Day 18

Rachel decided we should travel around to different places and write books about it. She figured we'd start with the Americas. I guess we'd go around to places where people hang out and talk to them; get their stories. Everyone has a story. Isn't it funny how conversations go. I think it was Sam that mentioned something about sometimes being in dangerous places. And I was saying everyone wants to be in a book, so everyone would talk to us and tell us their story. Then we decided that even if we were being mugged, we'd be okay if we just told the mugger we're writing a book and asked him to tell us his story. Haha!

Actually I would love to just go around together having adventures and writing books about it. Rachel has a whole series planned in her head. We might have to work on some more languages though!

We also planned to have our next writing project be making book covers for Rachel's novel. We're going to write a hook of some kind, but not quite a summary. Then an opinion, but not quite a review to go on the back. Maybe more than one. We'll also need to come up with some cover art. I'm hoping we'll take ideas from everyone's covers when we do the cover for actually publishing it. We talked over what the title should be. I think the consensus is that she should call it Becoming Sencra's Queen. We talked about "Becoming Queen" and "Becoming Queen of Sencra", but Becoming Sencra's Queen sounds more interesting or mysterious or something. Now you want to read it, don't you?

Sarah gave Sam his science test orally today. She did the book he's doing last year. She remembers every chapter when she hears us talking about it. He's not too excited about the tests, but I think it's just because of the writing. That's why I like to do them orally for now. He usually gets 100%. Today he got 97%. I don't really keep track of the grades, but for some reason they like to have them.

Here we are standing on the coast of Spain looking at Morocco.

We were looking at maps today and we were saying how we never think of Spain being right next to Africa. It seems strange that they're almost touching. We wondered if you could see one from the other, because it looks like they're barely 10 miles apart. So we looked at street view, and you can! You can see the coast of Spain from Morocco! Are you amazed by that? Did you know?

We're getting ready to take a giant field trip. We're going to see our son and his family (Wilson and his wife Kamille and baby Eliza). I finally get to meet my little granddaughter in person. She was born last month. It's over 2000 miles, and we're driving. I know, we're crazy. Jeff's got something like 18 or 19 days off, so we'll be there about 11 of those days. We can't even believe how excited we are! I'll try to blog every day while we're traveling. I'm sure there'll be plenty of learning along the way!

We were trying to figure out how to listen to library books on the long, long, long drive, but I think you need the internet to do it. We don't have any smart phones or anything, so I'm not sure if we can. I may just have to read aloud. That usually doesn't work out because we never have air conditioning that works and the wind is loud. But we're getting that fixed this weekend, so we won't expire with all those days of driving in the heat. So I guess I'll be able to be heard when I read.


The kids are out back playing badminton right now. When Jeff plays Sam, they keep that birdie in the air forever! They have this incredible rhythm. Bubby is lying in front of the sliding door watching the birdie go back and forth and crying for the kids.

See you tomorrow!