If you won't read the saga of our vacation...

Then check out my new link: Patrick and Barb in Haiti.

They are missionaries to Haiti and have a blog with their latest news. I am amazed every time I read about them. Please pray for Patrick and Barb and all the missionaries you know. Pray for God's provision and for his protection. Pray for God to break down the barriers that keep them from effective ministry to lost souls.

You should never promise to..

#1 blog about your trip.
#2 post pictures on your blog.
#3 break a camera.



MM was ill from the time we left (We didn't go to Church the Sunday before we left because we were all ill to some degree...). He's allergic to pet dander and our first stay was with family. They have a dog and a cat - both indoor! It was great to spend time with them and eat and enjoy their company. I just wish that MM had been in better humor. Have you ever been to see any part of the TVA? You should. It's really pretty. The bridges and dams are huge in comparison to the dam that holds our river back... Since MM was ill enough I spent my sleeping hours sleeping and my waking hours chasing boys. But I did manage to blog a little while we drove...

We left Alabama for Chattanooga. As a kid I never understood all there was to know about Chatty. We stayed in a hotel and MM seemed to get better - a little. But I've already told you the fun we had there.

Onward to Boone, NC. My cousin and her family live near there. We watched the newscast for weather reports. The second night in Chatty brought cold cold wind and a little rain. Would we be driving in snow? One must know. I have always tried to keep the kids from getting too excited about things that may or may not happen. It's a fault of mine so when cousins started talking about frozen precipitation I tried to not let on that anything abby-normal was going to happen. Really, I just hate disappointment. The weather looked clear enough and it wasn't that far of a drive - just 5 hours or so...

The van was loaded and we were on the road. GPS was on and we were ready. If you are going to use one of those, be sure to have a paper map to go along with it. It helps avoid the back roads that are supposed to save you time but in the end lead you to a dead end just like the sign said. That only happened to us once and it was on this leg of the journey. I was driving - remember MM is still not 100% therefore I couldn't blog to my heart's content... Please accept my apologies. The construction signs all said "ROAD CLOSED to THRU TRAFFIC". I've always wondered what that meant - Now I know :o. You will drive until you are less than 2000 feet from your next turn and you will have to make a very tight u-turn to go back along the winding road from whence you had just come. It was a 30 minute diversion that left us at a gas station where the clerk spotted the boys right away and asked to give them a lollypop! She gave us great directions that the GPS hated and we were back on the road.

We finally arrived at my cousins' about an hour and a half past dark. Dinner was ready and we were worn out. The kids weren't terribly hungry - in fact they hadn't eaten well the whole time we were on the trip. All the time I kept saying "they'll eat anything" and turn around to one or the other complaining about what they were getting! UGH. So much for good manners. Guess I need to pull out that graces book I bought (NOTE TO SELF - Never buy books your local bibliovore is pushing...). By the next morning MM is feeling so bad he proclaims in my ear that he'll be packing up in the morning to take us all home. That would be an entire day early - and in haste!. What? Huh? The snow hasn't even fallen yet? How will the kids get to play in it if I'm busy packing their stuff? What are you saying to me?

Plan B begins: I call the GP at home and they can't do much for him since he's not feverish. Plan C: Visit local Doc in the Box and get something to knock out the illness or MM - I don't particularly care which at this point. We didn't get there until nearly lunch because of the road conditions. We don't and my cousin barely drives in the snow. The kids are out of school. My cousin and I laugh about family and growing up and raising kids. I realize I have been given something special - family. MM gets his meds by the rush of the Rx at Wallyworld who was going to go to lunch while MM suffered. I'm grateful for a measure of sanity in this blustery day.

We stayed one more night and began our trek home. After MM got us out of the mountains it was my turn to drive - the rest of the way home - therefore no blogging for me. HUMPH!

Enough from me, here are some pictures from the trip:


We really did visit family except I forgot to take pictures most of the time. But I did take some mental ones, and they're the best anyway-except I can't share them.









And here is M practicing his catching technique - we'll have to work on that.











This is MM's cousin's cabin in the woods!

This is what happens when S "Didn't see the step." and L couldn't stop his error.
Then there's the trolly ride all of 2 blocks.

And the sculpture of wood and railroad. You'll have to visit Chatty so see all of it...

