An Ode To the Durability of Children

My cameras all ran out of batteries today and so I ended up using Elijah's phone to take some pictures. When I went to download my pictures this evening I found a whole bunch of pictures Elijah had taken over the span of our journey. It was fascinating to see the kids in all these different moments along the way. They have grown so much in the last month, and suffered their parents' whims so often. I wanted to post this series of pictures together as a reflection of the many moments throughout this journey in which our kids have shown strength and patience as well as humor.

Their last night in their room before we moved out. Sleeping on the floor in an otherwise empty bedroom.

We've had a lot of moments of waiting with the piles of luggage. This was in Sacramento at our second hotel.

Waiting for food in a weird little town in Nevada. The food took one and a half hours and when it finally came it was inedible. But the kids had fun with the anti-aircraft gun display near by. They had already been on the road for seven hours at this point.

Playing in the park in Santa Fe in the rain. Hannah's leggings are totally wet but the air is so warm she refused to wear her sweater.

They ran around in this park until after dark. Eli made friends with some kids in a nice family that were also there to hear the music.

Izzy was having a hard time that day. He kept getting really angry with Eli. But he and I were the members of the family the most interested in the music. He told me that the singer was very good.

One of the many hikes that started out with a lot of complaining and ended up with happy tired children. This one is in the hills above Santa Fe.

Izzy quietly reading to Hannah on the floor in Texas.

Hannah found a stage for her dramatic presence while waiting in the rain for our table to be ready. The kids have gotten really good at waiting for a table at restaurants.

Everywhere we go our friends and family are doing interesting things the kids get to learn about. This is Mary on her donkey Brownie.

Many of the places we go Eli introduces himself to children around us and strikes up friendships.

Here he is making friends with some kids who just moved to Texas from Louisiana.

There's been a lot of waiting, and a lot of telling the kids to behave and be quiet. This was a precious moment when they all followed that instruction. Waiting in the rain for the trailer to get hitched onto the minivan so that we can get ready to drive to New Orleans.

Some days we took too long to get to dinner.

Even the silly displays in hotels are interesting when they have guns or authentic costumes. This was a Civil War canon in the lobby of a Hilton just north of Atlanta. The kids have learned a lot about history in the last month.

Swimming pools have been one of the greatest treats of our road trip. The kids love to get to a place and find there is a pool. Hannah is already starting to swim as a result of all the practice.

No matter where we go Hannah likes to charm the people around her. Those feet belong to a guy who was sitting next to us in a coffee house. She went right up to him and started to ask him about his work. We are starting to work on boundaries a bit more.

It's a good thing the boys like each other so much. They have spent so much time together lately they sometimes forget anyone else is there. The imagination game is in constant full swing. Here I believe they were developing plans for piracy.

The best stuff is not always the stuff we expect. It's been amazing to look at the country with children as our companions. Everything looks different when you have to take them into consideration.

The boys got to talk on the phone with their friends during this meal. They were in high spirits. It's been a long haul and they have had to spend most of the time with just their family. These kids are social and not used to being trapped with just us. An interesting side effect to the road trip is that they are mostly in the adult world much of the time.

Hannah gets pretty tired during our adventures, and we have had some struggles with tantrums, but when it really counts she's a hardy little girl and a real sport about it all.

Driving Through Nevada

Eli:

We went to Las Vegas, and a place called the Strip there were huge shiny casinos.

Rebekah:

Driving through Nevada is a surreal experience. We drove through the entire state from Carson City to the Hoover Dam. We spent much of our time on highway 95. We passed Walker Lake which was beautiful but had no one recreating on it in the middle of the summer. Wondering why, we looked it up and discovered that the water line had dropped drastically in the last few years and as a result the water had become increasingly salty and the fish were dying. They used to have loons come every year, but this year they had to cancel the annual loon festival. At the bottom of Walker Lake is the largest munitions depot in the United States. I'm not completely sure what this all entails, but it sure looks like something creepy and isolated and strangely powerful. I kept having fantasies that it was really some secret location for containing and torturing large masses of people. I've never been more aware of how many military industrial complex type structures there are, and how likely it is that the conspiracy theorists are all correct. We stopped to eat in the town that supports the munitions depot. We waited an hour and half for our food, watched a man almost choke to death at the next table, and then when the food came it was so awful none of us actually ate, except Elijah who had ordered fried eggs. You really have to work to mess up fried eggs. 

Through most of the night as we were driving in near pitch black there was an amazing electrical storm in the distance. At one point it started to rain huge drops. We had been just then wondering what the small strange square of lights in the distance was. Then two things happened, the highway changed to a larger four lane smooth road and we passed a sign that said "Mercury." Turns out it is a town in the middle of Nevada where the people in charge of nuclear testing used to live, and it has a marked air strip, but the rest of the town is unmarked. Only authorized people are allowed to go there. This pretty much epitomizes our Nevada experience.

Finally we rolled into Vegas at 2am. We got a hotel at the north end of town so that we could drive in and drive out without getting too caught up in Vegas proper. We did drive down the strip on our way out of town, so that we could show the kids all the big shiny casinos. The boys spent most of the time picking out the ancient culture they liked best. They both agreed that we should stay at the Luxor next time.