Bringing the family together

What a maneuver! What a work of art! How blessed as a family we are!

For all of our family to participate in the Taylor, Arizona Fourth of July celebration, we had to have 7 independent families in 7 individual cars/vans/suvs, leaving at 7 independently chosen times, traveling 7 possibly unique routes, all ending up at the same time at the same place. It boggles the mind.

Of course it helped that certain routes were suggested and that Uncle Leonel and Aunt Carol Ann had issued a rather open-ended invitation to feed any of the group that "happened" to drop in for a visit. I don't think they realized how open-ended we took that invitation to be. (Thank you, Leonel & Carol Ann!!) It also helped that we live in the age of cell phones and each car had at least one cell phone.

The net result was that Carolyn and I arrived in Joseph City early this afternoon for a nice visit with Leonel and Carol Ann. Then an hour or so later, Jon & Jessica arrived for a visit as well. Then, another car arrived, then three more at the same time. Leonel and Carol Ann honored their invitation and fed a delicious meal to everyone. And before the food was all gone, the last car showed up.

There was a little more visiting then all the cars reloaded and headed to the motel in Taylor which will be our headquarters for the next 2.5 days, The valiant hotel clerk efficiently handled the registration for 8 rooms and 27 people.

Everyone appeared to travel well and there were no accidents or sibling fights. Some heavy rainstorms threatened a delay but in the end nothing serious resulted.

Tonight's mission: get to sleep and be rested enough for a 5:00 am wake-up call so we can be part of the Taylor Fourth of July Parade.