La Gran Aventura Day 11: Birding, Grading, a Kindness, and a Surprise Cousin Visit

Thursday,  December 21, 2023

After yesterday’s storm, everyone woke up today feeling remarkably well. Maybe we just needed for things to break yesterday to release the pressure that had been building up.

In the morning I asked if the kids would be interested in getting birding apps loaded onto their phones so that they could start their own life lists. I myself started birding in 2022, and it’s one of my favorite hobbies. I started this trip with 275 different species identified, and I’m hoping to push my life list up to over 300 by the time we are done. I’m sure it will happen. Kimball and Ian took me up on the offer, so I’m excited to get them birding.

I’ve already found some new birds here in Arizona, including the American Coot and the Gila Woodpecker :)

This was actually my first opportunity to practice my lesson learned yesterday. Alicia and Anahi don’t seem super interested in birding, so I didn’t push the envelope with them. They seemed skeptical, but I assured them that I really am OK if they don’t bird. They will find something else to occupy their time. I’m sure.

Today I also decided just to bite the bullet and get my grading done -- no matter how many hours it took today. And it took quite a few hours. Now it’s done, and I feel such a burden lifted -- like I can finally focus completely on this trip.

While I was grading, the kids all went for a walk. They didn’t go far, but it was good for them to get out of the house. They were gone for hours!

In the late afternoon, I went with Janie’s family and we did a family photo shoot with them at a pond close to their house. I have to admit that this is not my favorite kind of photography, probably because I haven’t practiced it much, and I have a hard time working with people.

Fortunately, Janie’s family made it easy, and I think the photos turned out pretty well.

Before we left for photos, Betty had asked me to take River with her. I wanted to focus on the photography, so I told her to please keep River with her. Turns out, she really did need me to take River with me, and I was a knucklehead for not listening. Not long after we left, River started acting up. I’m sure she is totally exhausted. Betty was trying to get dinner ready because my Dad’s brother Steve was going to come over for dinner. I think one of the circles of Dante’s inferno is trying to get real work done while having an overtired three year old hang all over you. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned how tired Betty must be. We’ve driven over 2,000 miles and spent over 30 hours in the car in 10 days. We had a big family fight  yesterday.

At some point in the evening, Betty had to run to Winco to get some final ingredients for the dinner. She dragged a fussy River all around the store, and when she got to the checkout, they told her that they could only accept cash or a check. No card. Winco giveth, and Winco taketh away. I know I’ve been there.

It was all too much for Betty. She just started crying, and left all of the groceries there. But then, as she was heading out the door, the cashier tracked her down and told her that the man behind her in line had paid for all of her groceries. That made Betty cry even more, and she thanked the man and gave him a hug. There is no way that man could have known what Betty had been going through. It was just a simple act of kindness that meant the world to Betty.

Maybe it was good that I didn’t take River, because maybe this beautiful experience wouldn’t have happened ;)

We got back from the photo shoot about the same time Betty got back from the store, and Uncle Steve came not long after. He is the best! He really has become a second Grandpa to Janie ’s kids, and he loves Betty as well. I think it’s an Arizona thing.

We had a great visit with Steve, and delicious taco salad, and then we had a surprise visit from my cousin Kimball -- Steve’s son. I haven’t seen him and his family in years and years. And it turns out, he and his family just finished their own giant family adventure in which they took an RV and visited all 48 of the lower states. As was the case when I met up with Kenson, it was just awesome to see other families trying to stretch themselves and grow as a family by taking on a huge adventure.

The night ended with everyone watching Home Alone. An no day that ends with Home Alone can be anything but great!

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If you click here you can find an index of all of our blog entries.

La Gran Aventura Day 10: Anxiety, the Temple, and a Family Fight

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

This morning Betty and I went for a run, and I told her that I was feeling some significant anxiety. I think it boils down to three things.

  1. Grading: I am still not done with grading. Our days have been so busy, and my attention has been on so many other critical things, that I simply haven’t gotten it done. I am also just putting it off. Eventually, I’ll have to get it done.

  1. Finances: I’ve mentioned this before, but just because I’m on sabbatical and bringing in my full pay does NOT mean that we are swimming in piles of cash. Travel is expensive, and I am constantly concerned about how we are going to make all of this work -- especially when we get to Europe.

  1. Vehicles: We’ve got this new Sequoia with temporary plates, and I have no idea if they will even let us take it into Mexico. We also still need to sell the old one. And I got an email this morning from the bank with some question about financing. I have so much aversion to thinking about it that I didn’t even read the email yet.

