oh hi there.
how was your weekend?
ours was . . . weird.
good parts and not so good.
i'm sure you all have those too.
you all know that
i have been so tired and worn out lately.
{and i have heard from so many other moms that i am not alone}.
we mamas tend to overwork ourselves.
i am taking some good advice and asking the Lord to show me what to say no to.
anyhow, all that to say, my sweet husband ordered me to go to bed early on friday night, which i did.
like right after 9. crazytown.
he told me to sleep in.
when i woke up the house was quiet.
i didn't even know they had left except that i had a text on my phone that it was daddy donut day.
yay!!
they stayed gone until 9:00.
that was a wonderful refreshing time...i slept until 8 and then sat in my bed with coffee & carrot cake and did some online christmas shopping until they got back.
while listening to christmas music.
yeah, it was pretty awesome.
it was so needed and filled my cup.
i have a good, good man.
okay so let's move on to saturday night.
we had planned to take the kids to see the christmas lights at silver dollar city.
our kids love it, but we haven't seen it all lit up for christmastime.
we've been seeing commercials for it and had been planning to take the kids sometime around the holidays so they could ride the train, see the lights and enjoy the park all christmasy and magical.
can you see where this is going?
okay some things to note:
we said no to going out on a group date with some friends of ours because we wanted to make sure we got to SDC before it got too cold to go.
apparently aj had a feeling that we shouldn't go to SDC that night but just brushed it off and didn't say anything because he didn't want to be curmudgeony.
sooo.. we decided to leave in the afternoon since we were just going for the lights anyway {bad idea #1} and ruby and saw could get naps in.
we got on the road about 1:45.
our usual 2 hour trip ended up taking 3 hours when we got about a mile to the turnoff and the traffic was
completely stopped.
this is the moment our hearts sank and we had the feeling that we just wanted to turn around and go home.
we pressed on.
and waited and entertained and sang christmas carols for about an hour until we got to our parking space at the very farthest spot imaginable in the farthest out parking lot.
then we realized dressing our kids in hoodies with no extra hats or gloves was a bad idea for walking around outside at night in december.
oh and at this point ruby was over it. awesome.
so we head to the line to wait for the trolley.
this normally takes about 10 minutes to get on and ride into the park.
we waited foreverrrrrr.
maybe an hour?
then it ended up that avery, ruby and i got on a tram and aj, saw & fin had to wait for the next one.
this was ridiculous.
we were separated from each other and our phones would not work.
so then we spent the next however long trying to call and text each other and not finding each other.
avery and i were waiting by the entrance, entertaining ruby while she played in dirty water on the pavement.
somehow AJ got past us and into the park and had no idea where we were.
finally our phones work and we got reconnected but i was out of sorts by this point.
we get in and start looking for a warm place to eat dinner.
we also realize at this point how difficult it is to keep track of four children in an amusement park
in. the. dark.
with what seemed like 4 trazillion people there.
stressful. in a word.
we tried to keep chipper and make the best of it for our kids...pointing out the pretty lights and exclaiming over how beautiful everything was....but inside we were mostly just in survival mode.
we saw a quick light show and then wandered all over and finally found a place to eat dinner insideish.
it was a typical $30, not that great of food dinner that we ate with cold hands.
at this point i'm realizing that i'm a fair weather friend of SDC and i need to just stick to going when it's super warm.
this mama doesn't like to be cold.
okay so we do a bit more wandering around.
we stopped for hot chocolate and the sweet, sweet man there gave us a giant cookie for free.
he said "are these all yours?"
i smiled and said, "yes," preparing for the typical "you've got your hands full!" but instead he reached in the warmer and got a big plate sized cookie out for us.
so sweet.
i actually cried thinking about it as we were walking.
i knew it was Jesus loving on us and showing us that He was there.
i take ruby and sawyer on the carousel.
we go towards the train depot and realize the line in insanity.
like wait 2 hours kind of deal.
so we break it to our kids that we can't do that.
luckily we had told avery from the get go that we probably wouldn't be riding rides, that we were just going for the lights and holiday stuff.
we looked through the christmas shows and found the shortest one available.
Frosty was a 20 minute show starting at 8:00....yes that is our kids normal bed time and about 2 hours past ruby's bed time.
thumbs up.
thankfully it was really cute and all but ruby really enjoyed it.
they all wanted to do some more things but we said it was so late and ruby was done.
we had to go home.
i think we finally made it out to our car about 9.
so, it was honestly pretty disappointing to make a four {five} hour round trip, spend four hours there and basically eat dinner and watch a 20 minute show.
somehow, though, we were able to roll with the punches and chalk it up to a learning experience.
sigh. live and learn.
okay the fun doesn't stop here.
thankfully on the way home 3 of the 4 kids fell asleep almost immediately.
i was dozing in and out until all of the sudden AJ is slamming on the breaks so hard and honking the horn.
i squeezed my eyes shut and just waited for the hit, saying, "Jesus please, Jesus please."
the hit didn't come so i opened my eyes to see a huge cow standing in the middle of the highway right in front of us.
thank. you. Jesus. that we did not hit that thing going 75 miles an hour.
thank you Jesus that it had white spots on it that AJ barely saw.
thank you Jesus that no one was behind us.
thank you Jesus for protecting our little family once again.
whew....i could almost see the angels pushing that cow back.
so we get home around 11 pm and start hauling our sleepy children inside.
and then we hear it.
the dripping.
and then we feel it.
squishy carpet.
this is what we came home to:
only i took this picture yesterday after we had cleaned up the mess.
you can't tell in the picture but that carpet is sooooaked.
water was literally dripping out of the ceiling.
AJ ran upstairs to our bathroom to find the toilet pipe
spraying water.
who knows how long that had been going on.
thank you Jesus that we did not stay the night in branson like AJ had thought about.
anyhow, i got the kids in bed while AJ frantically got the water turned off.
then we spent the next hour, cleaning up popcorn ceiling off the carpet and using every towel we own to sop up the carpet.
it was insane.
honestly, the night had been so crazy, this didn't even surprise me.
AJ was just sick over it.
we did all we could do and finally crashed into bed in the wee hours of the morning.
yesterday it was looking much better.
we had fans on it all day and took our freshly washed and dried towels and did another soaking up session last night.
we made it to church yesterday and honestly had a really good day.
so....our take aways...
testing of our faith produces endurance.
we are thankful for that rough night so that we appreciate the easy ones all the more.
we are thankful that we saw God's provision and protection for us in so many ways.
even in harder times we realize it could always be so much worse.
when we have those nagging feelings that we should or shouldn't do something...we need to take the time to pray and listen to the Holy Spirit. :)
i am thankful that we were able to make the best of a night that was not what we expected.
i think the kids will see it as a good memory even though it was hard on us.
from here on out i only want to go to theme parks on weekdays.
the end. :)
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