goin' out west

just after sunrise, bundled up and ready to go in the early morn.

addie lives about 15 minutes up in the mountains, so darin drove me to her house and then she and i took off on our long drive. up highway 50 through the sierra nevadas.

first stop was a weird little gas station stop called Fresh Pond, where lo and behold, we see our good friend martin! he does very dangerous work up in trees and meets his crew up there before they go climb way up into the massive pines. he is a jolly good fellow and it made my heart glad to see him as we headed up the mountain.

over the summit to tahoe...

and into the great nevada basin

lucky for us, addie's husband artie is the greatest snack packer ever. he prepared us a cooler full of healthy road trip snacks: sliced cucumber and onions, yogurts, sliced cheddar and havarti cheese. in a separate bag we had bagels (pre-sliced by art), rosemary crackers, mandarin oranges, apples, organic pretzels, avocado.

we pigged out all day!

i teased addie about her traveling "outfit" - sweat pants.

she thinks my taking "outfit" shots is kind of hilarious anyway, so i snapped some of her...

being sure to show the detail of those lovely sweat pants! this picture cracked us up every time we looked at it.

being sisters on the road is great fun. we listened to and discussed new albums (new iron&wine anyone?) and talked about everything under the sun, plus a few of our classic laugh attacks that leave us gasping and crying.

we drove the sun down in western utah,

and the sky was perfectly reflected in those crazy salt flats.

we made it just in time to meet up with matt and amy and kids at our favorite thrift store ever, the infamous DI (deseret industries) which is massive and sprawling and chock full of goodies. and they close at NINE PM. (i've sung its praises before.)

then hit up local favorite (soooo busy!) JCW's for milkshakes, veggie burgers and fries.

back at home bella demonstrated her newfound piano skills. she writes her own music on giant sheets of posterboard as you can see in the background, with song titles such as "i like fun," "the rabits" and "fun is evrewer"...she says she wants to be a singer.

then we had a mini-christmas with the gifts addie brought. the kids were soooooo excited....

so much so that in the fun of undoing packaging, a proud little jarom got over-exuberant with his pocketknife helping his baby brother open a spiderman video game. jarom had gotten the pocketknife for his birthday in november and was feeling pretty manly doing the job. addie spotted his enthusiastic cutting out of the corner of her eye and said, "jarom you're kinda freaking me out with that pocketknife..." and next thing you know, he has sliced into his own wrist. yes, wrist.

and believe me, blood was flowing.

luckily my brother matt is a jack-of-all-trades and quite knowlegeable about first aid and the perfect person to have around during a crisis. jarom was so scared, screaming through his tears..."i hope it didn't hit a vein! i don't want to die!"

it was heart wrenching but kind of cute.

i was busy hugging and sweet-talking the victim. i even got blood on my neck somehow!

a nice cold orange soda brought to you by your little sister would cheer anyone up.

jarom's wound (although it really was scary and quite deep) healed amazingly cause he is one heck of a strong little lad. on sunday he claimed the hot springs made it feel "GREAT!" i'll write about that part of our trip tomorrow. for now, after our long drive and family antics, we all went off to bed in this super cozy abode that houses this amazing offshoot family of mine, amidst gifts from ghana and new zealand, books, plants, kids, sweetest love.