Happy Birthday, Dorothy!

The picture tonight is one Davy took of Don and I crossing the river as it entered the ocean in Waipio Valley. I was tired that day, but I'm recalling it and wishing I was soaked in that water today! I'm soaked in sweat and viewing this picture brought back sweet memories. I had on crock flip flops and the current was really working to sweep away my shoes. I was struggling to stay up right, but I had to hang onto my shoes, too! Thankfully, I had my hiking stick with me. We went back the next day and I wore my tennis shoes; that was a better plan. Then we hiked up the mountain on the other side. Great, great memories!

Today I am so exhausted. Our friend who works on our cars, here, has had our 'new' van for over a week. He knows that we take lots of long trips in the car, so he was going over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure we are ready to travel. He did all the mechanical stuff and it's ready to roll, now. So, Don and I took on the job of cleaning it. Man, I've never seen such a dirty 'clean' car. Those people had run it through a car wash, so it looked pretty good, but before I could 'move into' it it had to be cleaned. I can't imagine how they managed to get that car so dirty! There were gummy places with tons of dirt stuck to it all over the inside of the rear door; I found scraps of duct tape, so I'm sure they had duct tape all over at some point. I wonder what's up with that? Anyway, I got it all off, but it took a lot of elbow grease. It was 100 in our garage where we were working on it, so it was no picnic! Don vacuumed all our floor mats to get the glass and dirt out of them and then I scrubbed them. They look really nice in the 'new' van. I washed all the windows and scraped off their Pennsylvania safety sticker (the guy who owned it lived in PA, but when he died his daughter hauled it to Texas, where they moved). Tomorrow morning I will go out and put all the stuff we'd taken out of our van into this one. Then we'll be ready to travel! I'm so grateful to be alive and well enough to work on cleaning this car; I'm whipped, but so blessed!

Today we are celebrating the birthday of our good friend, Dorothy! We partied at their house Monday night, playing cards. God is so good to give us riches like tremendous friends and wonderful health!