During my years at Biola College (University now), I sang in the Biola Chorale.  One year, we toured the west coast, singing in various churches.  At that time, Roanna and her husband, Jim, lived in Arcata, California while attending Humbolt State.  Rannie was very homesick and really wanted to come to one of the tour concerts to visit with me.  She and Jim decided Medford, Oregon wasn't too far and made plans to travel to that concert.  In anticipation of seeing her little sister, she drew a daily countdown cartoon book with stick figures starting 12 days before they arrived in Medford.  She presented this clever and very funny little book to me when they arrived. So sweet!  I still have it and will always cherish it.  

Our family usually traveled to Washington State every summer to visit with our relatives. Both sets of grandparents lived there, several aunts and uncles, and our very fun cousins.  On this particular occasion Mom and Dad weren't going to stay as long as Rannie and I wanted to, so we begged them to let us take a Greyhound Bus to get there earlier.  They finally relented and dropped us off at the depot in Anaheim, and these two young girls (maybe 11 and 14) traveled the 21 hours to Toppenish, WA. We arrived pretty late in the evening, 10 or 11 p.m., and dear Aunt Dee picked us up.  I didn't realize how far Toppenish was from their house and felt so bad she had to travel that far late at night.  Can you imagine letting girls that age travel alone on a Greyhound Bus these days?  I don't remember anything terrible happening on the bus, and I'm sure we had a great extended time with our cousins!  Thanks Mom and Dad.

One summer our family traveled to Estes Park, Colorado with another family from our church, the Boswells.  (I think a Brethren Church conference was being held there.)  To help our family save money, the Boswells invited Rannie and I to stay with them in their motel room.  Rannie was probably 10 or 11 and I seven or eight.  

Well, Mr. Boswell snored something awful; we'd never heard anything like it and were scared to death. We knew there'd be no sleeping for us.  Rannie said she'd heard that if you pinch a snorer's nose, the person would stop snoring.  Then we got to debating which one of us would do it.  "You do it!"  "I'm not doing it, YOU do it." In the end, I was just too scared, so Rannie tiptoed over to his side of the bed and stood there working up her nerve.  Finally, she pinched it really quickly and ran back to bed; he snorted a little bit and rolled over.  Ahhhhh, he stopped!  Not so fast.  He rolled back over and started his snort, snort, snoring the remainder of the night. 

The next morning, they asked how we'd slept.  We looked at each other and just started laughing. Luckily, he had a good laugh when we told him what we had tried to do.  I don't remember spending a second night with them, so other arrangements must have been made.