Ongoing Adventures from the Road

What a week! I had many intentions to post, but got a bit overwhelmed at the thought of where to begin.  For those of you who followed our Tuesday night adventure on Facebook, I apologize that I never gave the end of the story!  That will be upcoming... Right now, we are sitting in a coffee shop in Georgia while the RV is in the shop yet again (you'll just have to read all the way to the bottom).  You might want to grab a cup of coffee.

I'll begin with Sunday!  Sunday morning found us at High Bridge Union Church.  This church is pastored by a former history prof that Nathan and I studied under at Asburry, Dr. Glen Spann.  It's also attended by our friends, the Kinnells and the Sheets.

  

In the photo above you'll see the kids all working diligently with their fidget toys -- brought by Amy, a serious student of sensory matters.  If someone was really smart, they'd sell a variety box of these toys.  Parents like me would buy them up in a heartbeat.

I don't have any photos of this, but before we left for Tennessee, we surprised our Asbury friends by staying for Global Cafe`.  Such a sweet, sweet time to be with some of our favorite-est people.  It's not lost on us that it won't be long before we don't know any of the students who attend (sniff, sniff).  For now, though, we don't think about it and enjoy a little taste of our 'former life'.  

Monday evening we drove down to Ashland City to see the Carneys.  At one point, the Carneys had been in the Albania program to adopt (which is how we met), before switching over to Russi*a.  They invited some of their church friends over for a yummy supper to meet us and hear about Albania.  It's always special to connect with folks over adoption and missions!  We stayed up WAY too late talking about all sorts of things and before we knew it, we had to be on the road again.  Thank you, Jason and Lindsey, for being such great hosts!  What a joy to meet your children (finally!)!  And thanks to Heidi and Jeff, Will and Casey, Scott, and Stanley and Marie for coming out!  We really enjoyed meeting you all!!!

 From the Carneys, we headed over to the Rutledges.  Elizabeth lived on my hall in the dorm, and we've reconnected through adoption (Rwanda, for them).  They've recently moved to the country, to an outdoors-y paradise for kids (complete with ponds, woods, and a cave!), but Ellie was happy just playing with their cat!  While I haven't seen Elizabeth in probably 18 years, it sure didn't feel that way!  They are a beautiful family and I was so glad for an opportunity like this to see them!

   We had just gotten north of Bowling Green, Kentucky when the RV started shaking violently and making a HUGE racket.  Ellie covered her ears and yelled, "Why are people shooting at us???  And why does it smell like gunpowder?" (like she knows what gunpowder smells like).  We had blown a tire, but because our rear tires are duallies,  we needed a tire service.  The gas station recommended a local guy who arrived within ten minutes.  

   He was really kind and after asking our story (why we were on the road), charged us only $50 for a service for which he said he usually charges $170. He discovered that the steel belting had knocked the tail pipe extension around, crimping one of them closed (a very dangerous situation).  With his tools, he knocked the end off and opened up the crimping.  Not even 15 minutes down the interstate, the spare tire blew.  We limped into a Pilot station, now about 9:30 at night, to strategize our options.

   Many of you friends on Facebook were kind to look up some tire places on the internet to refer us to.  Given the hour, we knew we'd have to spend the night near the tire shop since we couldn't drive more than 30 mph and felt it was safer to drive that speed at night instead of during rush hour the next morning.  We were directed to a tire place just one mile from the Pilot station.  He answered his phone at that hour (a miracle!) and told us that he just happened to have the tires we needed (a hard to find size). We got permission to park over night at Pilot with assurances from the tire shop that they would see us first thing after opening in the morning.  We got situated, hooked up the generator, cable locked it to the RV, set up the beds, and tried to settle in for the evening.  After settling comfortably in, we discovered that heavy rains and strong winds, lasting several hours, were coming our way.  Let me back up: we were told by the previous owner that if it was ever to rain, or if we were to park it long term outside to drive up one of the front tires on a wooden block he provided so the rain could drain off the roof (the ceiling AC unit is heavy and over the years had caused the roof to sag and collect water).  About 5:30 we were awakened to the sound of a heavy stream of water falling from the AC onto the aisle between our beds.  We quickly grabbed a skillet and some towels to absorb the splatter. 

