2nd Half of February Road Trip

I know that everybody has been sick with anticipation to see how the second half of our road trip went.  Sadly to say, I have dropped the ball and left you hanging.  I meant to blog right away but mountains of laundry, grocery shopping (not one speck of food in our house after a months absence), and once again the flu bug gracing us with it's presence has stopped me.  Thankfully we are all recovered now and have settled back into a routine.  I take that back.  Nothing about our life is "routine" right now.

The second half of our trip went A LOT smoother than the first half, which was quite a relief!  We had a wonderful time relaxing with my (Angie's) dad at his place in Arizona.  He lives outside of Phoenix right on the edge of the desert.  It is a very beautiful and peaceful place to be.  Colton was excited when he learned that my dad's neighbor, Harvey, has a garage full of r/c model airplanes!  A group of Harvey's friends often drive out to an old abandoned road in the desert to fly their airplanes.  Colton LOVED watching the airplanes and asked roughly a million questions while they flew.  

Colton and Macie watching r/c airplanes fly in the desert.

Remember our trip to Alaska back in October when our family was freezing in the 12 degree weather and the locals told us that it was just a fall "chill" and not really cold yet?  It was quite opposite in Arizona!  I went to a play group with Colton dressed in flip-flops and  shorts and noticed the local kids "layered" up with long sleeves and jeans.  74 degrees to us felt like summer, definitely not winter.

On our way home to WA we broke the trip up into smaller "chunks" and tried not to stress out about making good time.  We stayed in So Cal for a few days to visit friends that we had missed because of the car trouble we faced on our first pass through LA.  We had our last In-N-Out burger in Redding, CA *sniff* which brings the grand total of In-N-Out burger visits to five (such restraint we have).  We stopped in Medford, OR for the night on the way home and stayed in a hotel with an indoor pool to have some fun, and most importantly, burn off the kids' energy before the last leg of the trip!  

Mmmmm coffee and sugar...good for driving.

If any of you are setting out on a road trip with a 4 year old and a 2 year old, ask Mike and I for some pointers.  We have a bit of experience under our belts now.  About 3,200 miles worth of experience racked up in one month!

Where does our family go from here?  We are staying in the WA area until May and then we plan to go up to Alaska again for a couple of weeks.  After our trip to Alaska we will be home in WA until our training beginning in August out in Nampa, ID at MAF headquarters.  

  

Highlights and Low Lights

We are 2,500 miles into our road trip through CA and AZ and what an adventure it has turned out to be!  There have been many unforeseen challenges along the way, twice Mike and I were at the point of throwing in the towel and turning back towards WA.  However, Mike and I are happy that we "powered through" and overall the trip has been well worth the troubles we have faced.

Trip Highlights

• In-N-Out burger!  We have shown restraint though, and have only eaten there three times.
• We visited two MAF families from our Candidacy Class.
• We had the chance to meet our "mystery supporter" for breakfast.
• We met new friends that treated us to an afternoon at the Phoenix Zoo.
• We shared our ministry during a Missions Weekend at a church in Mesa, AZ (which happened to be a couple blocks away from my old apartment).
• Reconnected with friends and family.
• The kids are getting spoiled by Grandparents (which doesn't happen very often because we live so far apart).
•  Got a sunburn in February.

Macie's first trip to In-N-Out Burger

Free show with dinner!  A tow truck backed over a fire hydrant and created a fountain in front of our restaurant.  We watched the firemen try to shut it off while we ate. 

Watching a movie with fellow MAF MKs that are also moving to Indonesia!

Colton wanted to go swimming even though the water was only 55 degrees.  This is how far he got.

