The "real" bus story

Everyone who knows us knows that we really don't have time to go do something for "no reason." (LOL)! I'm sure many of you were wondering about the whole bus story from last week, but I tried to make it "believeable" by saying it was for an upcoming homeschool event. It wasn't, but now that we have our license I suppose it may come in handy for something to do with homeschool sometime down the road. This story starts about a month ago when someone called from church to see if we could drive the busses for the church staff Christmas party.

They knew we both had CDLs. However, neither of us had pass or bus endorsements. You already know the rest of the story from last week's blog- 4 tests later we had our endorsements and were able to drive bus for the staff party. It was a LOT of fun serving the staff by driving them around to all of their Christmas party activities and it gave us reason to get the endorsements which we had thought about getting "sometime" anyway.

The staff party started out with the employees arriving at the church gym where they were greeted with a sign that said "**church name** AIRLINES! The employees were run through security, given boarding passes, and the travel itinerary. Several people putting on this party were in costume so we decided to do the same. Here we are getting ready to head to town. Tim is dressed an an old style bomber pilot and I'm dressed as a modern day commercial pilot.




Nathan kept asking me if I was the "same" mommy (LOL)!

While the employees boarded the "plane" Tim and I pretended to be reading the plane flying manuals that we made up.


Some of the organizing gals decorated the busses to look like planes complete with lights on the floor and seat assignments above the windows:


Here we are each on our own bus! I chose the manual since I had never driven the automatic...but I hear the automatic would have been easier to drive (LOL)! The manual wasn't hard to drive, it just doesn't have any power so it made one part of the trip a little slow... going up a long hill in 2nd gear!

The first stop was in Mexico where everyone got off the busses, ate, visited, listened to the entertainment sing, etc. Then, we headed to a house downtown where everyone deboarded and sang Christmas carols. Then, they headed to Italy... On the way to Italy we were pulled over by the police. Fortunately, they warned me about this ahead of time otherwise I might not have been too thrilled about this part (LOL).... although knowing how "creative" our church is I think I would have figured it was part of the plan.

Everyone had to deboard the "plane"... they were all checked and after they found the three "wanted" people and hauled them off in the police cars we were allowed to continue on to Italy... where we met up with those 3 again. After Italy, we headed to the North Pole where the staff played some games, had their pictures with Santa, mingled, etc. until way past my bedtime (LOL).

Again, it was a fun night and we were glad for the opportunity to participate and help them share a fun evening!