Road Trip to Arizona

Last weekend my parents picked us up on their way down from Oregon for a quick road trip to Arizona. 

Quick for us. They are still there... us young people had to go back to work. 

*Disclaimer: this story is told from the point of view of a UNmechanically inclined girl*

It was quite a trip down there, what was suppose to be a 10 hour drive turned into about 22 hours. 

We left Friday after work and drove as far as we could, we found a rest area at 1 AM outside Riverside, CA. After a few short hours of sleep we got back on the road. Ten minutes later, around 7 AM we were on the side of the road. The back axle on the trailer decided to come off. We tried calling a couple tow trucks but nobody wants to come haul a 40 foot fifth-wheel trailer on a Sunday morning. That's where my genius Macgyver husband comes into to play. 

The only thing that stopped the axle from falling completely off was a set of stairs. All my dad had for tools was a hammer and a chainsaw wrench. They jacked the trailer up, used wood blocks to get the weight off the axles and then pushed the axle back into place. 

As you can see from the photo below, the bolt broke. They used a bunch of nails to replace the bolt, then duct taped and roped it all together. That got us down the freeway to a napa, where hubby proceeded to buy the tools my dad didn't bring and the bolt to correctly fix the axle. 

A few hours later, we arrived at our destination... Quartzsite, Arizona. 

Not a whole lot there during March.... I was told that this place was filled with thousands of retired people in their motor homes and the mecca for swap meets. In March, there are just a few stray retired people left. We still had lots of fun though. 

After setting up camp, my dad, hubby, and I decided to go on a quick trip through the desert exploring on the new UTV. 

The odometer on said zero when we left camp, three miles later we had to pull the fire extinguisher out. The winch was not installed properly which led to a electrical fire. We were stranded out in the middle of the desert, with about 30 minutes until dark... I started running through the desert back towards the main road. It was about a 10 or 15 minute hike back to the gravel road. Did I mention I was wearing TOMS with holes in the toes? Not great hiking shoes. Once I made it to the main road panting because I am horribly out of shape, hubby called and said he got it working again. So I ran for nothing.... 

While waiting for the boys to come pick me up I took a few selfies and admired the beautiful sunset. 

The next morning my dad was drinking coffee out of the perfect cup... 

It says "If it ain't broke, it ain't ours"

Pretty much sums up our Saturday! 

This hubby of mine saved the day with all of his genius mechanical mind skills! 

Don't worry... Sunday (blog post coming soon) was much less uneventful in the break-down department. 

Rocky

We found out a family in our neighborhood was selling boxer puppies. 

Trevor's mom loves watching Ruby, and kinda mentioned something about getting a dog. 

We went over to check out the puppies and couldn't resist! 

We sorta surprised Trevor's mom with a puppy for her Christmas present. 

I say sorta, because you can't just surprise someone with a puppy, she approved it first :) 

She didn't know when we were bringing him over though. 

We brought him home first to meet Ruby. 

A little intimidated, she stuck pretty close to us while Ruby was sniffing her and chasing her all around. 

He was at our house about an hour and in that time he peed twice, pooped and then stepped in it and also must have made Ruby feel she needed to mark her territory because Ruby peed while running making sure she claimed the whole living room. We were then confident Ruby is suppose to be a only child and we will not be getting another dog for ourselves. 

Just look at those eyes!

The girls were so surprised and everyone instantly fell in love. 

Kisses for Rocky's new mommy!

He has already grown so much since the day he came home. He listens pretty well and plays great with the girls. I think he is going to be a great addition to the family :) 

Christmas Party down South

We were invited to a Christmas party at Trevor's brothers house down in Southern California. 

We barely made it over the grapevine before they closed it due to the snow. 

Dress code: Dress and bow tie.

Trevor had a custom bow tie made by Chanel's Custom Crochet and kept it a secret from everyone until right before the party. The bow tie was a hit! 