The first time any of the kids play in the snow - S just doesn't know why mommy insisted that he get out of the warm car.

Then there's the first snow sledding of the season - a totally unusual snow in NC in mid November. Earliest my cousin has seen.













The next morning MM took this shot of the front door view as the sun rose our last day of vacation.










Then there's the donning of the layers. It's the only way I knew to dress the kids and not need snow suits for one or two days.

PS: My cousin has two dogs and two cats - both indoor. Amazingly MM started to feel better after he started his Rx but now that we're home, he's relapsing. Wonder if that's just where we live?

I can't forget the Sawmill.

One cousin owns a sawmill. My dad would love to come see his place and perhaps help me refurnish my house with some of the most beautiful heart pine furniture in the world. If you've never visited a log cabin, you really need to some time in your life. Did you notice that I like to tell you what to do? We have pictures of the cabin. Words don't begin to describe it.

We think we might see snow today and perhaps tomorrow night!

Yeah.

Part Two

Some of you have already read about this part of our journey - but only in bits and pieces. Now I get to spell most of it out.

I. The phone call
We woke Friday morning with full intentions of getting on the road and visiting Lynchburg, TN and the Jack Daniel's Distillery (that and my name may make you think I'm a lush - but I'm not!). Then we received the call. Our lovely dear and wonderful neighbors called to let us know what I should've already known - it rained all night Thursday night and most of it right on top of the lake and our river is rising rapidly. We moved quickly from calm and relaxed after three days with our niece and her kids to dazed and confused with total stress and anxiety mixed in. It was like we were paralyzed and didn't know what to do. I make calls and go online so we can make informed decisions.

II. The trip with a detour.
After searching and calling we decide that we can't change our course right now because we need a plane or rental car to get Kent home to take care of our stuff and neither of them were available from Alabama! We loaded the van and moved onward toward Chatty, but for some insane reason we thought that we could still visit the JD distillery and make it to Chatty on time - how could that be since we didn't leave on time? are you seeing a pattern? None the less, we detoured right by the facility and kept on trucking (or following - there was a funeral procession all the way through Fayetteville!). After a pleasant stop at Chick-fil-a (do you ever stop to think how out of towners feel when we invade our local CFA? - until Friday I didn't care, I'll have to reconsider that for my next CFA group!), we pressed on to Chatty with our faithful although mildly wayward in cloudy situations GPS in tow. The kids were all wiped out but they were in good moods anyway.

III. The arrival
When we arrived Kent went to check in and figure things out. If you haven't been here, downtown Chatty is quite fun and inviting. Kent saw all his cousins lounging in the lobby. The excitement built as the night went on. Where apprehension loomed before our arrival, now pleasure was taking it's place. When we had all gathered. We decided to go to a nearby restaurant for dinner. Our boys were exemplary. Most people including us worry about our kids behaviour in stressful situations like eating out, but we didn't need to worry! Our kids and our extended family really enjoyed one another.

IV. The Joy
It wasn't over with just one dinner. It started Saturday with Breakfast, swimming in the heated pool (M's favorite thing so far.) followed by lunch at MM's aunt's assisted living facility and concluded with a nice sit down dinner at Sticky Fingers. Between lunch and dinner we visited a nearby cousin's saw mill. His house is a log cabin made from parts of an old tobacco barn. It is so way cool. The way they have it decorated is like it was a family home and had been for centuries! While we were there we enjoyed apple cider and molasses cookies and one another's company. If you haven't given your family a chance to open up in a few years, now may be the time. MM was very unsure of what his cousins would think of our life but now he sees that they want to love him not judge him. What a joy!

Sidenote:
There were six kids total at the reunion. Half of them were my own. One had just turned a year and the other two were 12 and 14. All the kids were wonderfully behaved (except my own of course, because they can never be perfect, right?) but I must say that the 12 and 14 yo were very pleasant to talk to and get along with.

V. The conclusion
At the end of this reunion I must say that I'm sad that it has to end and we have to get back to our own lives. It wasn't long enough. We didn't have enough time to do all that we wanted to do. There wasn't enough time to ask all the questions and get all the answers and sort out who's who among the cousins. It's not like we can just visit them every week. We are all amazed at how much the blood relatives are alike and yet so unique. BTW: many of them were born in my hometown which means they aren't all that bad... I almost forgot: The river never made it into the first floor and no one lost anything of value during the heavy rains. Our neighbors and my dad made sure that any valuables were up and out of the way of any rising water. This marks high water #3 for this calendar year.

