Gettin' ready to Go

Heather and Jared have all the stuff they need for the next month in the house, since everything else they own is in boxes in the garage. With 4 dogs and all the kids here, it's impossible to keep things cleaned up much. Oh well, I'm not a neat-freak so it's not a big deal. It's sure been great to have the kids here, and we had Dakota twice this week, all day Sunday and a couple hours last night. She is growing up so fast!

My friend Julie Hutchins Greer stayed over last night too, she is on the way to the Grand Canyon today. She painted a mural in one of the buildings there, and she has a painting in a gallery show there now. It's a national thing, the Parks dept. has a collection that is showing at National parks around the country, and the kick-off is at the Grand Canyon this weekend. Cool, huh!

I've been working on my watering system for the past week, hoping to keep everything alive while I'm gone. David fixed the automatic system pipes that broke last winter with the freezing weather we had, so that's taken care of. Now I'm setting up soaker hoses and an automatic timer on all my backyard plants that aren't on the electronic system.

I've set up reservations at Day's Inn across the country, so we'll have a decent place to stay on our trip. It will be quite a caravan, our big black truck hauling a big Uhaul trailer, Mom's motorhome hauling Heather's car, and Jared's car. So now we have 6 driver's for 3 vehicles, it should be a little easier to manage, with several drivers. Gas is going to cost a mint!!! We're expecting close to $4 a gallon, ouch! I'm pretty excited about the trip though, we're going through Tennessee from Memphis to Kingston, which is in the northeast corner. Then up the Applachian mountains on highway 81 into Pennsylvania. I'll post picture as we go along, I hope, we're supposed to have internet access. I can't believe we leave next week!