Family Alive

The start of this road trip has just been one bump-in-the-road after another. Believe me, no one is looking forward to 15 days traveling to Wisconsin/Minnesota to see friends and family than me. But it’s been hard to keep a good attitude about all the miles that lie in front of us with all the problems we’ve had since before we even started.

Analise has had Girl Scout Day Camp all week, and Friday was to be the camp program at 2:30. We were going to go together, and leave for our trip right from camp. Thursday I got tons of cleaning and laundry done, but no packing, because a friend had invited Josiah to play for the day (and she was going to bring him to the camp). I was thrilled at the thought of 4.5 hours to myself on Friday, tons of time to get all the packing done.

Analise woke up Friday morning with a large bug bite on her leg, so we gave her Benadryl and rubbed some itch cream on it, and iced it while we drove to camp. I dropped Josiah off, and 10 minutes after I’d gotten home to get started on my day, the camp nurse called. She was bothered by how swollen her leg was, and it was really bothering her. So I headed out for another 50-mile round trip to camp to pick Analise up. We spent a bit of time finding her group and saying goodbye, since she wouldn’t be at the program. Then we zipped over to the doctor’s, who agreed it was probably a spider bite. He gave us a prescription for an antibiotic (just what I need… a bottle of medicine to keep cold for 10 days, and battle with Analise to take. UG!). We got home at 1pm. I got started packing, and Josiah came home at 1:50. Thankfully, Grandma came to play with the kids at 2:30, and after a stop at the pharmacy and one quick trip back home for a forgotten item, we were on our way by 3:50pm, actually about the same time as if we’d left from camp. But my packing was rushed and disorganized (and one set of DVD player headphone was accidentally packed buried in the back), and I was a tired, frazzled mess who had already spent over 3 hours in the car to camp and back twice yesterday BEFORE we left on an 8 hour trip to St. Louis.

It was a long trip, with tired kids, forcing Analise to take her medicine, and lots of grumpiness by everyone. We finally arrived at the super cool Moonrise Hotel at 1am, tucked into bed at 1:30.

Josiah was up at 6:30, and of course, pretty much the only bag Brian didn’t manage to unload was the snack bag, but the kids played quietly until 8. We had a good morning at Panera and then the kids and I went to Forest Park and played on the playground.

I let them ride their scooters for a bit, until Josiah tumbled and cracked his lip open. He screamed for 15 minutes, when a sno-cone finally calmed him a bit. But his poor lip and cheek have been bothering him off and on all day.  It looked jagged and ugly to begin with, then it looked better for a while, but by the evening, it was looking ugly again. Is that normal for split lips?

We headed off to the bike race this afternoon, and arrived in time for the kids to do their first race without training wheels. They did AWESOME! Josiah won (his group of 2), but he was so fast! And Analise was 2nd, and the first girl! They got t-shirts, ribbons and even teddy bears as their prizes. We then had a couple bike tumbles, which I guess is to be expected.

It rained 3 times during Brian’s 1-hour race, and we eventually ended up soaked, and the car got wet bc we left a window open (when it wasn’t raining it was quite hot!). Poor Brian raced well until he flatted with 2 laps to go, and then he ended up 2 places out of the money after chasing the group to the finish. We were all drenched and exhausted and quite grumpy after the bike race. But we drove down to see the Arch, and even saw a rainbow over it (barely visible in the picture below). The last plus was that we enjoyed two trips to our favorite Noodles & Company today, and our hotel is really comfortable and cool.

The sunset from our hotel room window was a lovely reminder of God’s grace and faithfulness. Thank goodness His mercies are new every morning! Tomorrow is another (BIG) bike race, a 6hr drive to Dubuque, IA where we’ll spend the night before driving on to Shell Lake on Monday. I know this trip will be worth it, though! I’m just praying God would grant a huge heaping of grace for each other and anything else “exciting” that happens!