Home!

We're home. We had a great trip! I wanted to avoid the same old, same old I-5 corridor, so we chose to drive through Idaho and Utah. It was gorgeous! I would definitely do it again. However, I didn't do it again when coming home. I looked at the weather forecast for Salt Lake City and saw that on Tuesday, when I would have been there, it was supposed to have snowed the day before and still be snowing a bit, and it wasn't supposed to get above 30 degrees. Snowy and icey are not my favorite ways to drive long trips. I didn't even know about any of the passes on that route, I just made the decision to go through California. It was actually nice! While here in Oregon, fall is about done, in California there were still beautiful trees with colorful leaves. And in Southern California, where I usually wince from seeing the air, it must have rained good and hard because it was actually beautiful there too. The only glitch in the trip (and going home I was the only driver--Paul flew home on Saturday night) was that 250 miles from home I pulled into a rest stop and saw that there was smoke coming out from my hood. Turns out (with the help of a trucker who came to diagnose) that there was a crack in the seal of my oil cap. It was allowing oil to get spewed out on the engine, thus the smoke. I drove to the nearest town and spent some time at the auto parts store. They didn't have the cap I needed, but they spent time looking for a seal for it that could be jimmied into place. I got home just fine on the slightly too small seal in my oil cap.

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. We got to tell everyone about our new house, and we got to meet our new niece. She is adorable, of course! It was fun watching her little personality open up as she got to know us a bit. She's three months old now.

We made nut roast from the PETA website for the third Thanksgiving, and it was delicious! It's great to have a family that's so accomodating to our quirky food habits. ;-)

Spent some time in Tucson's old town, on 4th Ave. That's where all the funky people hang out. :-) Had some great pizza at Magpies, and browsed through the co-op. We laughed at the claims in the windows of a (closed) salt crystal shop--seems that salt crystals can cure just about any problem known to humankind. And we went into our favorite bookstore in Tucson, that we discovered last trip--Antigone Books. No, we didn't buy anything, but Paul and I both have new titles on our hold list at the library. We really enjoy looking through bookstores that are small and selectly chosen--if a bookstore has some of the same tastes as us, it's really easy to find something we really want to find.

If I were to choose the top reason why we make the effort to go back to Tucson every year for Thanksgiving, it's Paul's grandparents. They are in their 80s and can't travel anymore, though every time we see them they promise they'll make the trip out to see us where we live now. They haven't visited us since we lived in the San Diego area--it's just not all that feasible for them to do so. I know they want to, they want to see how and where we live. So I feel obligated to go to them. They were a huge influence in Paul's life as he was growing up. They've given so much to him, and in turn to me, and the kids, and I feel it my duty to give back to them.

While I was driving back, Paul called me one evening to tell me our realtor had called. Our new house had been appraised at 59k *over* what we are buying it for! Wow, what good news is that? We are getting a good deal--we knew that before, but we know it much more now.

So, now we're back and I have a jillion things I need to do: laundry and unpacking, of course, but also packing for moving, calling services to change the address, cleaning the house, etc. So I probably won't be checking in here too much in the next couple of weeks, as move-in day is one and a half weeks away! Eek!