(This is the car John had when we met. It was so old that you had to pull out the choke to start it. I had never driven a car with a choke, a motorcycle yes, but car!?)

(Something about Montanans is that if you are on a farm or ranch - which are very different- you keep everything forever. You never know when you can use something to jerryrig something else. These old McCormick tractors are three of I don't know how many. They look so neat there all in a row.)

Yesterday we jumped into the van and headed out to Montana. We had a twelve hour trip ahead of us and four sleepless nights behind us. I had intentions of finishing a read-a-loud book during the trip. John had gone shopping before the trip and bought the kids a new DS game. I thought that I'd hide the game in Job's backpack and have him find it en route. Unfortunately he found it within an hour of the trip and it was in constant use until we arrived. They would set their time for 20 minutes and pass it around each building on the other's success. We did have about 2 minutes of sprints in Idaho but other than that walking to McDonald's from the parking lot it was the only exercise we had. We just sat on our rearends feeling them spread out wider than I had possibly imagined they could. Lona is not as big of a video game player as the boys and likes to "trade" her computer time for movie time. She watched Journey to the Center of the Earth and then Star Trek twice. I rode in the very back of the van with Lona watching ST in the dark as we finished our trip. I think that Scotty was one of my favorite characters. I love it when he said, "I like this ship. It's exciting here" He didn't have a big role but he was just plain good at it.