Our first city on the road is finally coming to an end.  Today is the last weekend of classes.  They have one meeting Monday night in Albuquerque, then Tuesday the 3rd we head out to Oklahoma City.  We are picking up and dropping off Sarah and Ryan.  They will be trading places for about a week.  Lucky for me, the location picked for “the switch” is OKC and I will be able to see my Aunt Carol and Uncle Ken.  We passed through OKC many times last year and I wasn’t expecting that to happen at all this year.  I’m thrilled with the plan change as Piper and I really need to see some family!  I had to show Piper a calendar this week and we are now counting down the days before we see Ken, Carol, Bryce and Chad.  She announces how many more days we need to wait randomly throughout the day.  Sometimes she whispers the time line to Levi.  He just looks at her like she is crazy! She then asked me to show her how many days before we see Emma. I don’t know when we will be driving there for sure so I told her she needs to wait a long, long time like for Halloween.  She woke up yesterday and asked if it was Halloween yet!  Oh my babies!  Always entertaining me!

I met a guy on the walking trail yesterday that really got me thinking about all this “solar stuff.”  The typical conversation of where are you coming from and where are you going was being exchanged between us.  I told him we were hosting a solar class here at the RV park this weekend and then on our way to the next city.  He said “Solar!  That’s great!  With the prices of gas rising, we really are all going to need to go solar.  It only makes sense.”  I was happy to be talking to a kindred spirit on the subject.  I went on to tell him how this RV park is run mostly on solar panels.  And guess what he said?…. “Oh, really? And it really works?”   What the hell!?  Are we really facing the challenge of convincing people not only the the price of panels are dropping and that this is a smart, cost effective way to produce electricity, we still need to convince people that we are not tree hugging hippies trying to sell a mediocre product?  How can we trust all the other technology advances like smart phones, GPS and internet and think that amazing advances aren’t happening to the solar panels we want to put up all over the world?  Sorry, I will get off my soap box.  It just feels frustrating to realize how much information needs to be shared to get us all to understand the benefits of change.

On another subject, FOOD!  Highlights this week were Enchilada Casserole (I added a can of corn to this recipe), Angel Food cake with pineapple (I added blueberries and strawberries to this one) and Hamburger soup. And my old favorite Taco Salad with the all important addition of Cool Ranch Doritos and I tried adding drained and rinsed Ranch style beans this time and I liked the change a lot.

I’m working on colors with the kids.  Explaining primary colors and what colors you get when mixing the primaries.  We took out the watercolor paints.  I love for Piper to paint but it is really hard to keep Levi under control in such a small space with paint.  Does anyone have any other ideas of how to demonstrate this lesson for Piper?

I will be busy packing up the RV and doing extra organizing preparing for 2 days of travel. I am so very happy to be hitting the road soon!