Chapter 1

In my third year of college, I met my husband, Donald Myers. We both majored in archeology. Two weeks after working together in our study group, we were inseparable. We were married six months after graduation, and I became pregnant with my first child. A beautiful baby girl that we named Carol. Over the next four years, I had two more children. Gregory and Donald Junior.

For seventeen years, we traveled around the Far East and South America, working at different digs, gaining much-needed experience and a reputation as dedicated and knowledgeable archeologists. We always brought the kids along and hired local women as nannies when the kids were too young to help at the dig. We were young and nearly broke most of the time, but we loved what we were doing. We would not trade those days of traveling around Asia and Africa with the kids and the excitement of discovering the past from small pieces of evidence left behind by people who passed this way hundreds or even a thousand years ago.

Five years ago, a professorship opened at the university that provided our grants and Don Sr. applied for it and was accepted. He thought it might be time to settle down and give the kids a normal life. Well, it’s almost normal. Every summer, the five of us head down to South America and work a dig in Peru.

Don Sr. and I are 48. Carol is 23, Greg is 21, and Don Jr. is 20. My husband insists they come and help at the dig as long as they live at home and attend the university. They are the best diggers we know because we trained them ourselves. It also stretches our grant a bit further.

The kids are not exactly following in our footsteps. Carol has her English and Journalism Degree and is working on her master’s, Greg is an Engineering Major, and Don Jr. is still trying to make up his mind. Thank the Lord, we live close to the university, and my husband’s position as a professor makes the kids eligible for reduced tuition as long as they maintain a 3.5 average.