Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone,

We are sending you our best wishes from Phoenix, Arizona, where we are spending Christmas with family. We hope that you too are enjoying this time with your family.

One of our Christmas traditions is to have a cheese fondue for Christmas Eve dinner. Being invited tonight we had it last night...we are flexible! Our first fondue in the bus! The children Grandparents and Great Grandma were there too. It was all tight, warm and cosy in here.

(Unfortunately our camera is not working so we do not have pictures to show you. Hope it gets fixed very soon.)

Another tradition that we did back in Switzerland every Christmas, when I was a kid, was to say a poem or sing a song holding a candle in front of the Christmas tree before we could open the presents. My children are now doing the same. They have been practicing their song ( Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, I think!). They are so excited, that Christmas is tomorrow, that Ben is jumping and bouncing all over the bus instead of walking!

What are your Christmas traditions?

May Santa make all your wishes come true.

Joyeux Noel

Sylviane

After San Diego

After leaving San Diego we stopped in Indio, CA, close to Palm Spring, for a few days to visit with Gene and Shirley who were our neighbors in Modesto. They will spend the winter over there. They told us about the area and the places no to miss so we didn’t waste anytime and went to visit The living desert. Loved it! Thanks for the great tips…
During that time we also did some shopping, stocked up on food to prepare for our Quartzsite adventure since we had no idea what we would be finding over there.

Well, we’ve been in Quartzsite now since Tuesday 9th…the weather has been changing everyday. First we had a beautiful warm sunny day, the next one was overcast and cold with showers, the third one was sunny but so windy it shook the bus so much we thought we were sailing on the ocean, now they are calling for rain and wind for the next couple days.

Bill is getting a lot of projects done here. Being parked in the middle of the desert allows us to be noisy and to spread out which is perfect for working on the bus. Today I painted some wooden containers to store office and craft supplies which will eliminate some boxes of paper that we still have here and there around the bus and give the kids more room to store their legos in their room. I’m also, STILL working on the advent calendar…sometimes I wished I had bought one already made at Target! It is taking a veeeeery long time. I have to confess that I used the pocket #8 until yesterday just adding a post-it to change the number. The kids would get up, see the little piece of paper and say with a reproaching tone: “Mom, you did it again!” Anyway, I’m caught up now until the 16th. Yoohoo, I can rest my fingers for a couple of days.

It is our first boondocking experience, not being plugged to city water or electricity. We are now on conservative mode…quick showers and no extra lights turned on. Bill built this bus with wild camping in mind so we have more fresh water and tankage capacity than most motorhome. We are hoping to last two weeks before we have to go back to civilisation to fill up with water, propane and dump the tanks. We'll find out!

We are loving it here! The children can run free exploring the mountains near by and mine for precious rocks with pick and shovels. So far they've found lots of quartz, some turquoise rocks and the skin of a snake. Lots of great adventures!

Sylviane

The gingerbread house

Ben and I built a gingerbread house (with a kit from Trader Joe's...so far the easiest and nicest we've tried. I recommend it! Syl.).

I didn't really like eating the gingerbread house except for the frosting! It was fun!

Eva

The living desert

When we were in Indio, at the beginning of the week, we went to the living desert. It was very cool. We saw all kinds of animals who live in the desert. We also saw poison dart frogs, a mountain lion, coyotes, owls, foxes , road runners, and other animals. We had lots of fun. We even got to play on African drums.

Ben

"les merveilles"

I just had a WONDERFUL thought as I was cooking some semolina for my diner (it's like cream of wheat but better. When I was a kid my mom use to make it often for our diner! She cooked it with milk, sugar and raisins...so good!) which reminded me of something else very yummy from my childhood......les merveilles! Merveilles is a very thin, crispy cookie, as big as a plate, coverd with powdered sugar. It is deep fried and delicious. Anyway, I've been dreaming of eating "merveilles" for about ten years now, especially the ones that you buy at the "migros"(a chain of swiss grocery stores)...they have the best ones... and just haven't been able to have any, not even a crumb. It is a treat that you can find only around February-March, for "Mardi-gras", which makes it more difficult. I haven't been back to Switzerland at the right time of year or too fragile for my parents to bring when they come over or I've forgotten to ask my mom to save me some until I would get there (usually in April)....a tragedy! But, (here comes the wonderful thought) next year we are going to Switzerland in March!....YES, after ten years I will finally be able to eat some "merveilles"!

