She never gets tired of hiding under or behind something, only to pop out with a huge grin. Her smile and laugh are infectious. She loves shoes.

They can drive us batty sometimes, but it sure is a blessing to watch them grow and discover the world! I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Festival of Lights

Finally, I can post an update! Our internet connection has been less than reliable lately, and I haven't been able to get very many pages to load, hence the long delay in updating.

Anyway, we went to the Los Altos Festival of Lights parade over the weekend. It was really awesome! It started at 6pm, so it was dark, and there were all sorts of floats and marching bands and storybook characters, all decorated with lights. Some of them were simple, and some were elaborate like something from the Disney lights parade. It was a neat experience and Ian loved looking at everything. Poor Rinnah was exhausted and it seemed like every time she'd start to drift off, a drummer or other loud thing would come by and she'd get startled. She went right to sleep though once we got in the car, and it was definitely worth going to.

We also went to the San Jose Children's museum, both on Saturday with everyone and just me and the kids today. This museum is great. The water feature is the best we've seen yet-all sorts of water tornadoes and things to squirt and spray....the kids played there for 45+ minutes each day, and I had to practically pry them away when it was time to go. We'll definitely be there several more times before we leave.

Ian's funny

Ian has said so many funny things lately. Unfortunately we forget most of them before we can post on the blog. But over dinner we had one of the funniest conversations to date.

Ian: Our family has 3 kids?
Me: Three? Really?
Ian: Yeah.
Me: Are you sure? Can you count again?
Ian: Three! We have 3 kids.
Me: You're one, Rinnah's two....who's the other one?
Ian: (very excitedly) Daddy!!

We were cracking up. He was laughing too, although I'm not sure he realized why that was funny!

Black Friday shopping was a blast. It honestly was less crowded and less chaotic here than it was in our little town back home. Maybe just because there were so many different stores? Mom Weatherford and I went, and I really had fun. It's a lot more fun with someone else, plus she knew all the best routes between stores! At any rate, I was able to pick up almost all of the items we were looking for. We got some nice deals on some toys and games for the kids. Next we just have to decide which ones are for Christmas and which will be saved for later. We also picked up the $39 camcorder at Target, one of those pocket ones that just takes Youtube quality videos. We're hoping that makes it simpler for us to take quick videos and upload them regularly. I got another memory card for my camera. And Jeremy finally got new shoes, which he's needed for quite awhile. And the best part? 99cent Ben & Jerry's ice cream from Walgreens on the way home. Perfect way to wrap up our Black Friday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We had a really nice day today. I headed out early this morning to hit the drugstores. They did 3 day ads instead of just Black Friday, so I went to RiteAid, Walgreens, and CVS to load up on free stuff and really cheap Ghirardelli & Lindt chocolate. Then we went over to Jeremy's parents' house for a fantastic meal of turkey, chicken & dumplings, and all the fixings. Jeremy hadn't been there for Thanksgiving since his freshman year of college 9 years ago! We were definitely overdue to spend Thanksgiving with them.

In the afternoon we did a skype call with my mom & brothers, and it was nice to say hi to them. Ian has been talking for days about calling his uncles and Aunt Katy on the computer, but of course when we got online he got all shy on us. Oh well. At least he sang most of the alphabet for them. We tried to call Katy & Peter, but they weren't home.

Tomorrow we're going out super early to do some Black Friday shopping. I've never gotten to do it in a major metro area-I'm excited! One of the things we're hoping to pick up is a new hard drive, which will help me get caught up on my pictures. I really really want to be able to upload pictures again by the end of the weekend. Definitely the goal I'm aiming towards.

Progress

Saturday evening Jeremy and I went out to see his dad's barbershop chorus at a cabaret dinner. It was great! The music was really wonderful and the food was good. Jeremy's mom watched the kids so we could have a little date night. I ended up coming home early because I just wasn't feeling good, and when I got home both kids were asleep in bed. I don't know how she did it, but what an awesome gift. That's the first night EVER we have come home to two sleeping children. Usually we can't even get them to sleep that early. Anyway, we're already planning for what we want to do when we're both cold-free and we could actually be out past 7pm. What a great feeling!

Sunday Jeremy was sweet and took the kids over to his parents' for a visit while I stayed home and rested. It did a world of good too, since today I'm feeling quite a lot better than yesterday. Ian is still coughing too much for me to feel right taking him to the children's museum, so we did another Walgreen's trip today and spent some time at Mom Weatherford's house again. When Jeremy was done with work we took another walk over to the pet shop (Ian insists he can't go there without daddy) and had an easy evening with the kids. They're both not quite 100%, and tiring out earlier than normal, so I think it was good for them. Ian has been sleeping 12 hours a night and took a nap this afternoon too, so I know his cold is still getting to him. Hopefully they'll get plenty of rest tonight.