So yeah, my stress levels are pretty high.

But I’m trying to be as positive as I can.

So after our run, I called the kids together and told them that we need to stop with the bickering and contention. I told that yesterday while we were driving, I heard an episode of the Church History Matters podcast  (perhaps my current favorite podcast) in which they talked about Thomas B. Marsh . He was one of the most important early church leaders. In fact, he was the first modern president of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. But during a particularly difficult time in church history, Thomas lost his faith in Joseph Smith, and he left the church for about 19 years. When he returned, Brigham Young asked him to speak in general conference, and he told the saints that he had “lost the spirit of the Lord out of [his] heart.”

Marsh continued:

“I became jealous of the Prophet, and then I saw double, and overlooked everything that was right, and spent all my time in looking for the evil; and then, when the Devil began to lead me, it was easy for the carnal mind to rise up, which is anger, jealousy, and wrath. I could feel it within me; I felt angry and wrathful [...] I got mad, and I wanted everybody else to be mad. I talked with Brother Brigham and Brother Heber, and I wanted them to be mad like myself; and I saw they were not mad, and I got madder still because they were not.”

After our little family council, I hoped that things would be solved, and they were for a time.

Betty, Kimball, Anahi, Alicia and I all got into our Sunday clothes and headed over to the Gilbert temple to do baptisms for the dead. It’s one of our favorite things to do as a family. All temples  are beautiful and amazing, and this one seemed especially so to us. The people were so kind. We even met a lady there (a temple worker) who is a friend of Hillsdale College. She was happy to meet us :)

So we got out of the temple and took a picture, and then things started to fall apart.

Betty suggested to the kids that they attend a church youth activity in the local ward there in Queen Creek, where my sister lives. Alicia, especially, did NOT like that idea. She said it would be super weird to just attend an activity in some random ward where they didn’t know anyone. I didn’t like her tone, so I jumped in to try to ... I don’t even know ... protect Betty? Argue Alicia into submission? It was not great, and things escalated fast. She dug her heels in more, and I dug mine. She told me (and I’m pretty sure that she was right) that anyone would feel the way she did if their parents  decided to make them go to an activity where they didn’t know anyone. I tried to make her feel guilty, telling her that she wasn’t being Christlike (ouch!), but it just served to make her more mad.

The tone degenerated in a matter of a couple of minutes, until finally Betty told me to stop the car because she was going to walk back to the house (about 2.5 or 3 miles). I sensed that if I didn’t let her walk, things were really going to get out of hand, so I dropped her and Kimball off. Then the rest of us drove home in silence (after re-affirming to each other how mad we were).

When we got back to the house, Alicia said she wanted to stay in the car, and I let her. I didn’t want anything to do with it all. I just kind of quietly went in, grabbed my backpack, and started grading. Anahi found a quiet place to stay out of the line of fire. About an hour later Betty and Kimball came in. Not long after that, Alicia came back as well.

I wish I could say that we had a big heart-to-heart about things and that we worked everything out.

We didn’t.

But I think all of us understood that we need to be much more careful about how we treat each other. For me the great lesson is that I need to be way more respectful of the agency of my teenage kids. I can’t just tell them that I think something is good and expect them to go along with it. I can’t tell them I’ll be disappointed if they don’t follow me, and expect that to be enough. I’m learning on this journey that JUST BEING ON THE JOURNEY IS ENOUGH! My kids and my wife are awesome just for being here. I need not be so precious about making everyone else’s journey look just like how I wish it would. It’s a miracle that we are doing this thing, and the details will work themselves out. Everyone will have a better time if they learn their lessons on their own without me having to control every aspect of things.

I’m sure Betty and Alicia and Kimball and Anahi and Ian and even River will learn their own lessons as well. But that’s the one I’m learning.

Tomorrow will be a new day, and I’m hoping it will be better.

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If you click here you can find an index of all of our blog entries.

La Gran Aventura Day 9: Drive to Arizona

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

This morning Betty and I went on a nice morning jog, and then we packed up everything for Utah.

A word on packing:

I’m pretty proud of the system that we’ve got for packing right now. Before we left, I went through with everyone and made a careful packing list in Apple Reminders for each of them. Recent updates have made it possible to group to-dos in Reminders into groups like Shoes, Outerwear, and Hygiene, so it’s easy to keep everything organized. And they way the kids have packed makes it so that everything in a group is packed into an individual bag or packing cube inside of a bag.

