Lovin' our van!

Our stop was brief, so I have more time to write now as we drive to Wausau, WI.
This tour has been very different for us from the last one, and I think I have to give our van a lot of credit for that. I don't think I realized how crowded we were in our Rav4 with the 3 of us, all of our merchandise, instruments, cables, cooler, food bag, computers, etc., until now having cozier means to travel in. I realized this the other day when I was kneeling in the van to get something out and it hit me..."I'm kneeling right now...I actually have space to kneel inside of our van!" We hardly had room to sit in the Rav, let alone a big enough floor space to kneel! I feel like we are all in a better mood now too since we have our own space. Before there was the stress of whose seat was back too far not giving you any room, or when someone asked you to take something out of the cooler and it involved first taking everything off the cooler..balancing it on your lap...and then pulling out the piece of chocolate or whatever was wanted. Now, the cooler has easy access between the front two captains chairs, there is more than enough leg space, and it's possible to even lean back your seat without crowding anyone's space if you want to sleep!

Yesterday, our van started acting funny, so we took it into the dealership to have it looked at. We called our mechanic, Nathan, in Tucson to run by him what the dealership said was going wrong (that there was a cracked spark plug) to see if he agreed, since we've built up a lot of trust with him, and he knows the history of our van. He was bummed to hear that we were having trouble with it, since they had done so much work on it before we left, and pretty much took it on as his own, and asked if he could call the dealership in Wisconsin to talk through what they are looking at and to make sure they weren't going to do anything that didn't need to be done. He called us back about 30 minutes later to say that he felt good about the mechanic's diagnosis, and also that the bill had been paid...what an incredible lesson in generosity!

As for shows, they have been going really well. Sorry I haven't taken any photos to post yet! Last night's show was especially fun for me because Liz's sister, Anastasia, was there! We hadn't seen each other in a couple of years, so it was a fun reunion. She was preparing us for our trip to Uganda by telling us that on New Year's Eve we won't sleep at all...and then on New Year's Day we'll eat all day long...sounds like they know how to celebrate! We'll get to spend more time with her in Green Bay when we are there in October.