Well, I did it again, every time I try to post more often - crazy stuff happens to me. Like a random family roadtrip the week before my birthday that ended in a very full lap and drool stained jacket all the way home... Her name is Olivia.
But she wasn't all...
We recovered some very intangible things on that trip. The only time we spent outside the car over those two days were for food and sleep. Jeremy was Navigator in the shotgun seat which forced Lauren and I to sit together in the back.
I'm pretty sure it's been years since we all spent so much uninterrupted time together. None of us had phone service up north so there was not a phone call or a text message for quite nearly an entire forty-eight hours. It reminded me of a long time ago when I was a kid and going somewhere other than your house was an escape from just about everyone who could contact you, unless they knew where you were going and had the number for that place. When you had to check messages right when you got home... just in case. And when my Dad's way of communicating with the guys he worked with was a big black walkie-talkie... Ah, those were the days.
I guess that was all just a long way of saying that there was a point on this trip when I realised that we were talking. All of us. Together. Without arguing. And without multitasking.
We were all being amazed at the beauty of the alien landscape outside the weight of the city we have been individually confined to for so long.
We were all sort of "This... is Arizona? ....Really...?" And we got some incredible pictures. And some coffee in a little coffeeshop in Williams. And McDonalds for breakfast in the car for the first time in a really really really really really long time. And we finally got away from that point that comes every once in a while when everyone is just tired, and you can feel yourselves coming apart because the glue is just getting old.
And we've been a family again since.