I then saved each list as a template and shared each list with each person. They then were able to access the list and make it a template on their own device. We can also share an active list with each other.

So this makes it possible for me to tell the kids generate a new list (from the template), share it with me, and pack completely up. Then I can follow on my phone to see how they are doing.

Sounds like a perfect system, right?

Well, not exactly. We have run into two problems. One is that Betty packed a bunch of things  after she and I made her list -- like complete bags full of stuff that is not on the list, a juicer, and a bathroom scale. So her list is not an accurate reflection of what she needs to pack. The second is that the kids are having a hard time with the concept of “actually see the the thing with your eyes and/or hold it in your hand before you mark it as packed,” which leads to a bunch of things not being packed because they were assumed to be in the right place but weren’t actually there.

It’s a work in progress.

We also had the problem this morning of not being on the same page about how long packing would take, or how much cleaning of Grandma and Grandpa’s house would need to be done before we left, so we ended up leaving way later than some people wanted to leave. It all led to a carryover of the irritability from the past few days. When we finally started driving I ordered everyone to just put a movie on their device and be quiet.

That worked.

The drive to Arizona went really well. Nobody was in much of a mood for conversation, and we didn’t stop much, so the time went by really quickly.

The highlight of the drive was definitely stopping at the Wahwheap overlook.

When I was a kid my Grandma Mack had a timeshare on a houseboat (Kingfisher II) at Lake Powell, and we would go down at least once a year for an adventure with Mack cousins. She eventually sold her share, but Lake Powell will always be a magical place for me. We always docked in Bullfrog Marina, so I wasn’t as familiar with Wahwheap. I’ve driven by this overlook a hundred times and never stopped, but the light in the sky was so perfect that I couldn’t resist.

We weren’t disappointed.

One more memorable thing happened on the way.

Just south of Sedona and north of Phoenix there is a little town called Camp Verde. It’s on a reservation. There is a big Casino there, and Montezuma Castle National Monument. Anyway, we did a quick pit stop there. Betty was in the gas station, and I was in the car with the kids. I turned around to say something to them, and my knee accidentally bumped the button that opens the back hatch of the Sequoia. I didn’t realize until the door started opening and stuff started falling out. The worst casualty was our bathroom scale (one of the other things that Betty snuck in the morning of Day 1), which was made of class and completely shattered.

The scale was a sad loss for us, because it’s been one of our best tools in our weight loss journey this year.

Anyway, I quickly hopped out of the car, hoping nobody had seen. And an old Native American man looked at me and just said something like: “It looks like you didn’t close the back up tight.”

I sheepishly walked into the station and asked for a broom to clean things up.

It was so great to finally get to Janie’s house in Queen Creek, Arizona. Her kids are adorable. They love us, and we love them.

Unfortunately, there was a bunch more grumbling among the crew about sleeping arrangements, but finally everyone got to sleep.

Let the next stage begin :)

Hours in the car today: 11

Total hours in the car: 39

Miles Driven: 655

Total Miles Traveled: 2,255

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If you click here you can find an index of all of our blog entries.

La Gran Aventura Day 8: Grading, Cleaning, and Christmas Lights

Monday December 18, 2023

Now that we have a new vehicle, we’re hoping to leave for Arizona tomorrow. So the theme for today was tying everything up before we leave.

The kids did a good job of vacuuming out the old Sequoia, and we transferred the things that needed to be moved from the old to the new.

Before we left on this trip, I had hoped to get all of my grading for the semester done, but that didn’t happen, so I had to bring a big pile of things with me. Well, today I hoped to finish it all, but that didn’t happen either. I did get some good work done, but it’s really tricky with everything else going on.

One of the best moments of the day was when I snuck away from everyone to go up on my Mom and Dad’s balcony to watch the sunset. The sun actually sets in the west, over Utah Lake, and the view from the balcony is to the mountains (north and east), but the light of the sunset on the clouds above Mt. Timpanogos was stunning. And I just sat and watched as the sky darkened -- turning from a pinkish-gray golden hour to a deep blue. It was good to slow down for a bit and just watch the process of nature unfold.

One thing that’s been great this year is that River has found a true love for Christmas lights. She’s always ooh-ing and ah-ing about what we see. We had hoped to take her up to Salt Lake to see the lights, but because of construction up there, we decided just to take her around town. The lights at the Orem City Center are really great, and Riverwoods is always awesome as well.