I just had to share this wonderful, exciting thought....thanks for reading

Sylviane

Sylviane went to the Homeland Security Office (INS) for her Test/Interview today

We had a list of questions that may be on the test to study from and Sylviane knew all of the answers.

I didn’t know all of the answers to begin with but I read the questions to her to help her study so I learned a few things too. I am still not sure I could name the 13 original Colonies but I do know the 4 amendments that guarantee or address voting rights.

Sylviane did great on the test, of course, but there was one question that stumbled her up just a little bit.

She wasn’t real quick to answer the question "what is your address". lol

We should find out in 4 to 6 weeks when she is scheduled to take the Oath and the ceremony to become a citizen. I have heard it is a nice ceremony.

This is a special day!

Bill

a couple of updates..

We got home from my Mom’s house Saturday to realize a live band was playing here at the campground. It was late but Eva (and to a smaller degree Ben too) really wanted to go check out the band. Eva and Sylviane danced the whole time they played. I started to dance but half way through the second song I looked down and remembered I had white socks on with flip flops…. Certainly not the cool fashion statement, I left the floor. I did finally take off my socks and rejoined the ladies for a few more songs.

Yesterday Sylviane took the kids to walk at Poway Lake, she went with Marie Laure and her family. I mostly goofed off yesterday but I did modify the plumbing so we can use the City water. Up to this point I had to fill the fresh water tanks and use our bus water pump to serve our needs. It’s nice not hearing the pump anymore and even nicer not to worry about the tank running dry. With the clothes washer we go through quite a bit of water.

Today we moved the bus again to our third spot here at the campground. We went ahead and drove over to the boat ramp area and gave her a bath while we could. I did notice one of the bus batteries is shot so I need to get that replaced by the time we take off at the end of this week.

Oh, I don’t think I mentioned that I got a couple more hoop nets before Ben and I went out last week. Now each of us has one. We had a great time pulling up the hoop nets. We launched at La Jolla shores, there is an area of the beach that is set aside for launching kayaks and small boats. Out in the open ocean waters of the Pacific! Very cool. We had no wind so I rowed for 30 minutes to get out to the kelp beds. No worries, I need the exercise. We had some nice warm barley soup that Sylviane put in a thermos for us, it was so nice to have in the cool night. We were too busy though to eat it all. As soon as I pulled up one hoop net I just had time to row to the next to see what was in that one. All the bugs were short but what a great night. The sunset was awesome (see the pic above). There was a seal that swam close and checked us out quite a bit. Two of the hoop nets had the bait stolen and I think it was this seal. I taught Ben how to use the shore lights to mark the location of the traps. Actually it’s pretty hard to find them in the darkness even though we had a flashlight. We looked toward La Jolla shores (East) and lined up a light near the beach with a light up on the hill, this gave us one line. Then we looked south to the city of La Jolla and lined up the close street light with lights on the building several blocks away, this gave us our second line and the fix we needed to get back to our hoop nets there. We also had two nets in a different spot but it was near a big permanent buoy that was easy to find.

Ben wrapped up in a blanket on the way from the kelp beds back to the beach, it was cold and we were tired but we had a fun and memorable evening.

Bill

December

December is here... This morning the children opened the first pocket of their advent calendar and they each got a little kit to make a necklace with wooden beads. Ben decided to give it to a special person for Christmas! They are so excited about the calendar. They always try to find out what will be in the pocket the next day. I do not fill it up in advance! This year I decided to make a new one out of burlap fabric, wool felt and coconut buttons, all natural fibers. It is taking much longer than I thought. So far I have #1 and #2 completely done and half done through #4. I hope that the days will not catch up with me!

A complete change of subject....
Last September I sent in my request to become an American citizen. After finger printing and background checking, they decided that I was okay. I have an appointment on Thursday for an interview where they will be testing my english and my knowledge on American history and politics (the very basics)....I will still not be able to talk politics!
I'll keep you posted...

Sylviane