We had a lot of fun getting dressed up for the party. Trevor insisted it was suppose to be a ugly Christmas sweater party. So glad I talked him out of that one... 

We had a lot of fun playing games, eating all the yummy food Michele made and meeting new people. 

Great Christmas party!

A trip to urgent care

 Trevor was out in the garage working on his Chevy the day after Thanksgiving. 

He calmly asked me to come and I reluctantly came thinking he needed help moving something. 

I found him with a bloody towel wrapped around his hand and my first thought is that he cut a finger off. 

Thank goodness it was only a cut... A very deep cut though.

After he got the bleeding to stop he wanted his mom to glue it together. Her first look and she sent us to urgent care... 

Lots of blood... I'd say the grinder won that night. 

So happy that we didn't have to wait, we were the only ones at urgent care. 

 The doctor did a very good job stitching Trevor up. He even showed us how to do it. 

A few stitches later, a tetanus shot, and some antibiotics and we were on our way home. 

He still doesn't have much feeling in one half of his thumb but it has healed up nicely. 

Local School Visit

Our next stop was a local school. The school was actually a boarding school that taught English. When we arrived all the kids starting screaming "Hello!". We visited a 4th grade class where we did some introductions and exchanges gifts. Them all the kids went outside to play games. There were a ton of kids at the school and they were all so interested in us. It was funny trying to talk to them because most of them only knew a few phrases. Many of the kids wanted pictures with us. I handed out a few jolly ranchers and a few seconds later I had a big crowd around me. The jolly ranchers were a big hit and gone fast! We really enjoyed playing with all the kids at the school.

 After the school we went to a local restaurant which served some interest food choices. It was my least favorite meal so far. I was happy to finally see soy sauce though!  Before dinner we got to participate in a fun game/dance using large sticks. It was kind of like jump rope or maybe double dutch. They would hit the sticks apart and then together and the goal was to make it across without getting hit by the sticks. From the pictures below you can tell that not many of us made it across. It sure was fun though!

 Had to include this cute little boy... he was at the restaurant and sooooo cute! 

Nanning

Getting caught up on my China posts... At the end of our trip the internet didn't work most of the time. Had a wonderful trip and I can't wait to share lots of photos!

Today was a full day in Nanning. Nanning is the capital city of Southern China. It is very green and humid. Still very crowded like Beijing. Our first stop this morning was an orphanage. They held a welcoming ceremony for us. A few orphanage directors were in attendance and gave speeches. The orphanage children performed two dances for us and then some children from our group performed a variety of talents. The children were so excited to perform their dances for us. They passed out fruit, but it soon became a game of banana's turned into guns. They loved seeing the pictures I had taken on my camera of them.  

After the speeches and performances were done all the children from our heritage group put red ink on their hands and filled an album with all their hand prints and names. 

We felt like famous people after the ceremony was finished. Their were camera crews and interviewers everywhere. We snuck away for a few minutes and found rooms full of little children eating lunch. We didn't want to intrude so we just watched them for a little bit, waved, and took some photos. I wish we could have stayed longer and played with them.

 We were served lunch at the orphanage. We had some free time after lunch so a few families decided to be brave and explore Walmart while the rest of the group returned to the hotel.

Lots of strange strange things in Walmart. I did find some familiar things though like Pringles! Funny story.... We were trying to find the bathroom in Walmart so we followed the signs with the boy and girl on it. No luck. Well an older couple were watching us and were trying to help us. So hard to communicate in this country. They ended up showing us to the bathroom which was two stories down, through a parking garage and down a hallway. We never would have found it without them. Such a nice old couple! All of the families stuck together as we left Walmart and walked back to the hotel. We thought it was just a few blocks from the hotel... 45 minutes later we finally made it to the hotel, barely in time for our next excursion. Turns out we took a wrong turn... Now we can say we got lost in China! Oh and the humidity in Nanning is pretty high so we were drenched by the time we got back to the hotel.