Family

By Jen.

After arriving in Springfield, MO, we were exhausted. My mother picked us up and dropped us off at our room, where we managed to make a quick meal before falling asleep for several hours to catch up on what we missed while traveling across the Pacific and continental USA. We got to spend the next few weeks catching up with family and being reacquainted with oversized America.

Case and point: on the left is the size of the box of granola bars in the rest of the world. In the USA, we offer the size on the right!

Enjoying lake time with extended relatives.

And, I am still young enough to sit on my mother’s lap.

While we were gone, a pack rat made a nest in our Jetta’s engine compartment. Besides a lot of debris piled up in the compartment, the only major damage was a bit of chewing on some spark-plug wires.

Some of the debris. According to my dad, it lined its nest with rat poison and snake skin!

We found an American version of the marsupial family: a possum!

On our trip to Tulsa, we discovered that our A/C doesn’t work well at temperatures above 92°F. So, Jonathan spent a day or two diagnosing and replacing parts. He eventually got something working using parts from 3 different sources.



It has been Jonathan’s family’s tradition to visit the lake over July 4th, so we joined them again this year after skipping all of 2017’s outings.

I got to really ski for the first time in forever after hurting my knee 5 years ago.

Jonathan got to do some tubing.

And we made some new friends as we caught up on the life that had moved on without us while we were gone.

Then, my brother’s birthday rolled around.  I had been planning on throwing him a grand celebration ever since my 30th a year before. And, I had spent the last half a year getting my family prepared for it. After much arguing, discussing, brainstorming, and planning, we finally had the arrangements laid out. Now, we just had to keep him from suspecting anything. First of all, since the party was not until 4 days after his birthday, Jonathan and I went to Kansas to let him think that was all he was getting. My parents showed up as well and made his day a bit more elaborate. My parents ended up sending him on a treasure hunt throughout the town to get his present.



But, we still had a big party and surprise for him later. And, this is where we went wrong. We had to find an excuse for my brother to get to Hays. I was working with his girlfriend to make it happen, but then apparently we pushed a little hard for it. My sister and another friend also asked him if he was going to Hays this weekend, so he started to get suspicious.

Since my brother was going to Hays via Wichita, we volunteered to take his cat directly. She was not happy until we let her out of her carrier, and then she really wanted to be on Jonathan’s lap, or possibly his shoulder. (She completely ignored me .)

Finally the day of the party arrived. We had to get him nonchalantly to the bowling alley. So, we used my sister’s kids as an excuse. But. as the time neared, the kids were still sleeping! And, my brother wanted to with my mom to get drinks, instead of having my dad do it. This probably worked out for the best, as it meant that I could wake up the kids without my brother knowing, but still, it was not going as I planned, which made me nervous! All that to say, we did manage to pull it off. While not flabbergasted in surprise, he was still pleased.

The kiddos helped him unwrap it and then he had to fully open it to make sure we hadn’t just used the box as a ruse (typical of presents in my family).

We spent the next hour bowling (a favorite pastime of his), and then a nice dinner. Afterwards, we did an escape room, which was fun and tested everyone’s puzzle-solving skills. We plowed through most of them like soft butter, but the last problem took us a while.

The last week before our van arrived we spent in Missouri, which included having my grandmother instruct me in the fine are of making butterhorn rolls from scratch.