GSA Chapter 6: The First Home Leave

I had the weekend before homeleave off so I decided to go visit my cousin Courtney in Selah, Washington which is near Yakima. Its about a five hour drive to her house from Gem State but that's nothing. I've driven farther distances for less time. I had a blast and we didn't even do anything out of the ordinary. We watched movies, went to church and just hung out. I haven't really had a whole lot of social interaction since moving to Idaho and so the long weekend was a welcome change of pace. Since my day off is Monday I got to spend a long weekend there. I drove there on Friday and back on Monday. It was amazing. When I got back to Gem State I did a little bit of deaning in the evening and then Tuesday was my day to be on call. Being on call merely means that if someone needs to be taken somewhere in the late afternoon or evening I take them or if there is an emergency I pitch in. So on an average day, being on call is fairly boring and pretty quiet.

Wednesday was an entirely different story, however because it was the start of the most epic idea of all time. HOME LEAVE. The definition is very self explanatory. A time where the kids leave and go home. In my case, I flew to Salem, OR where I got to visit my amazing family. My aunt has been wanting her two sisters (one of which is my lovely mother) and me to come visit her and do a trip that was mostly shopping and girl time while her kids were in school. We haven't been able to do that trip until now because whenever her kids are in school that usually means I'm in school. This year is different though, so the dream finally became a reality. I flew into Portland and waited for my mom and Aunt J to fly in from ND. Then we ate lunch and grabbed our rental car to drive to Salem. Wednesday was filled with...well I don't actually remember what we did Wednesday. But Thursday was packed with SHOPPING!!! We went to the Woodburn Outlets and literally shopped until we dropped. Then we went out for amazing Indian food at 9 at night. After Indian we went to a karaoke bar where we rocked it until midnight. It was so fun and completely random and I loved it. We were there until the bar closed at midnight and I ended up singing the last song of the night. I happened to choose "Like a Surgeon" by Weird Al which was pretty funny. Friday was supposed to be just as crazy but we were so exhausted from Thursday that we sort of walked around in a daze the whole day. Friday night we had pizza for supper and Uncle E and I took the kids swimming. We swam for two solid hours. I was exhausted afterward. I haven't done a whole lot of hard core swimming like that in a while. But it was fun. 

On Sabbath the four of us ladies drove to Tillamook where we had lunch with their Grandma, my Great Grandma. She's 100 and she made lunch for us. It was fantastic. After lunch the four of us squeezed onto the couch and sang hymn for Great Grandma for an hour or more. We spent a lot of the time laughing so hard that we were crying but occasionally we could hold it together long enough to actually get through a whole song and we sounded pretty great if I do say so myself. Everyone was so giggly that I felt like I was in an alternate time period and I was somehow transported to a time when my mom and two aunts were just teenagers and I was along for the ride. It was a blast. We ended the day with TV in our hotel room. This morning we went to breakfast at an omelet place that was amazing.

I'm sitting at my gate waiting to fly back to Boise now and I'm sad that the fun is over. Thankfully, I live a lot closer to Uncle E and Aunt D so hopefully I will be able to visit more often than I have in the past. I'm thinking Thanksgiving sounds grand to me. I miss everyone already but I have very fond memories of this weekend and they are memories I won't soon forget. Uncle E, if you're reading this, you never burned that CD for me. Miss everyone. Its time to board to Boise.

-Ashley