Events of Saturday, January 29, 2011

                Waking up in a Costco parking lot southeast of Memphis, Tennessee, we  cleaned up our beds and generally got ready for the day like always. When breakfast time came, we all held hands and sang one of our Saturday songs for grace, but Mom sneezed mid-song, and I refused to hold her hand thereafter. Soon we were all laughing our way through the grace. Oh well. I hope God liked our laughter better than our song. After breakfast, we pulled in and drove “away down south in Dixie”  – I mean, to Mississippi. On the way, Daddy found us a nice campground in Canton, Mississippi, where we plan to chill out in words that start with the letter ‘m’: moving to Mississippi to do math, study Mark, and watch a movie. I just love alliteration!

                Our first stop was at a very well-decorated rest stop and welcome center, a pleasing example of Southern hospitality. Quaint rocking chairs by the fireplace and comfortable chairs around a coffee table as well as lace curtains and cute knickknacks adorning the tables, made it feel welcoming, more like a living room than a business. However, there were also the brochure boards and information tables and desks. Our next stop was an uneventful gas station stop, and then we arrived at our campground: Movietown RV Park!

                Upon arrival, we drove in circles for quite awhile around the entire park like a bunch of weirdoes looking for the perfect spot – near the Wi-Fi transmission antennae. After finally choosing our spot, getting level, and pushing out our slide outs, we realized that we were about a bazillion miles away from the one bathhouse in this RV park. Great!

                Next, we had lunch, a hot lunch, thanks to being plugged in. We thoroughly enjoyed our croque-monsieur sandwiches and soup, along with our typical side dishes of apples, carrots, and chips, with Oreos and animal crackers for dessert. Following lunch, we participated in a family manuscript bible study of the gospel of Mark. After our bible study, we all did our own thing: computer catch-up work, postcard-writing, picture-editing, re-organizing and cleaning, sewing, sorting, jogging, and dishwashing.

                Soon, it was time to Skype Grandpa and Grandma at their Oregon home. We had a jolly time doing it, especially when Grandma gasped, “Oh no! I just had such a fright! For some reason I thought you guys were in an airplane, and when your father stepped out the door, I thought he was jumping out of the airplane!” After the bouts of laughter subsided, we all decided that Daddy didn’t need a parachute to get from our “airplane” to the bathhouse. We discussed where we are (Canton, Mississippi), where we have been (Cape Canaveral, Disney World, Nashville, and Memphis), what we’re looking forward to most in being at home (seeing what we haven’t seen for over seven months!), and what Europe is going to look like (when our flight departs and arrives, where we’re traveling, what we’re going to see, our rental car, and where we’ll be staying).

                After a while, we said goodbye and plunged into an hour-long math session with Daddy. Lindsey is gaining knowledge of geometric proofs and properties. Abby is learning about simple diamond factoring in algebra. Ben is discovering the sum and difference formulas for cosines, and I’m slowly tackling my Advanced Placement Calculus AB summer homework (if you really want to know specifics, I dutifully undertook an exercise today regarding the equation of a curve).

                Glad to put away our math lessons, we next Skyped the Mitzners, cousins Timothy and Claire and Aunt Pat and Uncle Erik. Today is the celebration of Claire’s first birthday, so Aunt Pat and Timothy were wearing ‘Happy Birthday’ tiaras, while Claire was dressed in her birthday finest. It was great fun to see our baby cousins Tim-Tim (who is twenty-eight and a half months old) and Claire Bear (who is now twelve months old). We laughed a lot together, even though we’re over two thousand miles away. Claire (who is almost walking, but not quite) was cute and curious, though very tired from a long birthday and late for her nap; Timothy was energetic, talkative, and very entertaining. At one point, he took a party balloon and thrust it at the computer screen to “knock us over”, and we just laughed.    After sadly saying goodbye, we sat down to a delicious dinner of chicken, rice, and corn, with a special key lime pie for dessert. We then cleaned up and watched Monsters, Inc., Daddy’s selection, before going to bed in our nice, dark, quiet campsite.