Amazing Send-off, Eventful Road-trip

We left Ithaca almost two weeks ago to come to New Mexico for a while.  Prior to leaving town we had some awesome times with our friends and our students at Cornell. 

Ned LaCelle with our kids 

Anna-Kate and Lucy Sheehan with Jack

After our Fall retreat the Sheehan family stayed with us for a day.  Their kids and ours had so much fun, Jack busted his teeth out!  They were apparently ready to come out, though in fact they weren’t actually loose yet.  Nothing brings excitement to a cup of morning coffee with friends like a kid walking up to you with blood dripping from his mouth looking bewildered and saying “uh oh.” 

Sam Ramsey got to be there for the family memory too.

 That Tuesday night we filled our home with students for a time of celebration.  We gathered in our living room to spend time praying and singing and thanking God for all that He has done in our midst throughout the first 6 weeks of school.  We also feasted on desserts and hung out til late in the night.

One Cornell Cru tradition is called “caking.”  I don’t know where it started, and I don’t claim any responsibility for it’s continuation, but it involves smashing cake on a person’s face on their Birthday.  It’s something the students do to each other, and it’s typically pretty entertaining.  It’s always a “surprise,” and the planning and execution of it are always eventful.  The students have never caked me……until now.  My birthday fell during fall break, but that afternoon a bunch of students came over to hang out and help us pack up some boxes.  By evening time we were eating some Pizza, and Jorge came up behind me with some cheesecake for my face!  Jack loved the whole idea and so he joined in as well.

We planned on leaving the next day, but it took a little longer to get say goodbye to people, get organized and pack the trailer.   Friends came by to lend a hand and hang out.  People graciously gave us cards full of encouragement and prayed with us.  Some even blessed us with gas money, which was very, very helpful.   Adam and Nic came over and we loaded our trailer and helped me get everything lashed down and ready to go.  It seemed good…but the only problem was how heavy it was. 

The next day we got a late start; around noon we hit the road.   But our minivan was not happy about pulling that trailer.  Our suspension was bottomed out and we were creeping down the road shaking and straining our transmission.  We made it to Elmira, NY which is about an hour down the road.  We ate lunch, and then after brainstorming different possibilities, we finally resigned to the fact that this was not going to work!   We were going to have to bring my truck.   Steph compared our van trying to pull that trailer to a dying bumblebee who’s just stung someone.   We drove back to Ithaca, quickly tossed everything from the trailer into my truck and took off in caravan.   We only made it to Jamestown, NY.

The next morning, we got up and drove to Erie, PA.  But we barely made it because the truck started freaking out!  We had to have it towed to a shop and we ended up wasting the whole day waiting for it to get fixed.   All in all the trip was starting out terribly!  Thankfully it wasn’t too expensive and we only needed the distributor to be adjusted.  So, that night, we made it to Cleveland.

After that, things went pretty smooth.  We were bummed to have to drive across the country in separate cars, but we switched the kids around, fired up the ol’ walkie talkies and it all turned out o.k.  And, it’s actually pretty handy to have both our vehicles here in Santa Fe right now. 

We made a lunch stop in Kearney, NE at Luke & Jakes BBQ with some friends and then spent a couple of nights with family in Colorado before we came down here to NM.