"are we there yet?"... the long road home

After driving ALL day on Thursday, participating in some snow adventures and a rehearsal on Friday, and throwing in a little shopping and a lot of wedding festivities on Saturday... Sunday had arrived and it was already time to make the long journey home. It is funny how much more excited you usually are about packing up and loading into a car for twelve hours when the adventure is upon you and somewhat unknown. However, when the adventure is over and you have already experienced the twelve hour drive once and have come to realize how long that actually is to be stuck in the car... the excitement just seems to fade and dread sets in strong.


Sunday morning we woke up, got packed, ate breakfast in our room with Mimi and Aunt Darlene (affectionately know by her grandchildren as "Mo") and loaded the car. The kids were not ready to be leaving Colorado so soon, and they definitely were not excited to be leaving behind the snow or McKay and Owen. (Who were getting to stay a few extra days!) However, there was a blessing in the midst of everything... Beckham was feeling much better! It is always so nice to see your child smile again, and Beckham woke up bright and early Sunday morning back to his happy little self!


As we began our long journey, we were surrounded with such magnificent beauty. A beauty that you cannot look at without realizing how amazing and miraculous our God truly is. It was so peaceful to just sit back and relish in His awesome creation. I began to understand what it is about the mountains that Matt loves so much. Unfortunately, the supernatural peace I felt didn't last me the whole trip. The trip back home just seemed SO MUCH LONGER. To my surprise, the kids did remarkably well. And when they began to struggle a little, we made a pit stop. We threw in a couple more on the way home simply because they were needed to lift out spirits. (Especially our pit stop at DQ Country for our blizzards! Ice cream tends to make everything better!) I think I truly was the one with the worst attitude, but I tried to keep it to myself.


For whatever reason, I have very few pictures of our trip home. (Maybe because I didn't want to document how painful I thought it was.) We did witness a few things along the way that caught my attention for one reason or another. Not long after we had begun our journey home, I spotted cars out in the middle of a small lake. Seriously...cars parked on the water? What? Okay, so the water was frozen... but how frozen was it? Was this really safe? Matt pointed out to me that they were all ice fishing. Wow! That is something you don't see everyday living in Texas!!! Needless to say, Beckham was as amazed as me!Later in the trip, Matt spotted several clouds of smoke. They grew larger and larger the closer we got to them. We were convinced that we were going to come upon a huge fire. We watched intently and with much anticipation. We were severely wrong. We soon spotted a plant of some kind with all kinds of smokestacks letting off these huge clouds of smoke. It did keep us entertained for quite some time though, which was a bonus indeed!

With only a few hours left in our journey home, we made one final pit stop. As we were filling up with gas, I spotted something that completely intrigued me. It was an eighteen wheeler with quite a message.
"Jesus Christ is Lord... not a swear word!" Wow! You don't see that everyday either. What a way to spread such a powerful message. Amen! That seemed to energize me a little, and helped me gear up for the last few hours of our journey.

Overall our trip to Colorado was awesome. However, we quickly realized that twenty-four hours in a car is a long way to drive for only forty-eight hours to spend somewhere! We might rethink that next time!!!