Major Means

Sam taking the oath.

"Sealing" it with a kiss. Note the kids faces, what a nice moment.

Me fumbling to get the new rank on his hat.

Of our 13 year marriage Sam has been away from us about 3 1/2 years. It has been a way of life for us. We have forge incredible friendships that will last forever. Most recently Sam did a year long deployment to Iraq. We recently celebrated him being back a year. This December will mark the end of his military commitment. As one of his final milestones with the Army, Sam pinned on the rank of Major today. His boss that he served with in Iraq, Major Khatod, did the honors at the 40th Signal Battalion, Fort Huachuca, AZ. Major Khatod even passed down his rank that he wore in Iraq, as he will be promoting soon. Sam was excited to have the warriors he served with meet his family. It was a really neat day. Part of me misses the Army a lot and I know Sam misses it some. He was good at what he did. Congratulations, Babe, I'm proud of what you did then and what you do now.

Tomorrow we wake early and head south. Our trip to Jerez will take about 12 hours. I hope to blog while I am there, but we will have to wait and see. I am sure it will be a busy time, as last time we were there we barely had time to look up.

The above picture are of the hike in the Coronado National Forest. I have lost the camera, so I can't post the pictures of the desert museum, but we had a blast. The kids loved seeing all the animals and vegetation. There were several guides with a wealth of information, Josiah got all his questions about eating cactus answered. FYI-they are toxic to our kidneys and should not be consumed raw. So, they are not good for desert survival as a water source. They also got to touch a snake. The boys really enjoyed getting park maps and navigating us through the exhibits.

I think it is an indication that your life is incredibly stressful if over the past 2 or 3 years, the calmest most peaceful time I can remember is the four weeks we spent in Mexico taking care of 23 additional children in a foreign language. I'm not complaining, it has all been necessary. We renovated a house, moved twice, Sam deployed for a year, I trained to be a midwife, and downsized to a 300 sq foot RV, just to name a few. I have been on call all of this year, up until the moment we left for AZ. Our schedule has been in constant flex. The trip out here took three days of driving.

I say all that to say we have needed a reprieve more than we could have ever imagined. As we look forward to the rest of the year, we see a packed schedule with many hours of driving and we buckled down ready to do it.

Then we arrived in AZ. Our friends the Elkins, friends from Army days in Germany, were waiting with open arms. They have fed us wonderful food until we can eat no more. They have given us space to rest and use the internet. They have planned fun things for us to do everyday. Never once have I even thought about feeling bad I have five children. God has blessed them with a beautiful house and they have opened it up to be a blessing to us. Even typing this I could cry at the amazing God we have, who knew exactly how much stress we could handle and exactly the rest we needed to be able to go forward.

Adventures in Fast Food

Seven burgers, 7 fries and 7 Cokes please---That is not happening! Maybe the real title is Nonadventures in Fast Food.

As you may have gathered we are pretty radical about what we eat. I really believe, and research backs me up, that eating at least 50% of your food raw is the way to stay healthy. Also we eat minimal processed foods. These include white sugar, white flour, anything in a package with ingredients you can’t pronounce. Seriously folks stay away from these foods. “Whole foods” is the trendy term. It mostly means “cooking from scratch” and I’m not talking about opening some cans and boxes and stirring them together either.
So, traveling makes this a little bit of a challenge. I am also a firm believer that with a little creativity most challenges can be met with success.

Last Monday we were traveling home and it was lunch time. I went over the fast food menus in my head. Most places charge an arm and a leg for a wilted stack of ice berg lettuce and a packet of sugar (high fructose corn syrup) filled dressing. Wendy’s has a side salad and baked potato on their dollar menu. That’s a decent option in a pinch. I decide we need to start keeping some EVOO (that’s extra virgin olive oil for those not Rachel Ray fans) and vinegar with us to avoid the packet of hydrogenated oil and sugar. So, if each of us gets 2 items, that is a minimum of $14 plus tax.

If you can find a subway, 3 subs at $5 each will feed our family, if we have an apple with it. It has lots of raw veggies and no sugar. The bread is basically white flour with a little brown coloring in it, I’m guessing, and the cost is $15 plus tax.
So I took my $14 and I went into the grocery store. I grabbed a jar of natural PB ($3.50), a bag of celery ($1), a head of cabbage ($1), a bag of radishes ($1.50), a bag of bananas ($1) and 4 avocados ($4). We cut up the celery and filled it with PB, passed around radishes, gave everyone a banana, and for those still hungry ½ an avocado with salt and pepper. Then we started a movie for them and they munched on cabbage. Lunch and snacks for 7 people, all for $12, very filling and completely raw!

