Thursday, August 5, 2010

Road Trippin

by Eric

We're wrapping up week three of training. It's been crazy busy. (Hence the lack of blog posts and Facebook activity...) I'll chat more about training in the next post. First, some news about our trip to the West.

It's hard to believe that four weeks ago we were packing up the last things in the house and trying to get everything to fit in the car. Our goal was to get on the road around 8 on Friday morning, but even with an early start on the day, that just wasn't going to happen. We kept moving stuff to the car, the storage pile, or to the garbage can until the house was pretty well cleared out. We didn't get the floor vac
uumed, the cupboards wiped down, or the fridge cleaned out. But thankfully we had forgiving landlords!

It was awesome that we were able to visit some of Karissa's siblings along the way to training! The first few days were spent in Denver with Marilyda, Steve, and Ryker.














We played at a place cleverly
named 'Frog Park'.





There was a spinning pole thing. Karissa may have gone one too many revolutions...




She recovered well and was able to have several in depth conversations with Ryker. I believe in this picture they were discussing total depravity and the perseverance of the saints.



We left Denver on Monday morning and drove to Salt Lake City. Our hotel in SLC had a mini-water park, so we hung out there and even played a game of water basketball.

The next day's drive was from SLC to Reno, Nevada. The GPS gave us about four commands during the whole 8 hour trip. Leave the parking lot, turn on the interstate...next turn in 504 miles... Doh. Reno was fun. We didn't see any shows or do any gambling, but we did check out the downtown casinos and enjoyed an awesome buffet. That night we saw some fire dancers in the park. Cool. But definitely strange!

The next day we arrived in California. We visited Karissa's college roommate Rosie in San Jose and spent a night in the biggest suite I've ever seen!

From there it was on to Modesto to visit Derrick, Ruth, Noah, and the new arrival Gavin. Ruth was very gracious to let us crash at their place despite GIVING BIRTH just 4 days earlier! We did our best to be helpful, watching one of the kids when needed and helping Derrick pack things up for their upcoming move.








Noah and I bonded over a breakfast of Cheerios and fresh fruit. We also spent time playing with him in the pool, and playing with his cars and train.





Gavin spent most of his time being cuddly and adorable. (while also keeping up the newborn's full time job of sleeping, eating, and pooping).


And finally on Saturday we drove down from Modesto to Pasadena for the start of training. Google told us our trip had about 37 hours of drive time. The trip ended up being a great chance to hang out with some awesome people and to catch our breath before the sprint of training started.






1 comment:

  1. Total depravity and the perseverance of the saints! OK. I'm only gonna say this once. I. Miss. Eric.

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