Springtime in AZ! (pt.7)

Seven is the number of completeness and perfection, and thus we close this saga of Springtime in AZ with a final gallery of pics from our last afternoon and evening.  Geneva had not gotten to do much of the driving earlier with the boys, so I took her out for some practice after shooting, while Paul took the boys on a short hike to Petroglyph mountain.  Of course we had to stop by the digger.  Megan LOVES big machinery, and I think driving a digger would be her dream job.  Poor Geneva could not reach the ladder to climb up, and was relegated to wandering around its immensity on the ground.

I always wish I could freeze every frame of a sunset – it doesn’t seem fair to miss even a moment of that magic.  What a shocking afront to my artistic and poetical sensibilities, then, when Paul tried to photobombed my sunset pic!  (Sniff!)  Kids around the campfire, drawing on the bricks with burning wood, flaming their marshmallows, being their lovable goofball selves — all so memorable and worthy of thanks.

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Our one last adventure was bestowed upon us after we got on the road at 5:00 a.m..  I had the younger kids with me this time, and Paul let Megan drive the white van with Laurent and the dogs in back.  Somewhere between St. John’s and Concho, I lost them in my rearview mirror.  Moments later, my phone rang, and Megan said the van had died and I needed to come back.  So I found a turnaround spot and headed back, found them several miles behind me, did a scary three-point turn on that narrow highway between two deep ditches, and pulled in behind, half on the road, half on the tiny bit of level gravel before the ground fell away precipitously.  I could barely push my door open against the raging wind as I got out run forward to the passenger side to see what had happened, my hand clamped firmly on my head to keep my baseball cap from blowing away.  All Paul could tell me was that they had been driving along and the engine just inexplicably died.  Couldn’t start it again, there was nothing he could do.  So, with great thanksgiving that another recent road mishap had prompted him to join AAA, he called them up, and about an hour later we confirmed that a tow truck was on the way.  We loaded all the kids, both the dogs, and the luggage (all that had been packed in the bigger white van) into the tiny Windstar, and went on our way, squished to the gills.  We made it home, thanks be to God, and never were so glad to stretch our legs.  We finally heard back from the auto shop in Show Low on Friday of this week that it will be a $500 fix.  Paul and I will have to go up next weekend to pick it up, so in the meantime, we’ll have one more week of driving Laurent to school and picking her up.  May the Lord bless our remaining vehicles with long life and no mechanical difficulties for a while.