California!

Yesterday I took off with the kids to drive to California to visit my mom before we take off for Down Under. The drive took us about 12 hours, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Seriously... the worst part was the first 3 hours driving to Portland. It seemed to take forever just to get there, and I knew we had a LONG way to go past Portland. But the rest of the trip went pretty quickly. Aside from the creepy guy asking me for money at a rest stop, it was a pretty uneventful trip.
This is a picture of my brother Michael. He was in the navy and got out a few months ago. He's here with my mom while he gets signed up for college and finds an apartment. So, I feel so privileged and lucky that he wanted ME to take him to Sacramento today to get signed up for his GI Bill and classes. So... Zach and I took off with Mike to Sacramento to get him all fixed up. He had to take about 3 hours worth of assessments to see which classes he needed to take, so Zach and I bummed around South Sacramento which was totally boring and very ghetto! In fact, here's a sign we saw- how fast ARE you suppose to drive here??And the funny part is the 17 MPH sign... really?? Not 15 or 20... but 17!!
So after spending all day trying to find an interesting store to shop in (the only thing we could find was Burlington Coat Factory... whooo hooo!) and making lots of U-turns... and seeing lots of Vietnamese signs on all the shops, we finally got him all set and we came home. The great part is that he will get $1770 a MONTH from the GI Bill for 3 years. That's so great.. he can go to school full time and not even work.
This morning, we got a tour of the great garden my mom has in her backyard. It's a small garden with container boxes and it's EXPLODING with veggies. My mom had two little baskets to Kenzie and Allison can go out picking veggies while we are in New Zealand. They were so excited! Here's some pictures of the girls picking the veggies this morning.

And this is Zach looking for a signal at my mom's house. He's trying to text on his phone desperately and there's a signal everyone in the neighborhood except my moms house. So he finally found a signal... on the windowsill. Poor Zach- all alone with no one to text :)

Girls are out tonight seeing Ice Age 3 with their Grandpa Ryel :) Mom and I are settling down for the night to watch So You Think You Can Dance!!