One side note: Christmas light photography is really tough. The lighting is really tough to get right. But it’s a great challenge and opportunity to get better.

After the lights we went to see Grandma Neubert one more time. She is so sweet, and we had a really nice visit.

I wish I could say at this point that everything is awesome. And we really have done some great things and learned a lot. But over the past couple of days, we have all gotten really irritable. Everyone is just one everyone else’s nerves. I think the kids are a bit frustrated because they have just spent a bunch of time hanging around waiting for us to do the car shopping or the car buying. We’ve also just been together for a LOT of time, and I think we are all realizing that that is going to be the norm for a long time. I think everyone needs to step up their game by being more respectful and more tolerant. If we don’t it’s going to be a long, long, long six months.

If you are enjoying these posts, feel free to comment, ask questions, etc. We love knowing that our friends are keeping track of us.

If you click here you can find an index of all of our blog entries.

La Gran Aventura Day 7: Ancestors, Church, and the Choirside

La Gran Aventura Day 7: Ancestors, Church, and the Choirside

Sunday December 17, 2023

A few weeks ago I had lunch in Hillsdale with my good friend Kelly Franklin and the local Catholic priest, Father David. It was a great opportunity to meet, express mutual faith and willingness to work together, and to talk about the Camino. I told them that I’ve been thinking a lot about a dialogue between our two faiths related to the Camino. There is so much that we have in common, and then interesting points of divergence as well. One of those points has to do with the fact that Catholicism has a long tradition of pilgrimage, while in our church we tend to place more emphasis on pioneers than pilgrims.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that we do have a strong pilgrim tradition in our church -- we just don’t call it that. Anyone who has taken a long trip to visit Salt Lake City to see the temple, or the church history sites in Palmyra, New York; Kirland, Ohio; Nauvoo, Illinois; or Independence, Missouri, has taken a pilgrimage. These are all places we consider sacred, and our faith is strengthened for being there.

One difference, though, is that a traditional pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred site with the goal of forgiveness of sins, or a request for healing, or to give thanks for a miracle. In our church, we go on these pilgrimages to learn about our past, to have our faith strengthened by being in sacred places, and to feel connected to our ancestors. When I pointed this out to Father David, he talked about how when he hiked to Santiago, he felt the same connection that I was describing. It was an important part of his pilgrimage.

This theme of connection with our ancestors is definitely a theme for the trip so far. So much of what we have done has had to do with connecting with family -- past and present.

All of this is a prologue to say that on this trip we are definitely feeling connected to our ancestors. This morning, especially, Betty felt that her grandmother was very close to us -- accompanying us on this journey.

Betty and I with Abuelta Acosta on our wedding day

It’s Sunday, so we got ourselves gussied up and headed off to church. My sister Annie was singing in her church in Orem, and my cousin James’s daughter Samantha was speaking in church in advance of going on a full-time mission to Tennessee, so we decided to divide and conquer. Betty went to support Annie (who did an amazing job and had the added bonus of a Spanish-language Sunday school class), and I took the kids to Provo to Sam’s talk.

Samantha gave a beautiful talk about how God has been working in her life. She has a powerful testimony of the simple message of the gospel, and I’m sure she will be a great missionary. I took advantage of the 2nd hour to conduct an interview with someone from our ward over Zoom. I’m so grateful that technology is allowing for me to continue with my calling even as we are so far away. I’m also super grateful for our ward and stake leadership who has been so supportive of all of this.

After church it was off to a delicious dinner at Annie’s house (another birthday celebration for Zack), and then we went to my Mom and Dad’s church for their annual Christmas “Choirside,” in which all of the choirs from the different wards in their stake (@8 congregations) take turns singing a couple of beautiful Christmas songs for the other choirs (who are listening in the pews and waiting for their turn). As one choir moves off of the stand and the other moves onto it, the entire congregation sings a Christmas carol.

We were all amazed at the quality of the choirs, and we felt the spirit as we sang the beautiful songs of the Savior’s birth.

After the Choirside, we ran into our old friends Lisa and José Lobos, who got married about the same time that we did. When we told them about what we are planning, Lisa told me about a book about the Camino that she had just read called Winds of Change, that she had just read. I’ll add it to the list.

In the night, I took a look at the kids screen time use, and it was way more than they are used to. We knew it would be like that during the driving time, but we had not been on the road for a few days, and it was still really high. So we gathered everyone together and we talked about how one of the purposes of this trip is to spend less time connected to the internet and more time connected to each other. We set a goal to reduce their time on their phones by a pretty significant amount, and they agreed. We’ll see how it goes.