For dinner Thursday night we ran into the grocery store and grabbed some guacamole and salsa. In the camper we had refried beans (our own healthy very yummy recipe) and tortilla chips. Beans, guac, salas and chips make a great dinner. Braum’s sales a very fresh raw salsa and guac is raw also. Beans can be made ahead and frozen, or put in a cooler, with the RV we have a fridge.

Breakfast was a big bowl of strawberries covered in homemade yogurt and drizzled with honey, oats and wheat germ. Then we munched on grapes and carrots while driving through Texas on our way to Albuquerque. We stopped in Tucumcarie, NM for lunch and had celery and raw almond butter Sam made earlier in the week.

I think we are on our way to meeting the challenge very nicely.

The Long Leg

Saturday we woke up in Albuquerque, NM at Bella Vista Baptist Church. Sam had a good conversation with the Pastor there and we headed down the road towards Arizona around 10:00 am with a full tank of gas, thanks to our nail biting adventure the day before. I put a load of clothes in the wash right before we left….mmmmm…I wonder how I did that since we don’t have washing machine in the RV, more on that in a later blog.

We rolled across NM, stopping along the road to pick up some Subway sandwiches with lots of raw veggies and some lava rocks. Adelina went on excitedly about rocks and minerals as she searched for just the right rock to take along. It was Sam’s idea to let the kids pick a rock which was highly unusual for him, he is always concerned with our limited space, but in the name of making memories we picked out some rocks and continued on.

We crossed over into Arizona and crossed the Continental Divide, or is it the other way around?

Somewhere around here I finished Sam’s never-ending cable design scarf I have been working on forever.

The highway we were on was going right through the middle of the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. I have always been fascinated by the Petrified Forest, so we stopped in to check about admission. Saturday National Parks were free, so that was just the right price for us. The children really enjoyed the park and we talked all about how there was a huge forest there at one point and how a huge flood could have changed things so drastically. It is really amazing to see.
From there we took a more scenic route. It was a little quicker and a really pretty drive. Amazing to go from desert and cactus to pine forest and back to desert and cactus. We arrived at Canyon Springs Baptist Church in the Phoenix, AZ area about 12 hours after we started. It was a long travel day.
When we arrived at the church, the wind was blowing up a storm—literally it looked like a storm was blowing in. Sam told the kids they could get out while he situated the RV. It was crazy! The kids leaped from the truck and ran for the playground, jumping and running and yelling. They had reached their limit. They jumped from the slide and the swings, all while this incredible wind was howling and threating to blow everything away. Lena literally ran circles yelling, as if she had lost her mind!
After letting off a little steam we all settled down and went to sleep. Sundays are big days for us, since we are usually at a church, trying to look presentable and missionary like. The kids always do a wonderful job of making a good impression, while being themselves. I forgot to take pictures of Sunday, so many wonderful Christians all over this great country, it was great to worship with Canyon Springs Baptist Church in Junction City, AZ.
Now it’s Monday and we are enjoying a down day. The kids got up at 7:00 am and played until 10:00am, then came in to cool off. Currently it is 107F here!

A Nail Biter

The truck has not gotten very good gas mileage pulling the fifth wheel. Actually it has gotten alarmingly bad gas mileage. We changed the air filter last night, maybe that will help a little. We hope to get a chip to put in that will help with gas mileage and pulling at some point. God has been good to provide.

Yesterday as we approached Albuquerque, NM we didn’t realize that we were driving past the last gas station for 20 miles. Sam wanted to pull over, but I thought it would be fine to wait until Albuquerque not realizing that actually was Albuquerque. They have what they called a safety corridor which is a stretch of highway through a small mountain range where there is almost no were to pull over and in some areas, due to construction, one lane and no shoulder. About a mile into the “safety corridor” our fuel gauge, which had been holding at a little below ¼ tank, fell and the low fuel indicator came on.

Naturally we deducted we should stop at the next gas station. Then we watched mile after mile go by with no gas station. As we drove through the tight corridor with one lane and no shoulder we imagined running out of gas with fast moving traffic behind us. Finally we began to see exits with signs for food and shopping, but still no gas. Now we were in the heart of Albuquerque. We reached the exit for the church we would be parking the RV at that night and still could not find a gas station. Finally I spotted one and Sam took a right turn. Now he was driving in heavy city traffic and we were concerned about being able to pull into a gas station with the trailer. As we approached the station we saw they had no diesel! We were all stunned and unsure what to do next. We had no idea how to find a gas station, with diesel, that we could pull into with the RV and we were about to run out of gas at any moment.

Then we saw on the right a station with diesel, big enough for us to pull into and the pump easiest to assess was open. As we pulled in and breathed a huge sigh of relief the church we were staying at called to see if we had found a gas station. Sam said, “You have never been in a more praying vehicle!”