The day after Thanksgiving, we headed off to Arkansas for a weekend with family. We had a wonderful time - it was so good to see everyone again. We made it in by 3:30 and then Ericka picked up Laura & I and we went to take pictures of her kids at Hendrix College. Afterwards, we had pizza at Uncle David & Aunt Denise's house. (where we were staying - they graciously found other places to sleep each night we were there so that we could have the beds in their house. :) Of course they were there, plus Aunt Susan from Kansas, and my cousin Kristen and her daughter Abby - whom Amelia absolutely loved playing with.
Next morning was rather slow. Everyone took turns getting showers, and then we prepared for more company that afternoon. Aunt Denise was having a cookie bake with all the family invited. Numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, kids & spouses of cousins filled the house that afternoon. The kids (& some of us older ones) decorated cookies:
There was also lots of conversation and story-telling going on. And football in the front yard & on TV. Here, the guys crash on the couch watching the annual bedlam game between OU & OSU.
Next day, we were up early and off to Aunt Donna's church where we were scheduled to sing our program for the morning service. Many of the family showed up which was wonderful - we loved having them in the audience. Afterwards, most of us headed for a mexican restaurant for lunch. After waiting over an hour for a table, Aunt Donna took charge & seated us at 4 different booths as we were not willing to wait any longer! We were glad to sit & fill our growling stomachs.
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| Cousin Mary-Kathryn with Megan & Amelia |
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| The three of us - and yes, we're all wearing purple. That was for singing purposes. |
By the time we made it back to Aunt Denise's and changed into more comfortable clothing, it was after 4:30 pm. We went in and sang for Uncle David's parents who live in an addition to their house. They are mostly confined to their room, so they greatly enjoyed our "mini-concert". Afterwards, we all loaded up again and headed for my parents' old "stomping grounds" about an hour away. Our destination was my grandpa's house. He lives in "the house that dad built". No seriously, my dad did build a lot of it. And my mom's brother did the cabinets. (Dad was dating mom at the time he was building it. Getting her brother to do the cabinets made good sense I guess :))
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| Me, on the porch |
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| The house that dad built |
Of course, we enjoyed our visit with grandpa............
By the time we arrived back, it was late, but we were glad we made it up to see grandpa. We ate some soup, took advantage of the hot tub, and then headed to bed with no particular time set for getting up and on the road. You know, it makes for a much better night's sleep when you have no deadline for getting up. ;) We were on the road by 10:30 and although we hoped to make it a fairly straight shot to home, it wasn't.
Not too far from the Oklahoma border on I-40, smoke started coming in through the vents in the back of the mini-van. (This van had myself, Samuel, Jonathan, Caroline, Laura & Daniel in it.) We called dad in the other van to let him know about it. He said he'd pull of at the next exit. As we exited, Samuel (who was driving) says "Oop, no power steering". <side note: the power steering had gone out the week before we left when I was driving. I could hardly turn the wheel at all. Dad got it fixed in time for our trip. Then, the day before we left, it went out again. Being Thanksgiving, no one was open, but a good friend helped fix it. It worked fine on the trip out, but not now.> When dad came back to check what was wrong we told him about the power steering. He said it wouldn't hurt to drive it that way - and Samuel said he would do it. I knew I wouldn't be able - much too hard to turn the wheel. So, we started off again.
We made it fine to Sallisaw where we stopped at a burger joint for lunch. After getting our food and preparing to get back on the road, dad spotted a repair place and called Sam & told him to pull in and see how long it would take them to fix it. We did. Sam got out & found someone to take a look. They popped the hood and were looking at it for a few minutes, while the rest of us enjoyed our burgers and awaited a verdict. Pretty soon, Samuel comes back in and starts it up. I asked if they could fix it and he replied that he was putting it on the blocks so the guy could get a better look. We all started saying that perhaps we'd better get out - we didn't want to be put up on the rack! But no, Samuel says, it'll be OK. So, we pulled up on there, Samuel gets out, and just a minute later - up we go! We couldn't help but laugh. Who would've thought?! Samuel told us later that he thought there was a pit below and they wouldn't be raising the car.
Anyway, a few minutes later the other van comes back and they start wondering where we all are. Surely they're not in the van on the rack! But, after making a call to one of our phones, they were told that yes, we were indeed up there. And we could hear their laughing over the phone. We certainly got a good kick out of it all. Even the guy working on our car seemed to be in a better mood when we left. Perhaps he thought it was funny too. So of course the camera came out. We had to capture this moment.
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| Notice all the "To-Go" boxes? from our delicious burgers that we ate while sitting atop the rack. |
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| Only 3 hours to home, we just couldn't go anywhere yet. |
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| When I opened the door to get this shot Daniel shouts out "Rachel, what are you doing?!" I assured him that I was quite aware that we were still atop the rack and I wasn't planning to fall to the floor - I was only snapping another picture. That's our other van in the background there. We had to bring along Aaron's trailer to fit all our concert stuff. |
When we finally got back on the road (really, it wasn't too bad. I think it only took about 20 minutes for him to fix) we made pretty good time and got home around 5:30. Laura took a few pictures from the window and I really liked them. Never underestimate what you can capture from a moving vehicle!
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| A very familiar sight - the grain elevators on the edge of town. |
