Please say a prayer for me and for Bella. We’re going to her class trip to Sacramento and the Gold Country. We’ll leave at the crack of dawn and will be gone for a couple of days. I’d appreciate it if you prayed that we have a safe journey…and that Brian survives caring for the boys while we’re gone. (Thankfully my mom flew up from So Cal to help out.) I’ll post pics next week. 🙂
In the meantime, in honor of RoL’s 9th bday, here is a flashback post from 2003 that also has to do with traveling.

Man, I love visiting my family for these week-long trips but I hate all the packing and unpacking. Brian can always manage to put all his stuff in one small suitcase but Bella and I have loads of bags of things we “need” to take with us! I tell you, if God answers our prayers for another child soon we’d also better add “and a mini-van” to the prayer because I don’t know how I’m going to fit another human being in our car on these 400 mile long trips! But I guess that’s another story.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, really touching. (Except for the fact that my sister EL was missing! But we’ll ALL be together during our Christmas visit. 🙂
Oh my gosh, then the day after thanksgiving we girls hit the malls for all those insane bargains you’ll get if you arrive at 3am and stand on your head while reciting “Twas the Night before Christmas” in Spanish. I refused to stand on my head but I did manage to get $100 worth of savings before making morning Mass. But that’s not the story I’m meaning to tell…
At the end of the day my two sisters and I were tired and hungry. We stopped at a fast food place to grab a quick bite for the drive home (which would take an hour). We’re sitting in the parking lot passing out the food and straws when a cop circles around my sister’s truck. My sister jokingly says, “Hey, that cop thinks we’re suspicious; he’s checking us out.” I told my other sister to hold up her pepsi so he can see we’re just eating. They laugh until the cop parks behind us and gets out of the car.
He walks slowly over to us and shines his flashlight into the backseat where I was sitting. It was not yet dusk but the windows are tinted. He asked where we were headed. My sister told him but he just looks suspiciously at us. I noticed that he also looked a little nervous so I told him, “We’ve been shopping all day and we just stopped to eat our dinner, officer.” Obviously he has nothing to worry about unless we decide to attack him with the pair of pajamas and slippers I got on sale.
Well, in the meantime, we hadn’t noticed that there was a whole gang of policemen driving up and surrounding our car. We were blocked in making it impossible for us to “escape”. Finally the cop realized that we were not dangerous. (I should have offered him one of our tacos). He apologized and explained that someone just called in that there was a silver truck (same as ours) with some guys and a girl (so now I look like a guy?) and they had a gun. (Okay, no wonder he looked a little freaked.) My sister then let him know that we had just seen that truck and the kids he was talking about. They took off when we entered the parking lot a few minutes ago. The cop thanked us and he and all his buddies removed their cars so we could leave in peace. (Thanks be to God. )
When we got home and told our family the story my mom just shook her head and half-jokingly said, “You see what happens when you take Bobbi with you. She always has a way of being involved in some kind of escyndalo!”
Hmmm, I prefer to think of it as more like adding a little spice to life. haha!
Have a great weekend!