A Quiz Meet To Remember

What an adventure! I'll try to sum up the highlights here, but you really had to be there to fully appreciate the "excitement" of this trip. After only a few hours of sleep, the boys and I met up with the rest of the quizzers at MFC at 6:30 a.m. for our quiz trip to the Oregon coast. The bus was quickly loaded and we were on the road before 7 a.m. This is what happens when I ask Jered to hold my coffee while I take a couple of pictures:

Including adults, we had 48 people on the bus. I'd like to say it was uneventful, but we did hit some pretty bad weather going over the blues. The roads were slick and the snow was falling fast and heavy. We saw a freight truck jack-knifed on the East bound freeway and a semi in front of us fish-tailed for what seemed like an eternity before he finally got control and straighted out his rig. Trucks lined the side of the road at the top of the hill to put on chains for the trip down. Our driver did the same.

We made it safely to Pendelton and stopped for lunch. Gloria worked off some of her energy in the playland at McDonalds:

Snow in Pendleton:

Corri bundled up against the cold:

Back on the bus again.

The rest of the trip west went by fairly quickly and we stopped at Arby's in Troutdale for dinner:

We arrived at Twin Rocks around 6:30 p.m. and got our room assignment. I like to think of myself as a go-with-the-flow kind of a gal, but when I first walked into our home-away-from-home, it took me awhile to adjust to my surroundings. We found ourselves in a cabin that was divided into two rooms, one side for the boys, one side for the girls, with sleeping accommodations for 8. We needed room for 12. More importantly, there was no in-room bathroom facility in sight. All of this served to put a little bit of a damper on my spirits that matched the rain that was falling outside, but things got better, as they always do. When the Wood's arrived an hour or so later, they were given a separate cabin that had two bathrooms with showers and could comfortably sleep 10!! We could have moved everyone around but by that time we were pretty cozy in our co-ed cabin and it was nice to be all together. It didn't even bother me when we realized the door between the two rooms was bolted open. AND Allison told me I could use their shower in the morning and avoid the cold cement floor of the community bathrooms.

Yep, we were cozy alright.

We had plenty of time to hang out in the rec room before going to bed:

Alyssa and Morgan:

Zach:

Gloria and Corri had fun hanging out together:

I'm more likely to go to bed at 6:30 a.m. than to get up at that time, so it was quite painful to get up so early on Saturday morning! We had a delicious breakfast in the dining room and an especially meaningful time of worship in the chapel. Quizzing went well for the morning rounds with 6 wins and 0 losses. All of the kids were answering questions and I was able to relax and cheer them on. (I'm not competitive. . . I'm not!!!)

After lunch it was time for the verse-off. Zach had been working on memorizing all 25 verses but he was a little bit fuzzy on a couple of them. When they called up the high schoolers who wanted to participate, they drew quite a crowd:

Zach did great and made it down to the final four:

This is what happened next:

Congrats to all four of them!!

Afternoon quizzing started up right after the verse-off and our team continued to do well.
Here we are in a huddle. I love that they humor me this way!!

Everyone answered questions and did really well.

Andrew:

Zach:

Alyssa:

Jered:

Morgan:

And, of course, I took a bazillion pictures:

We finished up the afternoon rounds of quizzing with a total of 12 wins, 3 losses. Free time and dinner followed while we waited for the team in Quiz Central to talley the finalists. Gloria spent most of the day following around the Newberg girls.

She loves Tallie :)

The weather was quite unpredictable, clear one minute and hailing or pouring rain the next. It's always beautiful, though, regardless of the forecast.

Zach and Gloria during a very brief respite from the rain:

We took advantage of a short break in the weather to hit the beach:

I tried to get a good picture of the kids to use for my Christmas card, but the wind and chill factor wouldn't cooperate. If I run out of time and get desperate, I may use this one anyway:

We were all pretty excited during dinner, waiting impatiently for the awards portion of the meet.

Here we are waiting to find out the results. Allison, Ian and Bridgier are sitting in the back if you look closely:

They handed out the awards for the verse-off first. Even though we knew Zach "survived" the verse-off, it was still fun to receive the certificate:

Corri placed in the top 8 for an individual in the middle school division!!! We were all so excited for her!!

Zach took 2nd place for an individual in the high school division. Yay!!

And most exciting of all, our team placed third overall in the high school division!!!!!

I'm so proud!!

