People. They are what makes it all worth it. We love the beautiful national parks. We soak in the history. We tinker and grasp all the science in amazing museums. But we crave social interaction. Deon has his coworkers, I have friends via text and social media, Aunica has her phone and sidda her kindle. The boys find friends wherever we are that minute. But we need those people who really get us. 

A few years back we became good friends with the Vergara family. They have since moved to Phoenix, but we see them as often as possible. We spent a number of hours with them today, refilling our social cups. We sure do love them. 

As we travel towards Tallahassee and the fulltime families rally, I look forward to new friends, too. By the time we are done with this year, we will have friends all over the country (especially as this is a nomadic crowd). They “get” us in an all new way. They homeschool. They travel. They are living small, many of them with large families. This experience will forever be part of who we are, and I am grateful every day to be part of this online (and sometimes in person) community.

Our other activity for the day was visiting the Mesa, AZ LDS temple. We don’t always take the time to do this, but we had some time to kill before the Vergara kids were out of school, and this temple has a visitors center. Learned some new things, played a fun geography game, and took some cool pics.