You might ask, "Why didn't you go outside and drive up on the block?" Good, legitimate question.  Blowing downpour aside, the alternator belt had fallen off AGAIN somewhere outside of Nashville, so we had one start on our engine (that we could count on) and didn't want to start the RV until we were within a reasonable leave time for the tire shop.  We held out until a little after 6AM, when we saw a break in the storm on the radar.  Nathan quickly packed up the generator and moved the RV slightly on the prop and the leak stopped almost immediately.

As we started putting away our bedding, dressing, and getting ready to leave, I noticed a strong smell of diesel fumes. We would later learn that in addition to beating up the exhaust pipes, it had also cracked a large hole in the wheel well, under our kitchen sink.  With the tailpipe extension gone, exhaust was filling the wheel well and entering the interior of the RV.

We made it to the tire shop.  A very unassuming place.  The owner met us outside his trailer and along with the help of us his assistant, replaced all four rear tires.  You see, they quit putting these specific tires on vehicles in the late 80s or early 90s, and eventually quit manufacturing them altogether. They had four Firestones that would fit, but we would also need to buy new rims.  In less than an hour, we were on the road again.

Nathan and I had to cancel our dental appointments (thank you for being so gracious and understanding, Dr. Stahr).  But we got to Lexington in time for the children's appointments and eventually onto our most important scheduling item, a visit to First United Methodist Church of Lexington!  Our friends, Jonathan and Faith Powers, had arranged for us to meet their pastor of missions and discipleship, Martina Ockerman, and she invited us to share at their Wednesday night prayer meeting.  We really appreciate the opportunity to meet some folks at this missions-minded congregation, and they were full of great questions about our family and what we'll be doing in Albania.  Sadly, I didn't get any photos (I think I was so full of adrenaline from the previous evening's excitement that I was just putting one foot in front of the other).  

We dropped the RV off at a shop in Wilmore to try to figure out the belt issue, and attended our last 'real' appointment of our time in Kentucky: Reni's consultation at Shriners.  While we had borrowed the Kinnells' car Wednesday, we took advantage of Shriner's transportation service they graciously provide.  Two sweet retirees picked us up at 8AM and took us to Lexington.   

Briefly, it was determined that Reni needs another MRI for us to really know what's going on in his lower left leg.  For the first time we heard of the possibility of "extension" surgery which might add to any bone that might be growing below the femur, as well as additional surgery which might change the arc range of motion for his appendage.  We're hoping to have this scheduled after this trip is over in early March. 

(Above: because Shriners transport insurance only covers parents and patients, Ellie stayed with Sarah R while we attended Reni's appointment).

I can't describe how restful it is when we can stay at the student center. (Which is just what we needed). Unfortunately, our time was brief so we didn't get to see nearly as many folks as we would have liked. We met with some students, had a Skype conference call with our regional directors, and spent Friday afternoon catching up on computer work before picking up the RV again. All in all, not a bad place to be stranded.

(Below:  supper Thursday night courtesy of the Kinnells)

Friday night, we packed up the RV and left bright and early for Berea and then Georgia.  I'll share photos and a recap from those visits in the next post!

BELOW: the kids with Abby and Anna, their teachers-to-be next year!

FINALLY : thank you, prayer warriors, for lifting us up.  We send this just as we get back on the road again from having another repair.  For whatever reason, the lug nuts on the new right, rear tires, sheared off and we limped into a repair station with only 1 (of 8) nuts remaining. God's hand of protection has been on us (the tire shop owner told us while shaking his head that we were "lucky, lucky, lucky!" -- we told him, it wasn't "luck".  As the coffee shop owner (who gave us a ride to his place from delivering lunch to the tire shop) told us, "If you weren't doing the Lord's work, it would be easy going!"  We are reminded that there is one who would love to discourage us and steal us from the joy we find in this season of homeland ministry assignment.  We are staying ever dependent upon Him and hope that as we share of these provisions, you are encouraged to see how your prayers on our behalf are rendering affect.  We appreciate you!

Making Connections; North Carolina, Pt 2

Whew!  This post has been in 'draft form' on my computer for a long, long time!  I'll see if I can finally get it finished!  We just haven't stopped!

From Ricky and Aidan's in Morganton, we thought we would try to beat the impending ice storm to Cary.  As you can see from the photos below, it beat us.

one of our hub caps.  those spikes are ice.

I'm only posting these photos now that we have safely returned and moms can no longer worry...