The activity for the evening was a bonfire on the beach but it was raining and really cold so we chose to hang out indoors instead. Bridgier brought Settlers of Cattan which is my new favorite game. I've played it twice before this (once/year at family camp) and this time I think I've finally figured it out. I drank way too much coffee and had way to much fun but it was all worth it.

Another late night and another early morning. We were up at 6:30 to load the bus so we could be on the road by 7:00. It was rainy, windy and cold.

We stopped at the Tilamook Cheese Factory to look around and to get some ice cream. Yum!

Back on the bus. . . again. . .

The weather cooperated nicely and we made good time to the Pilot truck stop just West of Penndleton for lunch at about 2:00 p.m.

Just East of Penndleton we found a little surprise waiting for us. . . the road over The Blues was. . . closed. We joined a line of semis forming along the side of the exit and started to make a plan. The bus driver made some calls but wasn't getting much information. Some of the news trickling in said the road would be closed until 4:00 the next day. We looked into different routes we could take but everything was starting to shut down due to the weather. We were told there were 8 foot drifts up on the pass and drivers were stranded. I started to be thankful about that time that we were stranded at the bottom rather than the top. Thankfully Bridgier and Allison, who had driven to the coast in their own car, had caught up to us at about that time so we were all together and Morgan sat with the rest of the kids on the bus while the adults scrambled to make a plan.

I called Shawn to see if he had any ideas and he suggested we find a church to stay at until we had a plan. Possibly even overnight. He gave me a list of churches in the area with phone numbers so we began to make some calls. There was not one moment that I was worried about our safety or our accomodations. I knew we would "survive" this. I was a little worried, however, about the bathroom situation. Things could get ugly fast if we all had to share the bus port-a-pot overnight that was already 3 days ripe. . . After calling most of the numbers on the list, we realized that it was going to be very difficult to reach someone at a church on a Sunday evening. Even the Red Cross had a message that they were closed until Tuesday but we could call a certain number if we needed military assistance. . . Even The Salvation Army Church was unreachable. We needed a miracle. . . Of course God always comes through and the one person we were finally able to reach was the pastor of The Pendelton Nazarene Church, who just happened to go to George Fox University with Shawn and Ken and Gary (each of these men had a kid on the bus) and was very happy to help house a bunch of Quaker Quizzers. He was so kind and accomodating. He and several people in his congregation met us at the church and gave us the tour. They assured us we could make ourselves at home and use whatever we needed. It was a beautiful church:

We rallied the kids and took up a collection. We knew most of them were nearly out of money since they had only been expected to pay for 4 meals and we had our 4th meal a few hours before. They were great, though, and brought up crumpled dollar bills and piles of change. Between the kids and the adults, we collected enough to bring in Pizza for dinner and donuts, bananas and juice for breakfast. (By this time we knew it would be an all-nighter) If you're ever in Pendleton, stop at Dominos and order pizza. They were great- when they heard about our situation, they not only gave us a 10% discount but they even threw in 5 free pizzas!! Even Walmart gave us a small discount and the sweet lady at the deli threw in $5 out of her own pocket and offered to buy us lunch the next day if we were still stranded. Again, we were very thankful that Allison and Bridgier were along in a seperate vehicle. It was just really nice to have their company and support as well as a way to get around. I'm pretty sure God arranged for this to happen, too.

The pastor even let us use the church projector to watch movies in the sanctuary:

The night was still pretty young when we all got settled so Bridgier pulled out Settlers again. I won!! :) The girls took the rooms downstairs and the boys took the rooms upstairs. Everyone was pretty comfy in spite of the hard floors. We were all thankful to have a warm place to sleep.

We were all roused from sleep very early because the roads had opened up!! I admit I was starting to feel a little bit cranky from lack of sleep and a shower but we all managed to pack up our stuff, again, and get back on the bus.

I took my time getting on the bus because, for some reason, I was having a hard time facing another 5 hours riding. . . The man closest to the door in this picture is our bus driver, Bruce. We couldn't have asked for a better driver. He had a great sense of humor, he was a great driver and he pitched in and did everything he could along with the rest of us. He became part of our group and he fit right in:

Back on the bus. . . again.

The rest of the trip home was uneventful. We did learn that there was a big storm at the coast overnight and the place we had been staying recieved 100 mph winds closing most of the roads between Portland and the coast and taking out the power. So, we were caught between two major storms and we were wonderfully cared for and safe. I'd say it was a miracle.

The storm that is my life took over when I got home, however, but I'd rather be home than anywhere else.