I hope to have some pretty pictures next time because I'll be home by then I think. The only time I've had to do this blog thing is when everyone else is asleep!

First leg of the trip...

You planned to leave before noon to go on your vacation, but it didn’t work out that way. The night before you all were really tired and needed some good sleep. It makes perfect sense to load up in the morning and then get on the road…until you get up in the morning and you realize that the amount of work to be done will take all morning if the kids are perfect and the boat extraction goes well and water doesn’t spill all over the floor… I wonder if I should have mopped the kitchen floor Lest you think everything went swimmingly (MM almost did…) this morning please allow me to share a few events from the chaos of getting ready to go on vacation.

The boys all slept until at least 8 a.m. which they haven’t done since the time change and that’s OK, but we’ve been fighting a cold all weekend and the extra hour of rest did me good. Since we are trying to clean out the fridge before we go, I took care to make sure we didn’t open a new box of cereal. The kids foraged for whatever they could find while MM and I made sense of ourselves so we could get going. But it wasn’t all good S took care to spill an entire cup of water right in the middle of the kitchen.

Quiz time: Do you know what flood waters do to boat ramps? I’ll tell you the answer in my next post. I can’t promise I’ll blog every day as we ARE visiting family but when we are driving I will try to include you on the happenings.

We didn’t want to leave it in the river while we are gone. With the boys all fed MM ventured up the shallow river to the nearest boat ramp (If we had a 4 WD truck we wouldn’t have needed to go there…). Rather than drive the boat onto the trailer, he just maneuvered it to where it needed to be to get it out of the water. It was quite an adventure to get the boat out and it did make it out of the water but not before MM declared in his mutterings that he wants a 4WD truck with a king cab so we can all fit into it. I didn’t hear him mutter it, but about the time the truck lost traction on the boat ramp I’m sure he at least thought it. I on the other hand was just glad to have it out of the water and don’t care to buy a new tool. {Note: I don't like this paragraph but I'm too lazy/busy to change it}

I discovered something I can’t do and this will make all my friends happy: I can’t back an empty boat trailer that I cannot see

We made it out of the house just before 2 p.m. Our first destination is less than 8 hours away so we’ll be there before midnight I’m sure! I have a really great brother. He’s a great geek and he comes with lots of gadgets. The latest one I discovered is his Garmin nüvi when he graciously took me to pick up our carriage at the “travel check” place it had been all day. I’m not sure it was a good idea to take it because now I’m sure MM will greatly desire possession of one in the near future. Oh well, it’s giving us turn by turn directions for the fastest route to our destination.

Just when you thought you knew us...

We are going on a road trip...

If you aren't shocked by that statement then why are you reading any more? In the 13 years I've known MM I can count the number of family trips we've been on and name them all. We don't average even one a year. However, this one is a big one (according to my measure). Following all public safety advisories, I'll not give you an exact itinerary, but we are going to visit three different sides of our family. We'll visit, nieces and cousins and cousins and more cousins - some once or twice removed...

In other news, we found a wonderful delightful hot house for our garden this winter. If the Farmer's Almanac is right, all these acorns on the ground mean a hard winter is coming and we'll need all the help we can get for our plants - especially our citrus...

We are very excited about our trip and our green/hot house. So much so that I'll not be able to post more because I must go cook pancakes---

Did I tell you how glad I am to have my M?

I didn't? Well, let me tell you. We celebrated his day this weekend. We have trained him and talked to him about proper birthday etiquette over the years. With firm words from MM we went boldly forward with our plans at G&Ps house. From beginning to end I was sincerely pleased with M. When I thought for sure that he'd fall apart because he didn't get a slough of pirates off his cake, he carefully handed out one to each guest (including his girl cousins!). There wasn't question that he wouldn't get them all. He knew they were for his friends. I thought for sure that he'd fight over his new toys and insist on opening them all just to loose the parts - no argument. Let's play, ARGH! I have had some fun at such events in the past, but this one goes down in the books as one I'd like to repeat! It seemed every time I turned around expecting disaster or at least uncontrolled chaos, I found my DS playing joyfully with all his friends!