In Cary we went to visit my high school friend, Joy, and her husband, Jason, and their two children.

Jason is an engineer and when he learned about our missing alternator belt, he decided that he and Nathan would figure out how to replace it. Joy and I stayed in the nice, warm indoors and caught up on life. It's cool to see that nearly twenty years after graduating from high school and moving our personal items out of our shared, side-by-side lockers, we still share the same values!  Like us, they have a daughter and a son, and the kids got along great!  

Thanks to the internet chat boards and YouTube videos, the guys got a new belt on, and Nathan learned how to change it again in the future (which he'd have to do less than 24 hours later).  We're going to the shop  Monday morning to see if the pulleys are out of alignment.  Any mechanics out there have other theories why we keep losing belts?

We are grateful for Jason and Joy's hospitality and the blessing of friendships that last over the decades!

Saturday morning we left the B family's home early and drove two miles across town to have the pleasure of meeting another Albanian adoptive family "for real"!  I met Janice on a Bethany forum over six years ago, before we brought Ellie home!  Thankfully she saw here on the blog that we were coming to her town and e-mailed to see if we'd have time for a visit!  We were so glad we did!  I've said this before, but the experience of adoption makes you do things you never thought you'd do before... like invite internet friends to visit your home, and vice versa. :-)

The Albanian adoption community is quite small, so it's always nice to meet someone else who has traveled the same journey, and in this case, now have the pleasure to have met in person.  We had lots and lots to talk about, and before we knew it, we had to be on the road again.  Maybe someday we'll see them again in Albania!  Their daughter "N" would like to return, she says, and we hope she does!  She said the sweetest thing as we were leaving, "Whenever I meet other kids from Albania, I feel like I'm meeting brothers and sisters." 

We are so blessed by the friendships we have made through our journey of adoption -- I really don't know how to explain it, but we are really grateful.  Stay tuned -- if all goes as planned, we are going to meet another Albanian adoptive family 'for real' before this trip is over!

"Heads" Carolina...

It's been a great trip so far (not without its share of excitement) and we have been so, so blessed by our visits along the way.  We have some pretty amazing friends and want to brag on them a bit here while we share snapshots from the past few days.  

I'm kinda hooked on Instagram and love that I can snap photos and share these moments pretty much as soon as they happen.  The square pics have been swiped from my feed (you can find a link to my profile on the right if you want to follow along). A few other photos are sprinkled in between.

Below ... Nathan's been amazing steering our vehicle up and down and through mountains.  I love this pic for the sight of the lovely 1980s dash board outfitted with a satellite radio, GPS, and back-up cam.

Not far from home we crossed historic Route 66 and the famous Dixie truck stop...

Tuesday night we stopped over in Winchester (KY) at the home of our friends Kevin and Amy (far left) Crump. Nathan and some of his friends hung out a lot with Amy and Susan's (middle) hall in college.  I had a lot of classes with Amy in the business department, as well as served in class cabinet leadership with her.  I'm pretty sure I had classes with Susan too but my memory is terrible. Somehow our circles overlapped in college too (did we go to DC together, Susan?)  All that to say, we have lots of memories together from college and at reunions the group of us find ourselves staying up to the wee hours of the morning sharing stories and laughing til we cry. Everyone needs friends like that.

Amy fixed a fantastic supper and invited some friends from church to join us.  We had a great time, stayed up way too late (for a week night), and enjoyed every minute of it.  (As evidenced by my utter lack of photographs aside from the one below).

Kevin picked up a box of toys at a garage sale and found the gem below which he gave to the kids.  I took this photo at a state park where we pulled off the Cumberland Parkway for a lunch and school stop.

Reni saw the limb below with the descending icicles and declared, "It looks like a toothbrush!"

A great benefit to traveling "RV style" is a portable fridge.  I cleaned out the fridge at the farm house and transferred a container of frozen homemade soup (made by my Grandpa Van).  Firing up the gas stove top we had a hot (free) lunch in the quiet of nature!

