The Odyssey - Part 2

When we left Nauvoo our trusty old Odyssey was acting funny. The engine was kind of misfiring and jerking around. It was Saturday and our location was remote. We drove through one decent-sized town and tried to find a mechanic, but there were only two there--both closed. We felt our options were either to find somewhere to stay until Monday and miss out on visiting our friends in North Platte or redouble our prayers and press on. We chose the latter.

Mercifully we made it to our destination without incident and double mercifully our friends had a good friend who was a mechanic who was awesome because he used some fancy equipment to determine it was a faulty ignition coil and replaced it for us in five minutes. (runonsentence)

Anyway, the reason we love North Platte is because that's where we found the Dailys, some of our favorite friends from college. All the years we lived in married student housing the Dailys were our next door neighbors. How many hours did we spend chatting it up on the balconies? How many calories did we consume of Jeanne's awesome cooking? The best thing about hooking up with old friends is finding that they have not changed. Don't you love those pick-up-right-where-you-left-off-ten-years-ago relationships?

Biggest North Platte regret: no photos of Jeanne and Jared! How did we miss that opportunity? Luckily, we got plenty of our kids all together. Both of our families have five kids who match up in girl-boy-boy-girl-girl birth order. Besties from the get-go, every one of them.

No one could settle for a smiley photo without a silly one to match. Except the first-borns--they're mature like that.

It was fun to go to church with the Dailys (just like the old days!) and we even got to fill in and teach the 11-12 year old Sunday School (guess when was the last time we taught together at church? yup, back when we lived next door to the Dailys). We stayed only two nights and one day before taking our new ignition coil and heading further west. All ten kids begged and pleaded to stay longer, but we had miles and miles of mid-west left to drive through.

Next stop: Utah.