Day 165, Wednesday, November 16

Spent today in Henderson with Mei, LeAnn, and Jasmine Chung basically talking and hanging out. Also spent a fair amount of time planning the leg of my trip which was supposed to take me up to Denver, CO Springs, then back to Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyon. After talking with Jim Roelof in Colorado Springs, I came to the conclusion that there’s simply no way to make it safely to Denver and CO Springs. It’ll make this leg of my trip much easier as a result. I’ll just plan to head up to Zion, Bryce and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. From there I’ll come on back to Henderson to spend Thanksgiving with the Chungs. I’ll also plan to take a trip out into Death Valley at that point.
I had dinner with the entire family. LeAnn and Jasmine are classic examples of first child/second child relations. LeAnn, 6 yrs old, tries to act very mature but gets hurt if she doesn’t get her way. Jasmine, 2 yrs old and definitely wading through the middle of her terrible twos, has to copy everything that LeAnn does. This means that if LeAnn picks something up, Jasmine has to take it from her. If LeAnn is getting attention from Hiep of Mei, Jasmine has to barge in between. If she can’t barge in between, she stages a fall or acts like she’s hurt her hand (always her hand for some reason) and starts crying loudly to draw the attention away from LeAnn. Of course, as soon as the attention is diverted, her tears dry up immediately. These two kids definitely remind me of how my brother and I related at that age.