Wednesday evening we arrived in Boone, NC.  This was my first visit to Boone and I'd love to return!  We were invited by our friends Arthur and Hanna.  Arthur and Hanna used to work for WGM in the Marion office before Arthur took a position as a senior producer at Samartan's Purse.  The two are SO creative, I wish I had just an ounce of their talent.  Not only is Hanna a talented actress, but she's using season at home with their young children to create some amazing items (check out her hats here).  Arthur has a gift for producing gorgeous films that really touch your heart (check out Three Hearts here).  He gave us an advance copy of their adoption video which has been picked up by a distributor and I'm anxious to view!  We learned that some of you readers here helped their adoption fund (THANK YOU!) so we'll be sure to share how you can view it when it's available.

Beautiful J...

Reni had two 'girlfriends' in the Rasco girls.

The whole crew...

We went to church on Wednesday evening and shared with the Rasco's small group and our kids got to experience AWANA. It was a joy to meet their friends.  They were very encouraging and we could see why their small group is one of the many reasons why they love their home in Boone.

The next morning we met Arthur at work where he gave us a tour of the Samaritan's Purse offices and  the famous Operation Christmas Child warehouse.

Afterwards we met up with Hanna and the kids at the SP cafeteria.  Arthur boasted that they had the best lunch in town and he wasn't exaggerating!  It was a great way to cap off our time in Boone with the Rascos!

From Boone, we drove south to Morganton to see our friends, the DiMartinos.  Ricky and Aiden traveled with us twice to Hungary to serve at English camp, and Aidan was also a former cabinet member at the student center before graduating nearly 7 years ago.  What a joy to be in their home and see their lives together as a family!

We felt immediately at home, refreshed and blessed by our time with this sweet family. After putting the kids to bed, they taught us a fun game called Ticket to Ride.  Before we even finished I was looking it up on Amazon -- there is a "Europe" version that I think will be great for game night in the village!  They prayed for us before left this morning and off we left, hoping to beat the ice to our next stop:Cary!

Ellie loved little M.  I couldn't believe how taken she was with him!

Thank you, thank you for praying us along on this journey!  We have felt your prayers and rely on them!  Special thanks to our friends who have hosted us!  You don't know what an encouragement you are to our hearts.  Sincerely.  We love you!

Back in the Saddle

After a break for Christmas, we feel like we are getting back into our missionary candidate role, going out and seeing old friends, meeting new faces, and sharing our testimony!  Sunday morning we visited a wonderful little church near Metamora called Cazenovia Mennonite.

 

 

You may remember us sharing about our friends, Joe and Judy, who helped us tremendously by moving our belongings from Kentucky to Illinois for us last July.  This is their home church, and what a lovely group of people!  After giving us their Sunday morning service, they came around us to pray, then served us a delicious Sunday lunch!  It's amazing what acts of kindness like that do to encourage our hearts as we traverse this journey to Albania.

 

Yesterday we kept this baby (below) fed and humming.  As most of you are aware (or experiencing yourself), the Midwest was hit with a regular Arctic blast.

 



 

This winter Mom and Dad installed a pellet stove in the farm house, and oh what a blessing it's been!  Several years of "town living" softened this ol' farm girl to where she forgot the joys of living in a drafty, uninsulated farm house with cold floors. Enter the pellet stove, the lazy man's way to experience true wood heat without the work and mess of carrying in armloads of fire wood. All you do is dump a bag of pellets (or corn kernels) into the hopper, flip a switch, and watch her light! I consider the occasional chill to be good conditioning for next winter, though I'm afraid this isn't helping my fire-starting skills. :-)

 

 

This cold weather came just in time to remind us why we're headed south for our next set of visits. :-) It wasn't fun packing the RV when the temps were in the single digits (with a brisk wind added, to boot).

 

 

I was extra grateful for my husband who risked his digits in the freezing temps to get the RV ready for her next road trip.  We are now making our way down to Kentucky -- spending the night tonight with some dear friends and their children, then from there we're headed to North Carolina!

 

 

 

 

Thank you for your prayers as we travel many miles.  The kids are in great spirits and so far we are good and healthy!  I wish I could say as much about the RV.  After getting her in the shop again, the pesky squeal of a belt under the hood has returned and is an ever present stresser, leaving us wondering if the alternator is charging the battery.  If I want to be positive, it's a constant reminder to trust in God's provision, even in this!