Trip Low lights

• Colton caught some sort of stomach bug and couldn't hold any food down for 24 hours...in the car, at the park, in the car again.  We ended up staying in a hotel room for the night until he recovered so that we wouldn't infect our friend's children.  We had to make two clothes runs to buy him more shirts during the night.  This was the first time we contemplated driving home.
• While we were visiting "Aunt" Margie in Santa Barbara we decided to go sightseeing with her in our car  around town.  While we were idling at an intersection the car suddenly went dead.  Would not start.  Dead.  There we were with a four year old, a two year old, and 80 year old "Aunt" Margie pushing our car up onto a small median in the middle of the road.  It was a stressful situation to say the least.  To add to the situation I had forgot my cell phone that morning in LA.  I left in a taxi with the kids and "Aunt" Margie and found somewhere to stay for the night while Mike dealt with the car.  Without a phone reconnecting was a bit difficult.  We ended up staying in guest housing at the retirement home where "Aunt" Margie lives and the car was fixed by the next morning.  That was the second time we contemplated driving home.  

  

Picnic dinner in the hotel while waiting for the Jetta to get fixed. 

We are thankful and praise God for his protection throughout our road trip and thank Him that our car didn't break down in rush hour LA traffic or in the middle of the desert on the way to Phoenix.  We are also thankful that Colton recovered quickly and that it was only a 24 hour bug.  Currently we are recharging and relaxing for a couple of days in Phoenix with my dad getting some quality "Grandpa time" in with the kids before we hit the road again.  We are excited to see what else God has planned for us on our trip!

     

February Road Trip

Next Monday we are packing up the Jetta and heading on a road trip through California and Arizona.  We are excited to visit friends, family, and In-N-Out Burger (of course) along the way.  

The last time I took a road trip through California my friend and I got a little too excited about In-N-Out Burger and ate there 9 out of 10 days of our trip (we were planning on eating all 10 days but opted for Bob's Big Boy Burger one day). Let's just say that we were feeling a bit lethargic at the end of our trip and to top it off our faces totally broke out!  I'm not planning on making that mistake again.

This will be the last time we are going to be in the California/Arizona area before we move to Indonesia, and because of that we are hoping to see as many of our southern friends as we possible can!  

Schedule:

Feb 4-10: Northern California (Staying in Penryn to be exact)

Feb 11-15:  Southern California (Staying in Riverside)

Feb 16-Mar 1:  Arizona (Staying in Surprise)

We hope to see a lot of this in the backseat!

The dreaded "P" word

It is getting to be the time for us to start sifting through our possessions and decide what is going to Indonesia with us and what isn't.  Sounds easy enough, right?  The kicker is that we need to ship most of our stuff in wooden crates (200 cubic feet allowance) ahead of us to our permanent base which we will not see...wait for it...for an entire year!  Our crates will hang out in a storage facility, board a cargo ship, cross the ocean, and meet us at customs in either Borneo or Papua.  Our family will take a detour to Salatiga, Indonesia for language school where will be living out of our checked luggage for a year.  

This concept has been messing with my sub conscience I believe.  I had a dream the other night that I forgot to pack all of our kitchen stuff so we weren't able to cook anything.  Even worse, I only packed jeans and sweatshirts for myself!  Needless to say I was HOT.  I spent my dream searching for summer clothes at the store but I couldn't find anything that fit my "american" body type.  

What would you pack in your checked luggage?  What item can you not part with for a year?

Church Visit

"It looks like they have already started," says Mike as we walk into the foyer.  "Are you sure it started at five o' clock?"

"Five is what my friend told me," I say as I think to myself, Are we experiencing "rubber time"

"Should we go in?"  Our courage is starting to fade.

"We came all this way, let's sneak in the back." 

Of coarse it will be virtually impossible to "sneak in" without being spotted, seeing that we are visiting an Indonesian church in Portland and we will be the only non-Indonesians in the room.  We work up our nerve, walk through the door, and sit in the 2nd to last row in the sanctuary.  We get a few glances and smiles sent our way by others as we enjoy the last few minutes of the service.  During the service the prayers were said in both English and Bahasa Indonesian and we also (tried) to sing along to an Indonesian song.  It was pretty exciting. 

By the way we were not experiencing "rubber time" ( jam karet is a term used to describe Indonesian's attitude towards the concept of time).  We were just late, an hour late to be exact.  So much for not drawing attention to ourselves.

