The Minivan Chronicles II

I have to thank many of you for the prayers that you prayed on our behalf as I travelled to my families' house with the kids. I must admit, most of our trip went very well.

Despite comments from gentlemen with gray hair about the amount of "baggage" I carried, we had a pretty nice day and spent many hours in the car watching every disney movie known to man.

Around 7pm I decided it might be time to pull over and find a hotel. In my mind, I was dreaming of spending a nice quiet evening lounging on a bed and maybe taking a quick trip to the hotel pool with the kids. That was a nice thought, but you can imagine that it couldn't be quite that easy.

After 2 hours of stopping at every hotel along the way and finding out that even in the middle of the week, hotels apparently fill up quickly; I was beside myself. I called my parents and told them that it looked like I might just be traveling through the night. It wasn't my first choice, but I figured I would survive and make the best of it. I told the boys to get comfortable and to go ahead and fall asleep in their seats.

Then the rain started. What started out as small drops quickly became a huge thunderstorm and I started thinking about how much I hated driving through storms (especially in the dark).

As I tooled along, stuck between a bunch of mack trucks, I was seriously contemplating whether or not I really wanted to try to go another 4 or 5 hours in pitch black, wet conditions...and then it happened:

Out of nowhere, the tractor trailer in front of me, began swirving. The car to his left began swirving and I grasped the wheel having no clue what was going on ahead of me.

And then I saw...

It was too late to do anything...I hit it with my left tire and heard the huge thud as it hit the side of my car.

I have no idea what it was...in all honesty, it looked like a big body bag. There it was lying across the lane, and in such stormy conditions, it wasn't visible until you were on top of it.

I pulled off the road and stopped at a gas station to be sure the car was alright and then I called my mom and told her that I didn't care what she had to do, but I need her to call every hotel between where I was and her house and find me a place to stop.

And so - thanks to my parents bailing me out- we made it to a hotel around 11pm and finally settled in for the night.

Despite the slight glitch of hitting a body bag in the middle of the highway, we had a nice time at the hotel and the boys loved every minute.

When we finally arrived at Grandma and Grampa's house, the storm that we had driven through had arrived at their house and we spent the first day trying to escape the rain by letting the kids play at the indoor playplace at the "Food Shack" (which we had to drive 45 minutes to get to! Oh the joys of a small, small town). There is actually a bumper sticker in this town that says, "Last one out of town, turn off the light."

When the rain finally ended, it had dropped over 5 inches in their town and the lake had risen so much that the dock began to break apart.

But, that didn't bother the kids...as soon as the thunder was gone, they were in the water.

Here you'll notice the dock that was missing it's boards and Ayden trying to surf on some of the boards that had come loose.

We ended the day with a trip to the local restaurant (yes, there is only about one restaurant in their tiny town) where the kids received two of the LARGEST ice cream cones we have ever seen (we ordered smalls):)!


We're thrilled to finally be here and we're enjoying every minute of it!
Hope you have a great weekend!