100% Ellie

Our daughter Ellie is one of a kind.  If you've met her, you know what we mean.  Her imagination leaves us speechless (she is either going to be an author, a screen writer, video game designer, or something in the creative arts).  For waiting until she was nearly three years old to speak, she is now rarely at a loss for words. Ever asking us questions, she is constantly absorbing information and experiences and storing it away in her steel-trap of a mind. We usually marvel at the words she knows, frequently (and appropriately) utilizing phrases she's picked up along the way. Added to that, she doesn't know a stranger.  I love that she's at ease with so many people and helps even the most child-reticent soul feel like he has a knack with kids. It all results in some interesting and often humorous bits of conversation delivered throughout the day by an extraordinarily vibrant little girl.  

While most of the world uses Twitter to share news stories, personal opinion, or links to helpful articles, I primarily use my account to record the funny things our children say.  Until October (when Twitter and Google supposedly went to war), a visitor to our blog could also read our most recent tweets.  Since I no longer can post that feed (which, if you know a way to get it working again, I'm all ears), I thought I'd share some of the funny things that have come forth from the mouth of our Els...

Ellie Quotes

"You know how a cow has three stomachs? I think I have three stomachs today!" Asking for a refill of her cereal refill.


Searching for cereal, Ellie grabs a box of Corn Flakes in joy, only to set it back down w/disappointment. "It's CHICKEN food!   [you know, because of the big rooster on the front of the box]


Ellie: This shirt has stains! I can't wear it. 
Me: we're staying home today. 
Els: You mean no balls or dance parties?
['cause #thatshowweroll]

[Upon realizing that she's due for a visit to the dentist and there's nothing she can do to prevent it ...in the spirit of "An apple a day keeps the doctor away..."]

"Doctors are stopped by apples and fruit, but dentists are tough! Nothing keeps them away!"

"Let's trap some frog and fire up the BBQ!" #elliequote 
Perhaps we've been watching a tad too much #DuckDynasty?

 "I wish it was spring..." #elliequote after making an emergency potty stop on a back country road in subzero temps.



"This is the worst Christmas ever... it'll never come!"#impatient



Me:What should we buy Daddy for Christmas? 
#elliequote: New, fast internet #countryliving #mykidisageek



#elliequote (after viewing an ad for a diet pill) "Does it take a long time to become UN-fat?"

[Considering the fact that being a grown-up may not be all it's cracked up to be...]
"Is "boring" {stuff} 'fun" for grown ups?" #elliequote #shopping

"I don't like goodbyes! My heart hurts! My brain hurts! My LUNGS hurt!" #elliequote

We saw some military personnel just now. Ellie asks, "Do they defeat GIANTS???"

"Reni keeps yelling out my eardrums!" #boysmakenoise

 I'm hibernating. I'll come out and do school in the spring!! http://instagr.am/p/Q-dhB5Mrxr/ 

Sneaking into her old home, Ellie a gives tour to her friends, "Don't you like what I've done to the place? Isn't it  beautiful?" Pointing to @jonboy017 's dog Pixie, "This is Spike and the cat is 'Doggie.'"



Leaving Lexington, KY church today Ellie said, "I felt a little homesick."
[Yeah, we did too, Els.]

_____________________________________

These are just a few of the funny things that proceed from the mouth of Ellie Waggoner since October.  I'm sure she LOVES it that her mom has shared them with the world.  We're just proud of the special, special girl that God gave us in her!  In her ever-appropriate way of speaking, she was the missing puzzle piece!

P.S.  Friends and family, if you have a favorite Ellie quote, feel free to share it in the comments below!

The Missionary Travel Agent

In all my interactions with my missionary friends, I never recalled any of them sharing about the exhausting mental exercise of scheduling homeland ministry visits (maybe the second go 'round is easier?).  The picture above doesn't do justice to the process of scouring address lists, reconciling availability, looking up contact info, and figuring out logistics for an agenda that tries to steward our limited resources of time and finances.  But please don't think I'm complaining.  I actually kind of relish the challenge and find a peculiar satisfaction in seeing it all come together! 

The process has actually reminded me a lot of my first job out of college when I worked for our local congressman.  For fifteen months I worked the front office (which is code for 'receptionist') in 329 Canon House Office Building, (though my business card sounded much more official with the title "constituent services representative").  When I wasn't answering telephones or divvying up the boxes of mail that arrived twice daily, I arranged special, reserved tours of Washington's top federal attractions for constituents of our district. 