La Gran Aventura Day 6: Podcasting, Sushi, and another Christmas Party

Saturday December 16, 2023

This morning I woke up early because I needed to do some preparation to record the annual Christmas episode of The Protagonist Podcast. My friends Joseph Darowski, Andrew Darowski, and I started The Protagonist almost ten years ago, and every year we have a traditional episode in which Andrew gives Joe and me several titles of real Christmas movies, and Joe and I each make up synopses of what we “think” those movies are. After each round, Andrew awards a point to whomever has written the story he would most like to see made into a movie. It’s all very silly, but also very fun, and it’s one of my favorite holiday traditions. All of the craziness this year made preparation particularly challenging, but I’m glad I got it all done.

You can listen to it here .

Once I finished writing, Betty and I went for a run.

For lunch we went out for sushi at The Happy Sumo because it was my brother-in-law Zack’s birthday. My dad’s brother Tom came and joined us as well. It’s been years since I’ve seen Tom, so it was wonderful to see him. When she saw him, River asked him what he had done with his glasses. It wasn’t for a few minutes that we realized she thought he was my dad!

After lunch, Joe and Andrew and I recorded the podcast, and then in the evening we had a super fun Christmas dinner with some of my cousins and aunts and uncles on my dad’s side of the family. You can probably tell if you’ve read this far in this blog that family is super important to us.

Speaking of the importance of family, my mother gave a really special gift this year.

Music has always been important on both sides of my family, and the Macks have a tradition of singing a few songs every year. These are songs that came to us through the Kimball side of the family (that’s my Dad’s mom’s side) and were special favorites of my great-grandfather Spencer W. Kimball. The songs are “The Little Elf Man ,” “The Mistletoe Bough ,” and “The Oregon Gypsy Jew.”

These songs date from at least the middle of the 19th century, and they each tell a memorable story. The Mistletoe Bough is my favorite -- it’s the story of a couple who plays hide and seek on their wedding night. The wife hides so well that nobody finds her until decades later, when they discover her skeleton in an old oak chest. Apparently it was one of the most popular Christmas songs in the late 1800s in England. One of those “scary ghost stories of long long ago.” And there are some great modern recordings as well :)

Anyway, for Christmas my mother printed out the lyrics and history of these songs and gave them in book form to each of her kids and to the Mack aunts and uncles as well. It was so fun hearing my family sing these songs together. Music is just amazing, and it made this night magical.

Itwouldn’t be a Mack Christmas party without a nativity scene :)

La Gran Aventura Day 5: A New Car and the Orem Temple

Friday December 15, 2023

Our run this morning was especially good. We went over four miles, and Betty was really pushing it. It’s good to feel healthy and strong going into this adventure.

In the morning we picked up the Sequoia and took it the mechanic for an independent inspection. Then Betty and I went for another walk while they looked at it. When we came back, the word was in. Mechanically, it’s in perfect condition! They couldn’t find a thing wrong with it.

I consider it a true Christmas miracle!

So then we went home and picked up the kids and we all went down to the dealership to sign all the paperwork. It’s a process that always takes way longer than it seems like it should, but in the end, we drove away with a new (to us) Sequoia. I think I mentioned it before, but it’s all Black, and the interior is really roomy and comfortable. It will be a huge blessing on the rest of this trip and hopefully for many years to come.

We drove directly from the dealership just across the street to the Orem Temple so that we could attend the open house.

In our church, temples are our most sacred places of worship, and once they are dedicated, they are only open to members who live according to certain standards. However, before the temple is open, they always do an open house in which anyone can visit the temple to see what they are like inside and to learn about what we do there, and why they are so important to us.

So what do we do in temples?

The quick answer is that in temples we perform sacred ordinances for the living and for the dead. These include baptisms for the dead, a special ceremony called the endowment, and marriages (which we call sealings).

That is what we do there, but for me there is a better answer about why temples are so important for us.

When I think about temples, and what they mean to me personally and to us as a people, I think of two fundamental texts. One is the book The Sacred and the Profane by the religious historian Mircea Eliade, and the other is an essay by LDS scholar Hugh Nibley called “The Circle and the Square.”

Eliade is a historian of religion. He takes a broad look at religions across time and across the world, and he points out points of contact between them.

