Volleyball, Christmas Parties, and the Journey Home

One night we rented the volleyball barn and invited the young people from church for a night of fun.

At first it was just us so we had fun bumping the ball around, warming up.

*     *     *     *     *

The day before we left for home we drove down to Pop-pop and Mom-mom's house in Maryland and celebrated Christmas with family there.  (I don't have any pictures from that get together, sadly!)
Then we left and drove up to Lebanon for the annual Sanger Family Christmas Dinner.

cousins playing UNO

It was so nice to be with the cousins again!

*     *     *     *     *

We left early Sunday morning and began the 33 hour drive home.

You see interesting things while driving!  

Like this water tower painted like a basket of apples!

Driving in Texas, boy its a big state when you drive the whole way across it!!

I'm sure you are wondering what is going on in the above photo!

Well, the gas stations are few and far between in Texas...  We had just passed the last gas station for the next 30 miles when our gas light came on.  Justin looked on his phone and found the next gas station so we stopped there.  Unfortunately, they were running tests on all their pumps so there was no way we were going to be able to get gas there!  Justin looked on his phone again and found the next gas station to be another 20 miles further down the highway.  So we hopped back in our car and prayed we could make it there.  Well, we're put-putting along down the highway when we ran completely out of gas!!  So here we are, five miles away from the Mexico border, coasting along the shoulder of I-20 with our four ways blinking, trying to get as close to this gas station as we could!  We were still 3 miles away from it though :(  So out of the car we go, carrying our orange juice jugs we had filled with drinking water for the drive home.  We walked about a mile on the freeway and then off the exit, it was still another 2 miles down towards Mexico to the gas station.  We're walking along, laughing at our predicament, when Justin stops in his tracks and goes, "Oh no!  I forgot my wallet in the car!"  So now when we get to this gas station how are we even going to pay for the gas?!?!  Not even thirty seconds go by and a Border Patrol drives past.  We waved him down and asked him if he could take us down to the gas station.  He was so kind and took us back to our car and actually just gave us about a gallon of gas that he had in the back of his truck!

About an hour after the whole episode started, we were back on the road!

One more state to go through and we would be in ARIZONA!!!!

I snapped this picture through the window so there is a bit of a glare but I thought the rock formations were so pretty against the blue sky!

WELCOME TO ARIZONA!!!!  We were finally in our home state!!

As we got closer to home we could see there was snow on the Chiricahua mountains!

{a timelapse video from when we were traveling}

We are so grateful to the Lord for His traveling mercies as we drove home.  It's always fun to go away for a few days, but the saying is true, "There is no place like home." :)