To Grandma's House we go.

Kate checks out the frog I caught for her so play withtrying out a tricycle

Samuel's first trip to the farm. He seemed to enjoy it- especially with his handy hand along for sucking on. He seriously can't leave his hands out of his mouth for two minutes.We weren't use to the central valley heat. Sam spent much of the time like this.
Swimming with Cousin Cami, Grandma and Jake


We spent a quick weekend at Jake's parents. We left Friday after work and drove through the night swearing we would never drive through the night again. We were exhausted. Luckily the Freeman Farm has all things entertaining to a 2 year old so it didn't take a lot of energy to keep her happy. Kate couldn't get enough of the cousins, dog, bikes, picking fruit, frogs and , trampoline, swimming, swings, and basement full of toys. It was wonderful as always to see Jake's parents, and two of his brothers and their families, these two families alone have four girls 5 and under and the perfect playmates for Kate. Church here was interesting as always (they have a ward of hardly 50 people). Not only do we pray, play the piano, talk or teach often when we come, Kate was the only kid in the nursery older than 18 months. That is right, they let babies come to nursery since otherwise there would be nobody in there- ha ha . It is such a wonderful ward though really. We headed home Monday afternoon. It was over 100 in Frenso when we left, driving mid desert, mid day with the air conditioner full blast we should have only expected what happened next. The car died, going up a hill. That is right- almost to Death Valley, at 4:00 in the afternoon. Stuck on the side of the road, Jake got out to see what he could do. The car heated up in seconds, and with two small children in the back we were sure dehydration and heat stroke was only minutes away.I did my best to keep them comfortable as I forced them to drink the luke warm water we had brought along. With some hope and a prayer, we were able to get the car started and going (although slowly with the heater on) until we could get to the nearest town about 20 miles away. We decided to let the car rest and hang out at Jack in the box until the sun went down and our car had cooled. Apparently our kids were the cutest things that town had ever seen, as eating our burger they seemed to draw a crowd of fans. When we got back in the car it seemed to have no trouble. We did pass a thermometer as we left around 9:00 at night that read 103 degrees. Putting our guess of what we were stranded in at around 112 or higher. I know there are a lot worse things that could have occured on our trip, and we are almost laughing now, but it was very miserable at the time for sure. We pulled into our house around 6:00 am. The sun was coming up, we were exhausted and seeing that is was already morning made me depressed. Thankfully the kids slept for about two more hours or so and we got a little sleep, especially Jake who had to be at work at 8:00. I am looking forward to cleaning out the car, doing the laundry and other chores so I can nap with the kids this afternoon. It feels good to be home.