I absolutely loved the city of Washington D.C. from my very first Gray Line Bus Tour over freshmen year spring break with my suite-mate, Jenni, and her Mom.  After several more visits and eventually moving there, I delved deeper into the city's sites and discovered that there were even more treasures and history around every corner with enough to do something different (and usually free or very cheap) every weekend to last me years. Connecting visitors to our nation's treasure trove of sites was a whole lot of fun and I couldn't believe it was my job!

The challenge I had was to balance a limited number of tickets per site (e.g. we only got 10 congressional tour tickets per week for the White H*use with requests for as many as 10-15 times that many during the busiest weeks of the summer), the days of the week that these reserved tours were offered (at some places, only 1 or 2 days per week) with the constituents' availability (e.g. in town on a Friday/Sat/Sun) and their priority list (they could rank the order of which sites were most important to them to see, and it seemed that everyone had the same top three favorite sites). My goal was to create a little travel itinerary for our guests that hit as many of their requests as possible, throwing in a few recommendations here or there for a good place to eat or shop and directions for which Metro lines to use to reach their destination. 

While most of the time it was a very fulfilling task, there were other times when I knew I was going to have to disappoint a lot of people simply because the supply of tour slots was no where sufficient to meet the seasonal demand. This was particularly stressful when the requests were coming from members of the congressman's extended family, local officials, or even family friends and I had already given away all of the tickets at my disposal!  (For serving a district more than 800 miles from D.C., we sure seemed to have a lot of visitors!!!)  But regardless of who was visiting, friend or bigwig or total stranger, I wanted to please. 

That's when it was handy to know the staffer down the hall from Sonny B*no's office. Representing a district in California, they didn't have nearly as many constituent visitors as us and he was usually good for a handful of extra tickets when our supply was short. It was also nice to have cultivated a relationship with the tour coordinator at the Treasury who would sometimes allow me to squeeze a couple of extra heads on a tour every now and then.  And when those favors were all used up, I would draw from my personal travel experiences and recommend a few obscure-but-none-the-less fascinating sites not listed on the official tour request form.  Most of the time, they were places our constituents didn't even know existed, but would later write me to say it was their favorite tour of all. And when all else failed, I would give a private guided tour of the Capitol building (which I got to give after taking a little class from Architect of the Capitol), taking guests through the underground tunnels and down on the floor of the House and Senate.  So while I wasn't doing something as significant perhaps as crafting public policy, if you wanted to get a tour of the White House or the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, you had to go through ME! ;-) 

In this position today, we are playing the role of constituent!  There are people we want to see and a message that we want to share, but how do we get access to the places we want to visit? And when we do, how do we reconcile our schedules and prioritize where we go in the limited time we have? 

Particularly helpful in this task are the friends who have acted as our "constituent services representative" and said, "Hey!  I've talked to our missions pastor and arranged for you to share with our small group, if you're available."  Those generous friends definitely help make our visits even more valuable, giving us 'behind the scenes' access'!  It's like we're getting the VIP tour instead of driving by and looking at the building from the window of a moving tour bus. 

I also understand that there are times and places where there is limited availability -- some churches are very missions saturated.  And that's okay because we're seeing that we are making some of our more meaningful connections in small groups and small churches.  Places where we meet brothers and sisters in Christ with a genuine interest in becoming more missions active and learning more about God's work in our own little obscure corner of the world, Albania. 

Definitely the process is full of the unexpected, like Thursday when I get an e-mail out of the blue from someone who read our calendar and saw that we were going to be in her town and could we get together? Yay! I didn't have her address so we had missed her on our initial zip code query. Thankfully, with only a few weeks' lead time, their schedule was able to jive with ours and we are going to meet in person for the first time!

Bit by bit our itinerary for our big trip south has started to take shape.  I'm okay with the fact that we're not going to "hit all the sites" (e.g. speak in a church each and every time the doors are open).  In some places, we're getting a basic introduction to a place we've never visited before, making contacts that might lead to future relationships.  In other places, we're getting the "VIP tour."  In both cases, we've prayed over our schedule and committed it to the Lord, doing our part to schedule what we can, but also be available, trusting in his divine appointments.

RIGHT NOW we are working our our spring schedule!  We are going to be in the States of Pennsylvania, NJ, VA, MD, NY, VT, and Maine!  PLEASE e-mail me if you would like to see us while we traverse through your state! You would make our day!