This is my story:
Dear family,
What a fun trip we had together! As I write this, I am aware that most of the family is still enjoying vacation time. Perhaps Aaron and Matt are doing hundreds of sit-ups in an effort to out-do one another. I can just hear them wincing, then screaming in pain... oh the competitive nature in our family hurts. I believe we all got this competitive nature from our dear parents. Yes, that same mellow couple who were described by Stu as "Ward and June Cleaver". They still show it every once in a while. For the most part, however, they enjoy life very calmly. I enjoyed many hours with Mom and Dad on the road this past week. We began with typical Hammond timing. Our scheduled departure from home was 9am. We finally left at 11:30am. We stopped by Sam's Club on the way out to pick-up a new member of the family: the Garmin GPS system. We figured out that it can speak in Dutch, Spanish, American English, British English, and Australian English. There were many other languages that we didn't try that were probably very interesting as well. Dutch was Dad's idea. This was a good idea until we realized we understood it about as well as he did, "they said something about a turn". Spanish was fun for a moment but still left our fearless driver in confusion. Next we turned to Emily the British woman. I have always fancied girls with British accents, but Emily had a temper which would not do with people as lost as us. She was notably dismayed when we made a wrong turn and so we switched to our Australian gentleman, Lee. Lee was an instant favorite for Mom who mentioned he was like Hugh Jackman (while Dad thought he was more like Crocodile Dundee). So we all continued along the road with Lee. We set Las Vegas as the destination and continued along. When we arrived in Las Vegas, we found that Lee was leading us to the strip. Dad grew very conflicted because he wanted to follow Lee, but he didn't want to end up in the strip! So he finally drove the opposite direction Lee had told him and Lee sounded dejected as he said, "recalculating". This happened a few more times, but the best was just before we stopped for dinner. Dad decided that there were not really any good options for food so he went down this street towards the Wendy's restaurant. Yes, we went to Las Vegas and stopped for dinner at Wendy's...scrapbook moment. So just before he pulled in at Wendy's, Lee wanted him to turn right on a street to continue on to California. Dad started slowing down as if he was about to turn, then resisted and continued on to Wendy's. We were proud that he had been firm with Lee. So the destination that night was Victorville. Yes, it is a real place, yes, people know about it...in fact, there was an IHOP and a Denny's! We stayed that night in the Day's Inn Motel. It was a nice place where we got a deal! We settled down for the night and Mom and I were almost asleep when Aaron called...every phone we had. Apparently Zoe was lonely...that's why he called...at 11pm. So since he had called all our phones, Dad determined that they should be turned off so they wouldn't disturb us as we slept. So he turned mine off. Then he couldn't find Mom's phone so he turned my phone back on and used it as a flashlight to find and dismantle Mom's phone. The best part of this story was seeing Dad's satisfaction at his clever move. The close association with the phones hadn't helped him notice that the time zone was different, however, and he proceeded to get up at "6:40am". It was really 5:40am and he went out to the car to get something and then locked the car...twice so that it honked waking us up...at 5:40am. We had a good laugh and went back to sleep. When we finally left and went to breakfast at Denny's, I asked Dad to try some new lingo to make the trip interesting. I told him that the missionaries in my MTC district from Wyoming would say, "I'm going to see a man about a horse" when they excused themselves to use the restroom. I told Dad he should try it, to which he responded..."I'm going to go use the restroom." I was dismayed. Dad returned a few minutes later and said, "I just bought some horses". It was a good start to the day. We all got along well with Lee and soon picked up Heather, continued on to the beach house, and relaxed. More to come later...
Well that's the news from the Potomac River, where all the women are working, all the men are good dressers, and all the kids are in daycare.
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