Colds

We've been fighting this cold for almost two months now, and it seems like we can just never get completely over it. I thought we were almost through earlier this week, and now Ian and I are going through kleenex like crazy again. (Good thing we just got 15 free boxes of Kleenex last week.) So the last few days I haven't taken the kids to museums or anything like that because I don't want to get other kids sick. We spent a morning catching up on laundry and today we went and returned some things to Target. I'm bummed because I was hoping that we could all go out to one of the children's museums tomorrow, but it looks like that will have to wait.

We have spent time visiting with Jeremy's parents still, which is nice. I'm so glad the kids are getting to spend some good time with them. Our visits before have always been around a week, so just as the kids were getting warmed up to them we'd have to leave. It's nice to have the kids get comfortable at their house, and with their Grandmother, Granddaddy, and Granny Gunn.

Jeremy has almost finished recovering the data from the laptop hard drive (I'm so thankful to have a techie husband) so hopefully soon I'll have things going again so I can post pictures.

Our exciting thing for the day-pomelo!! It's a huge citrus fruit, kind of like a grapefruit but sweeter, that we loved in Thailand. I found some today at a farmer's market here. It was such a treat to enjoy it again!

Special Day

We've reinstated the reward chart for Ian for sleeping. He starts with two "green go"s, since he loves green go/red stop things, and if he keeps getting out of bed we turn them to red stop. For each green he has left in the morning he gets a sticker. We had a picture for him to put the stickers on, and with a perfect track record, he could have finished it in 6 days. It took him about 3 and a half weeks, but he finished it this morning. So tonight we went out to Chuck E Cheese (we had a coupon) and played for a few hours. He had a blast and felt so special. We don't plan on making every reward day this big, but we wanted the first one to be a huge deal so he'll start associating the reward with staying in bed. He loved picking his rewards at the end to spend his tickets on. He just had trouble believing that he could get more than one thing-he thought we were asking him to change his mind. His cherished big prize is a little plastic ziploc-style bag with chuck e cheese on it, filled with some stickers, candy, and little plastic star-shaped glasses. We had a great time today-Jeremy and I even got to play skee-ball and pinball. Rinnah loved shaking the tokens in the cups and pouring them back and forth between two cups. She also loved putting the token in the slot to make those little cars rock back and forth, but freaked out when it started to move. Oh well.

Pics may have to wait. We had a little incident here involving someone less than 3 feet tall, a small cup of water, and a laptop, so until we get that all straightened out I don't have a way to upload the pictures.

The weekend

Yesterday we went to the Tech Museum in San Jose. Jeremy's been looking forward to going there. We were running late and managed to leave without the camera-I'm still kicking myself for that one. If we were going to miss pics at a museum though, this was probably the one, since most of the exhibits were geared toward older kids and even adults. We had fun. Rinnah's favorite part was the escalator. Ian liked the MPG simulator where he got to drive a car, and the magnetic shape blocks. I just wish we could have gotten the pics of the kids interacting with their grandparents, because it was really precious.

We made it to church again today. Jeremy's parents attend a really awesome church. The worship is so vibrant and the music reminds us a lot of the churches we'd visit with the gospel choir we sang in back in college. The speaking has also been really good. Unfortunately, the one thing that hasn't been good is the nursery. Last week Rinnah was turned away because they were full, but we arrived late so we figured it was our fault. Today we got there a good 15 minutes before the service even started (a major achievement for us) but Rinnah was turned away again because a nursery worker hadn't come in so they were short-staffed. This morning though, Jeremy's mom was sweet and took Rinnah to the overflow room so Jeremy and I could enjoy the service without having to worry about taking care of her. And last week Rinnah was just amazingly well-behaved during the service, so it has mostly worked out. I think we're going to have to give up on attending the service with Jeremy's parents though, since the nursery is in such high-demand and we don't get home until 1:30 when we attend that service, which is really pushing the kids' naps. The service is very good though, so we don't want to go to a different church. We'll make it work.

We had such a nice week this past week, visiting with Katy and Peter, spending some evenings over with Jeremy's parents, and doing the museum on Saturday. I guess now I have to come back to real life and catch up on some cleaning and laundry before we go out on too many more field trips!

Sunnyvale

Last Saturday we made it to Sunnyvale, California. This felt like a huge milestone since this whole time we've been headed to California as our major destination. We're excited to be here. Visiting Jeremy's family was one of the big appeals of the RV for us, since this is an experience we could never have without the RV. We are planning on staying in the area for two months which will give the kids some nice quality time with their grandparents.

Jeremy's sister Katy and her husband Peter were out here for a few days. The last time we met up with them in person Ian was only 10 months old, and obviously Rinnah wasn't around yet, so it was a long overdue visit. They are doing really well and the kids took right to them. We had a nice visit; I just wish it could have been longer. I'm still working on getting pics uploaded, but hopefully that will be soon.

