Day 1

Hi Friends! We finally have internet access and can post what has been going on!!


DAY 1~~ (April 18)
We decided to leave early because of snow forecasts in the Siskiyou pass. Karry worked from home on Friday and Brenda finished up laundry, packing, putting things away in the trailer, and cleaning up the house a bit—whew! We were short changed on packing time because of Brenda being sick (better now, by the way, thank you for prayers!), and then leaving early made us have to rush, rush, rush! Our original thought was that we’d leave the house at 3 pm when Karry was off work…yeah right….Then we thought 4 pm….No…We were heading out of our neighborhood at 6:30.

First thoughts/moments:
It was very windy, and the trailer is heavy (esp. with 3 cases of bottled water, a generator, clothes for a family of 6, snacks for the next month, etc.), and it was “fish tailing.” That was pretty scary to us (esp. Brenda!). We got to about Salem when we realized that we left the oh-so-important manila envelope with all of our tickets (Disneyland, Sea World, Medieval Times, Go San Diego passes & Knotts Berry Farm) sitting in our den. Thank goodness my (Brenda’s) parents were in Clackamas and had a key to our home & were willing to drive out there to pick them up. They were already planning on joining us at Disneyland anyway, so this worked out.

Our original goal was to sleep in Grants Pass. Ruby got a little fussy, and we were getting tired, so we decided to pull off in Roseburg and sleep in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

The kids did great for that first trip—all of them. We listened to an Adventures in Odyssey story, and didn’t play any DVDs (yet!) They were just so excited about the trip!!

Ruby had a hard time falling asleep, but she was very tired. Karry installed a baby gate across the opening of the bottom bunk in our trailer, and that is Ruby’s “crib.” She wasn’t quite sure about it and the boys kept calling her a baby tiger in a cage. :) When she did fall asleep, she slept through the night!

I (Brenda) had a hard time falling asleep too, so I stayed up reading “The Birth Order Book” by Kevin Leman (thank you to David & Lora for the book!), and admired my first-born traits. :) (you know, I could be an astronaut, president or architect—most have been first born kids or only kids—Karry, the baby, could be a comedian :).

Kaleb fell off of his bed once (but doesn’t remember that!), and people drove through the 24-hour Wal-Mart parking lot pretty fast all night, but other than that we slept well!