Gettin' Our Kicks

Well, today we are headed to the Grand Canyon. We are just going to do a little quick-see. If we had more time we'd do a hike and take the steam engine train.......but eventually we have to head home!

Well, either the laundromat dryers are shrinking my clothes or I have gained weight on this trip. Ellie has all the willpower. She doesn't eat meat and it isn't because she doesn't like it. And she'll probably never eat meat, again. I, on the other hand, can't seem to pass up anything unless I am "on a diet" which is always for a measurable amount of time. How is it that I can create a person with more willpower than myself? Hmmmm.....maybe I didn't create her. Just a portal, I guess. Speaking of portals! The Kuplacks have named the baby Tristan. I love that name. I fell in love with it when Brad Pitt played Tristan in Legend of the Fall. He came riding out on that horse with his long hair blowing in the wind....wait a minute.....everyone knows I dig bald guys : ) Congrats again to the Kuplacks and hopefully little Tristan will be home soon, adding his voice to the mayhem.

Yesterday consisted of driving. We followed the historic Route 66 through the Mojave desert. One exciting thing that happened was that we played the "pass and be passed" game with Avril Lavigne's tour bus! We didn't see any stars in LA this time but kept up with Avril all day yesterday. We tried to stop for a bite to eat along 66 - there wasn't much. The first place we came to was crawling with buses so we kept going. Then we came to a Dairy Queen and found the same situation - the line was out to the door. Across the street however, were the remnants of a ghost town with a big faded and peeling sign that said "Coffee Shop". There was one car outside. We decided, "What the heck?" so we crossed the highway. It was like stepping back in time : ) The little ones and Jeff sat at the counter, behind which was a woman at least 80, wrinkled and cranky-looking while wearing a fluffy lavender dress and apron. There were pictures of movie stars on the wall, including Ray Charles and Elvis. We had burgers/fries (Ellie had an egg salad sandwich) and then (Eugene you would have loved it) banana cream pie, chocolate cream pie, dutch apple pie... YUM! The cook came out once; he was 7 feet tall and looked like he was freshly paroled :) So glad we decided to cross the road. The burgers were definitely better than anything we'd have had at Dairy Queen and instead of a busy, hurried lunch with a bunch of other haggard travelers, we sat in a cool and peaceful place where we received a lot of attention and homemade pies out of the pie case.

Needles is a little disappointing. We are in a parking lot with a boat slip : ( The teens had a meltdown last night - both are needing to retreat. The little ones are not used to any personal or private space (which is why I am not used to it either) so the rest of us are holding up just fine. This vacation has truly been a vacation for me - WAY less work than my normal life - one little bathroom to clean, lots of time to sit and think in the car, none of the daily grind I am used to. A lot of the time the little ones are strapped into car seats and when they're not - I have Jeff to help me chase them. So I am enjoying the trip and not anxious to get home (except that I miss Schnitzel something awful). But Ellie and Joel are ready to get home to their things and their friends. The rest of us could become permanent nomads and be quite happy. But both teens are doing their best to remain positive.

We have a few catchphrases that have arisen. One is, "Don't touch me - I have cradle crap." Jasper has eczema on his scalp and we call it cradle cap even though he is 4. He calls it cradle crap. During the middle of a meltdown Ellie tried to comfort him by gently rubbing his hair and he screamed "Don't touch me! I have cradle crap!" So now we all say it when we're getting irritable. Ellie also says, "Look at my face! You people are giving me zits!" Another is "Where's Jasper?" I always ask this, even when I'm holding his hand. I used to ask it while he was nursing so I have a history with this phobia. Our latest phrase is, "The wine skins have burst!!" Jules and I are reading Gregor the Overlander and in the book they travel with water in wine skins. Yesterday while Jeff was pumping liquid gold into our car Jules goes into the trailer to use the bathroom. He runs out screaming, "The wine skin has burst! The wine skin has burst!" Jeff was like, "What???" He follows Jules into the trailer to see that the bottle of wine we had started the night before had fallen off the counter and spilled everywhere. Jules looked at Jeff and said, "See? The wine skin has burst." Too funny. So I am quite certain that Jeff will never use the words "wine bottle" again. Never. Ever. He will call it a wine skin from now on. I know this in my soul.

Ellie is also very good at mimicking a Saturday Night Live character. The character is a woman who is always "one-upping" everyone. She twists her hair nervously and says the most outrageous things ending with a "so......". Ellie does this constantly and it is very funny. I was noticing that I have like 120 hits on my non-existent blogging profile (I never filled it out but I just might before the trip is over) and Ellie was like, "I've had over a million hits on my profile so..." and I was like "I've had a googleplex number of hits on my profile, so...." and Ellie says, "My profile won the Nobel Peace Prize, so....." If you want to read Ellie's award-winning profile you can do so by clicking on my non-existent profile, which will show my other blogs and their members - one is Homeschool Writers which is just my writing/literature class for our co-op - Ellie's name is one there and you can click on it and read her profile.

Well, tomorrow (or maybe tonight) I will have more interesting things to post.

Sardine mama