Where's the Chicken?: Ready to Go...

We’ve been back in Bend almost a week, so it’s high time that we updated things here. It’s been a week of regrouping, repacking and making sure we have what we need for the next four months of adventure (and that we can fit it into our backpacks). We head out at the crack of dawn tomorrow – actually, earlier than the crack, since sunrise is 7:30am and we board at 5:40am – on our way to Washington DC and cousin David.

We cruised our way back from Iowa last week with another Boulder, Colorado stop. This time our dear friends Will and Beth WERE there

(and Bill and Charlie, too), so we stayed with them, not just in their house. We had a day of snow-driving between Boulder and Park City, Utah

(our overnight stop), with a quick little stop and hike in Dinosaur National Monument

(once we were beyond the snow). On our way from Park City to Bend we saw even more prong horns in Eastern Oregon than we had seen in Wyoming.

It’s been nice to have a few days to get reorganized here, enjoying the glory of central Oregon – 75 degrees and sunny yesterday – 45 degrees and sunny today. We also had the chance to visit cousin Caleb and Ben’s school, and were able to share about our trip with their classrooms.

We also had some good Seattle connection this week. Chrissie’s BFF, Lisa Ritscher, came down for a couple of days for some good girl time (Chrissie had the nerve to say her 4 weeks with 4 boys – her three and my dad – was not fully sufficient to meet her emotional needs).

I cruised up to Portland for a night to hang out with our brother, Steffen Nelson. It was a little Seattle relational fix that was wonderful, while making us miss you all more.

So we find ourselves here the night before the big take-off, getting generational haircuts (grandpa cuts dad, dad cuts boys), finding a place for everything - deciding what we can’t live without, and then leaving half of that behind.