After the service our family was greeted right away and we were asked why we had decided to visit an Indonesian church.  We told them that we were moving to Indonesia to work with MAF and we wanted to learn more about Indonesia.  We were met with excitement and were asked if we spoke Bahasa Indonesian.  We said, "Not yet."  After assuring us that Bahasa Indonesian is very easy to learn they started to teach us some phrases right away.  Our family was then invited downstairs to eat some Indonesian food with them (which was awesome by the way).

The pastor asked Mike if we could come back and share with everybody our story and what we will be doing in Indonesia.  Mike asked, "How long do you want us to share?  5 minutes?  10 minutes?" 

"The WHOLE service, we want to hear from you."

We were sent home with a plate full of Indonesian leftovers, how often can you say that you visited a chuch and got sent home with food?  Not very often.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our family is gearing up for our last Thanksgiving in the States (for quite awhile) and we are enjoying our long weekend.  Thanksgiving hasn't been quite the same for our family ever since my mom passed away a couple of years ago, and we are still coming up with a new routine for the holidays.  One constant however, has been the annual "Run to Feed the Hungry 5K" at our church Thanksgiving morning.  The past seven Thanksgivings I have found myself shivering on the starting line in the morning waiting to burn off some calories in hopes of combating some of the damage I will be doing later in the day.  It is also a great way for our church to stock our food cupboard and combat hunger.  This is a tradition that I am going to have a hard time giving up.  Perhaps next year I will have to organize my own 5K on Thanksgiving morning in Indonesia.  I'm sure it won't be that hard to convince my fellow classmates in language school to run 3 miles in the heat with me.  :)

Macie is two and eating bugs for breakfast!?

October was a very busy month for us!  We were home a total of ONE day and spent the others traveling on deputation.  After our first two weeks of the month spent crammed in the Jetta driving all over the Seattle area we came home, packed frantically and grabbed a red-eye flight to Anchorage, AK.  Although all of the locals in Alaska assured us that it wasn't yet winter and it was still fall, we were COLD.  The kids and I went to the zoo one morning and it was 12 degrees, yes 12!  Colton kept telling everybody he came across, "It is cold up here in Alaska!"  Although it was cold, the sky was blue and the sun was shining (which is a rarity in WA).  By the end of the trip we were starting to acclimate to the cold, 30 degrees felt a bit cozy.

It was 7 degrees when we took this picture!  

Macie turned two on our trip and we were able to have a little party for her at our friend's house.  I started to make the cake for the party, but when I got ready to decorate it Mike took over.  I think he was afraid that I would just serve it on a dinner plate and slap some frosting on it without bothering to smooth it out (which I would have).  Our friends have 4 boys and including brother that made the guest list for Macie's party 5 boys.  Macie had a blast and from a parent's perspective there wasn't as much high-pitched squealing as there would have been if the guest list included 5 girls!

We attended a church in Wasilla one Sunday and had the opportunity to share about our ministry with the Sunday School class.  I don't know if this is a normal thing to do, but even though it was 12 degrees outside that morning all of the windows were open in the sanctuary and the fans were on!  I didn't want to look like an "out of towner" so I didn't put on my jacket and I toughed it out.  At the end of the service the pastor was excited to introduce us to a person who...wait for it.  Grew up in Indonesia as an MK and flew on MAF as a child!  Out of all the places to meet a person from Indonesia, Wasilla wasn't what I was expecting.

The next day we spent lunch at his house with his family and he told us LOTS of stories about growing up in Papua, Indonesia.  He served us some coffee that was grown outside of Wamena and it was wonderful, I am looking forward to drinking more of it in my future.  They also taught us how to make sticky rice for dessert. He taught Colton a few tips on how to be a good MK, one of those tips was how to properly roast a Cicada.  In the mornings he said it was fun to run to the screen door, grab a Cicada by the wings, flick it on the head, set it on top of mom's stove, roast it, and then pop it into his mouth for breakfast!  Colton replied by yelling, "I don't want to eat BUGS!"  He was assured that they taste like Snickers without the chocolate.  When in Rome...  Or in this case when in Papau...  

Cicada it's what's for breakfast.