It has been SO beautiful here. Like 74 degree days and cool nights, at least in the bus, and I have been spending alot of time with our windows wide open. The mosquito-eaters have been making the bus their home also and it’s annoying since there’s not a big home for them to fly away into another room so I don’t see them again. No, they are all in the same room as me, flittering around with those long legs and fizzy wings. And I still see mosquitoes because no, mosquito eaters actually aren’t useful at all and are known as crane flies that eat nectar. So really just taking up valuable bus space for no reason. But it’s worth it to have all that cool fresh air.

We went to Mackay, ID, to visit Madison over Easter. We had such a fun time. Uncle Deans, Cousin Lance, Grandpa Petes and Uncle Jeffs were all there as well and we spent three happy days eating and hanging out at Uncle Mikes with all of them. Madison and us and Mom spent one morning by ourselves. We drove into the mountains and along a river until we came to the hot springs. The spring runs under the road and pools in the river so you sit in the river but its very toasty if you can find the right spots. If not, you will end up with a scalded bum and freezing feet so after trial and error, we found spots and spend a while sitting in the hot river pots surrounded by mountains. I loved it. We ate sandwiches for lunch and pondered my family’s strange holiday dinner places: Christmas dinner under El Capitan in Yosemite, Easter lunch in the Sawtooth Mountain hot springs, New Years in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We wouldn’t trade them for all the amounts of traditional roast and mashed potatoes in the world.

Last week we spent evenings helping Mom at school for Open House. The school did the history of California with focus on different nationalities or events that helped shape California. Mom was in charge of the Gold Rush and given a random group of kids so that’s what we worked on. Dan helped Morgan make store fronts and the kids did awesome with each of the parts they acted out. We had the boys mining in the river and they had used the old dirt pile to dig a trench down. Then they filled it with rocks and gold stones and their job was to pan for gold in the stream while the water ran down, powered by a garden hose, not from the Gold Rush era. It was pretty cool. Then there were girls working in the bakery and doing laundry on washboards, a banker in a suit weighing gold in Wells Fargo, Levi Strauss measuring denim, and the Ghirardelli chocolate factory. Some of the other groups represented the Sikhs, the Mexicans, the Mennonites, the Japanese, Spanish Missions, the Portuguese, and the railroad.

So our exciting news is this: Morgan has wanted to teach school for a few years now, and it seemed like the time to do that so he put his name in the teacher bank and made a few calls… and so we are going to be leaving California and making our new home in Enderby, British Columbia, Canada, not toooo far from the Washington border on Canada’s west coast. Morgan is going to teach grades 8 and 9 and I am going to be teaching too! We are SO excited to move somewhere else and make a new home and meet new friends. I am in denial about leaving our people here so I just don’t think about it at this point. We are going to take our bus, (see schedule below) but not necessarily live in it in Emderby while we teach. We think it would be more hassle and stress to worry about winterizing and the cold and water and all. We would like to park it and keep it as an AirBnb while we are there but who knows.

Since we have a deadline, we have our to-do list made and it’s extensive. And expensive. Currently Eli is working on our back and top decks, while Morgan is getting the roof ready to paint this week before Eli gets the decks on. Friday, Morgan spent part of the day at the DMV working on the bus title and transferring it to a motor home. We have to get it inspected this week at the DMV and then hopefully, they’ll send off for our license plates! We want to have the bus pretty much ready to go asap so we can take it on a couple beach runs before any long haul trips.

We plan to leave after the Jantz reunion here in California that’s the first of July, and drive the bus out to Copeland to visit Grandma Jul and our other people there. We have a few stops planned on the way there. Then we’ll drive out to Central KS and see my “families” and then hopefully on to Michigan to spend a few weeks with Dillon’s and Mom and Madison. Yay! From there we will see, but most likely across Manitoba, Sask, and Alberta with stops at all the places, and then into Enderby. We are going to be SUPER flexible with our travel plans because it’s a bus so who knows? Maybe it will go all the way and maybe it will have to be helped.

I’m working as a nanny a couple days a week which I’m really loving. I’m so bummed I will have to give up my sweet kiddos in July. Anyways that’s part of my week’s agenda this week. We are getting our vaccines Tuesday, eye appointments Saturday, and some evening I HAVE to make butter chicken and naan bread for supper because it sounds delicious right now. In between, Mom and I are going through our school theme boxes organizing for next year and both of us are getting ready to start packing. I have a feeling its going to be hectic until school starts!

Wishing you a happy week friends♡