Now some of you know that November is one of my favorite months because my birthday lands in it. In fact, we often refer to November as my Birthday Month, because I pretty much try to celebrate all month long. But November is a grand month for other reasons too – Thanksgiving is waiting there at the end of the month, and back when we had our home, that holiday was always filled with lots of family and fun. Each year since we’ve been on the road Thanksgiving has had a different flavor, but each one was very special in its own way. Another good thing about November is that Christmas is “in the air”, but it hasn’t taken over every store and airwave. Quite. Yet. But the best part of November is really about the Birthdays. Because as our family has grown, so have the number of November birthdays.
It used to be that November was mine, all mine. That was pretty long ago, though, since we’ve been saying Happy Birthday to BIL Fitz for about 40 years and SIL Sharon for about 35. Then 5 years ago we added dear Hayley to the family and just two years ago along came Madelyn Sage. This year we also got to say hello to another new family member – my new great-nephew, Noah, born November 17th.

But there are some other dear folks that I share my November birthday-month with. (Or should I say, with whom I share my birthday month? ) My birthday buddies, Connie and Bonnie, and I have been meeting together sometime during November for as long as I can remember. We go back a long way – back to those having babies days. We each had baby girls in 1976 and watched our lives intertwine over the years. Almost 30 years ago I moved out of the “neighborhood”, and although I was only about 15 miles down the road, our young family eventually found a church closer to home and we lost some of the easy connectivity that we had been used to. But still, we stayed in touch and somehow, perhaps wordlessly, committed to getting together at least once a year during our birthday month regardless of how much we saw (or didn’t see) each other otherwise. And as we got older and life got busier, we found that our once a year gatherings was one of our best days of the year. We would worship together, go out for lunch, and end up at Connie’s for birthday cake and catch-up. We did a lot of laughing, a fair bit of crying, and some serious praying. We saw each other through some rough patches in our marriages, a divorce, open-heart surgery, the death of our parents and some dear friends, and lives that sometimes seemed to be spinning out of control. We rejoiced with weddings and grandbabies, celebrated milestone birthdays, and reminisced about days gone by. These dear women have been my safe place. And even when we only met for that one day of the year, it was as if no time at all had gone by. Since we’ve been on the road, we haven’t actually been able to meet during November. But by and large we’ve done pretty well at getting together whenever I land in town. It’s been a while, though, since I’ve been back in town. And as November comes to a close, I’m missing you, my dear sisters in Christ.

Hope YOUR birthday month was filled with folks that you love, and that the year ahead is full of blessings.
And I PROMISE we’ll be eating cake together before the next November comes around!

We spent our Thanksgiving day on the road. But since it was almost all New Road, it was still a very good day! (And we did get to talk to our kids and we have a turkey ready to roast tomorrow, so there will still be leftovers!). We were only going about 200 miles from the Coachella Valley down the east coast of the Salton Sea, south to El Centro and then west along the bottom of the state (almost into Mexico) and then a little north to swing around to Jamul (there are mountains in the way of actually getting there more directly). Here is what it looks like on a map -

Here’s what it looked like as we drove it -
Down past the Salton Sea

The north end of the Salton Sea is in the Imperial Valley – a real fruit (and vegetable) basket area of California. This field was ready for something!

Although the Salton Sea is increasing in it’s salinity each year (along with becoming more poluted), it is still home to about 30% of the the remaining American White Pelicans.

(If you’d like to know more about this lake (the largest in CA) there is some info Here on Wikipedia.)
We soon left the lake behind us and continued through the desert – but we knew that mountains were in our future!


Oh, yeah, mountains ahead. We were going from about 300 ft. below sea level to over 4000 ft. above sea level. Not the highest pass we’ve traveled by any means, but believe me, it was one long climb!



And what goes up, must come down -

and down -

and down.
We passed some majestic windmills along the way -

and pretty much continued to wind up and down and over and through mountain after mountain.

We eventually made it to the outskirts of The Big City – but I bet you can all picture Thanksgiving traffic. It wasn’t very photo worthy.
We finally settled down in parking lot near a Kohls in El Cajon. We figured if they asked us to move we would just say we were waiting for it to open at 4AM. Fortunately, no one bothered us so we didn’t have to actually get up and do it! (But I must say, many others did! And without the comfort of having their bed in the parking lot!).

Today we moved into our December project – Indian Hills Camp. We haven’t seen too much of the camp just yet, but I can share with you my new picture window view -

I don’t think we’re done being thankful just yet!

Remember those chairs?

Today was the day we were going to fill them up!
We started the day with lots and lots of food -


Added lots of volunteers who moved the food to the tables

and then “packaged” most of the food into bags for easier distribution.


(that’s Gary up to his knees in bags, and I think it was about to get deeper!).
The gates opened up at 10AM, but the line started forming long before then -

But soon they were finding their seats and enjoying a time of worship and thanksgiving -

(It was a beautiful day – but the sun got pretty hot. I found these helper-kids in some make-shift shade as they waited for the service to be over!)

At last the folks were in line for the food – and by the time they got to my station (I was handing out candy AFTER the pie), their arms were full of frozen turkey, lemonade, potatoes, onions, carrots, tortillas, canned corn, stuffing mix and a pumpkin pie.

And once the folks started through the line, there was no time for whipping out the camera!
The next time I had a chance to snap a shot – it was clean-up time!

Last week the ministry was having trouble finding the turkeys they needed for their event today. They were planning on buying them, but there didn’t seem to be any to be available. Yet today they had over 1000 birds ready for distribution. How’s that for a Thanksgiving Moment!

So, today was our Thanksgiving Day. Tomorrow we will be on the road moving to our next project. We might try to find a restaurant along the way, but we might just enjoy a simple dinner of pancakes and bacon. But it won’t alter the fact that we are so very thankful for this life we have been blessed to experience, the family and friends that God has put into our lives, and unspeakable gift of His son, Jesus.

600 Chairs
Two People




and our Just Desserts…..

(aka Lunch)

Watch out – here come the tables!

Tomorrow is the big Turkey distribution – they have over 1000 turkeys (along with all the trimmings) to give away. Should be an exciting day!