In The Sacred and the Profane he describes two kinds of spaces. He calls regular space, profane space. It’s unorganized and homogenous, and it spreads in all directions like a sheet. At times, however, something powerful and divine manifests itself like a puncture in that profane space. The place where that happens is what Eliade calls sacred space. The key here is that humans organize themselves around sacred space. They order their towns and villages and even their daily lives around that sacred space. They place a stake in the ground at that point, build a temple there, and everything else becomes organized around that sacred center because for those people, it is the center of the universe.

Nibley says: “The temple as the center of the universe may be a myth, but it is the most powerful myth that ever possessed the human race.”

Citing Eliade, he continues: “The chief difference between the man of the archaic and traditional societies and the man of modern societies [...] lies in the fact that the former feels himself indissolutely connected with the Cosmos and the cosmic rhythms, whereas the latter insists that he is connected only with History. [...] But for thousands and thousands of years, our ancestors went through those things. So let us think about it all for five minutes.” (Nibley, Hugh. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 12: Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present. Deseret Book Co. Kindle Edition.)

So the temple is the sacred center where we learn about God’s plan for us and our place in the cosmos. And we learn that central to that plan are two things: the Savior Jesus Christ, and the family.

Because of that, there is no better place to go with your family, than a temple, and the Orem temple is particularly beautiful. It’s decorated with a cherry tree motif, which is appropriate because Orem used to be all orchards. I grew up in a cherry orchard. With so many temples in Utah, I had never really thought that they would build one right in Orem, but now they have.

It was a beautiful evening, and it was only getting started.

From the temple, we went to my Mom and Dad’s church building for their ward (congregation) Christmas party. I grew up in that ward, and it’s always great to go back and see friends.

This evening was particularly great, because I ran into a friend I grew up with, Kenson Pribyl, and it turns out that a year ago, he and his wife sold their home, bought an RV, and have been traveling the country ever since. They have a YouTube channel called Exhaustive Joy. (You should check them out!) It was like finding a soul mate, and it gave me some inspiration for our upcoming adventure.

La Gran Aventura Day 4: Car shopping and My Birthday

Thursday December 14, 2023

OK, so the word on the car is that we need to get a new one. It has some major repairs that need to be done in order to make it drivable, and even then they told us it just wouldn’t be safe for long trips. And we’ve got a ton of driving ahead of us -- too much feel comfortable with driving this old vehicle.

So after going on a run, Betty and I headed out to look at vehicles. We considered a ton of different options, but ultimately we decided to go with another Sequoia. We felt like if we could get one that is in good shape, even if it had some miles on it, we would be able to get a bunch more out of it.

The first one we looked at was right in Orem, and it looked promising: 2013, super clean interior, 180,000 miles on it, and a good price. We took it for a test drive, and it felt great. But we didn’t want to jump at the first one, so we headed up to Salt Lake to look at a couple of others. They were NOT good, so we headed back to the first place to talk.

Betty really loved this first Sequoia that we had seen, but she didn’t want to pull the trigger without having our mechanic look at it. I was also curious about the dealer’s inspection report, but had been told that the dealer might not give it up. So we told the dealer that we wanted to take it to a mechanic, and he said we were welcome to do so, but he also volunteered to give us their inspection report, which was super clean with minimal work -- except that they put a new transmission in it. That’s awesome! Then he had the guy who was the mechanic that did the work on it come and talk to us about it as well. This guy said that he loved the vehicle, and he’d buy it in a second if he could.

We were almost tempted to buy it on the spot, but after talking to Lewis the mechanic again, we decided to give ourselves a night to think about it, and that we would take it to the mechanic in the morning. We don’t want to be pressured into a decision. This is a big one.

So that was a super-fun and relaxing way to spend my birthday day, but thankfully, the night was still free.

For my birthday dinner we went to 7 Brothers in the Riverwoods. They have the most amazing burgers and fries. I didn’t actually get a burger, though. I got a bacon cranberry melt. It was definitely worth the calories. It was so fun to hang out there with Mom and Dad, Annie and Zack, Marybeth and Andy, and Lamon. We haven’t seen them for so long. Siblings are absolutely the best!

Then we came home and had cake. But not just any cake. My sister Annie is a cake wizard, and she made this blueberry cobbler cake that was to die for.

After cake, my aunt Nan and her husband Joel came to visit as well. They are such great friends, and we love them so much. Unfortunately, Betty missed most of their visit because she was so exhausted from the day that she just fell asleep right on the floor in the living room :)

Lights at Riverwoods