We've been trying to take a little easier day today because since we got here, we've put the kids through a lot of late nights and napless days. Both kids took a nice long afternoon nap today and then we went to a nearby park so they could play. We also got to talk to Grandma Fox on skype tonight which was nice. Still working on bedtime, but hopefully they'll get a good night's sleep and we'll be able to go somewhere tomorrow.

California

Ian keeps getting so excited anytime the GPS says anything about California, and keeps asking when we're going to California. We've tried explaining that we're already in California, it's just a really big place, but I think he's confused since this whole time we've been saying we're going to California to see Grandma & Granddaddy, and we haven't seen them yet. But we will soon! Tomorrow we're off to Sunnyvale, California which is very close to Jeremy's family. We're looking forward to it!

We've had a nice time here in Redding, but I think the better part of a week was just about right. We went to the (one and only) museum, but it was geared toward much older kids and there wasn't a whole lot for Ian and Rinnah to do except outside. We had gorgeous weather at the beginning of the week but with the rain the last few days, outside parks and playgrounds aren't really an all-morning sort of option. We did go to the Kids Kingdom in a park here, and saw the hugest and possibly the best playground we've seen yet. There wasn't a way to get a good picture-it's a labyrinth of a wooden play structure that goes on forever with all sorts of twists, towers, and crannies to explore. Here's one pic that I'm borrowing from someone else of it:



Aside from that, we've just been catching up on laundry, recovering from colds, and enjoying playing outside any chance we get.

Sick day

The museum was finally open today but we couldn't go. The kids seem to be picking up this mild cold thing that we've had, but it's been hitting them a little harder today. Rinnah had a fever this morning of 101 so I decided to keep them home and try to get her some extra rest. Poor Ian was so upset that we weren't going to the museum-he was feeling just bad enough to be extra cranky, but not bad enough to get any extra sleep. At any rate, it seems to have done her good because this afternoon and evening she seemed to be almost back to her old self and no longer had a fever. Hopefully both kids will sleep well tonight and we'll be able to get to the museum tomorrow.

Redding

We are now in Redding, California. It is so wonderful to be in summer weather again! Here I thought I would have to do laundry this week but instead we're just busting out the t-shirts and shorts. It's been in the 70s, bright and sunny-a welcome and refreshing change after the 50 degree rainy weather we'd gotten used to in Washington and Oregon. It's amazing how yesterday morning we were freezing cold since the furnace wasn't working (battery too low to blow the hot air), and today we're opening the windows and Ian's complaining about it being too hot outside.

Today was pretty low-key. The kids got to play outside quite a bit for the first time in a few weeks, which they loved. We even let Ian get out the sprayer he has so dearly missed. We took a quick trip to Walgreens to keep my register rewards from expiring, but otherwise spent the day here at home enjoying the weather and the fresh air. I made lasagna in my new pan (Target clearance! I'd never had a lasagna pan before) and we had a nice early evening.

There is one museum here in town, but during the winter hours they are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so we have to wait awhile longer to get there. I'm hoping to get the kids to a playground tomorrow. We've missed our evening walks to parks and maybe this will be the week we can reinstate them.

Roloff Farms

On Friday Jeremy took a vacation day and we all went out to Roloff Farms. The Roloffs are on the tv show "Little People, Big World". I haven't seen all the episodes, and I haven't seen any in at least six months, but I'd seen enough of the show to be curious about all the things they've built on their farm. During weekends in October, they open their farm to the public for pumpkin season. They've got the typical harvest-fest type of things in a really nice setup.

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We started out at the pumpkin patch. Rinnah even learned to say "pumpkin", although it sounded more like "bump"!

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Ian surveying the pumpkin field

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They had a really neat hay maze for the kids

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Ian was so excited to pull one of these wagons through the pumpkin field.

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Rinnah thought it was a lot of fun!

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Plenty of cute photo setups but the kids weren't exactly cooperative

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Another wagon ride for Rinnah

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There was this giant chair to sit in

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Amy Roloff was out as a clown doing balloons for the kids

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I think Ian was scared of the clown outfit....

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Checking each other out at the petting zoo

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We also got to take a wagon tour of some of their farm, including their Old West Town and their sports fields, and drove by their house. It was pretty cool to see everything we'd seen on tv! Matt really did build the 'ultimate playground' for his kids-it looks like an awesome place to play outside.

It was also great to just have an extra day for our family. Jeremy takes vacation days pretty rarely, and it's usually because we're visiting someone. That's nice, but there was something special about taking a day to do something with just our family of four. We enjoyed it. And this is just the sort of thing that we never would have taken a trip to do, but an opportunity came up with our RV life and it was a fun experience.


We then spent the weekend driving and have now made it to Redding, California. The RV park is nice, tucked behind a used car lot but very well maintained and (best of all!) they have a great internet connection so far. Jeremy and the kids were even able to do a Skype call with Grandmother & Granddaddy W. tonight. We will definitely appreciate a reliable connection!