The best laid plans.....

It's amazing to me how things can get so turned around.  Plans change, things go wrong, it's just a fact of life. People wonder why I plan things last minute and this trip's planning catastrophe is just one of the many reasons why.

Scott and I have been planning a trip to South Carolina for this week since October.  We missed an opportunity to come up in October due to my pregnancy with Lilly and decided to replan it for this week.  When the Lord told us that we would be moving here, our plans seemed to fit right in line with his timetable!  It was the perfect opportunity to bring some of our "stuff" up before the move to save time and space later on.  We would have a peaceful mini-vacation before the stress of a move set in.  Long story short - we just arrived in South Carolina with 5 children, 4 suitcases, 3 adults, 2 guitars, 1 PS3, and thankful hearts that we even made it.

My sister closest to myself in age, Kayla, and her 2 children, Cameron and Cayden, joined us.  That in itself is an adventure.  With her children, the trip now had a 5yr, 3yr, 2yr, 1yr, and 1mo old on board.  Like I said, an adventure. 

Then there was my husbands 1991 Crown Victoria.  I don't know that they make cars like that anymore.  That wonderful car has held on for dear life - only two windows work, the lock is broke on one of the doors, the real leather seats are cracked and peeling, and the AC doesn't work (in Florida that's a big deal, especially when the windows don't roll down).  This vehicle's primary objective in life is to get Scott from home to work and back again.  It's not used for anything else as our family does all of our errands together whenever possible.  But, we had decided to bring it up to SC and leave it.  I wasn't sure it would make the trip!  It has a tendency to overheat, but it did alright since it's the middle of winter and not the Florida summer.

I should have figured how the trip would go when we woke up an hour and half late on the morning we were to leave.  Then the car seat I was to use for one of the children was missing the straps.  After a search, we decided it would have to work with a simple seat belt over the front.  The kids had to be buckled in and the rest of the luggage loaded.  After it all, we left at about 8:00am (we had planned to leave at 5:00am).  We got about 30 min from the house, when the traffic came to a complete standstill - just 1.2 miles from our exit.  It took us 45min to get to the exit and ALL traffic was being detoured onto that exit.  I got out an old-school map and found a route around the traffic.  It took us out of our way, but it was faster than waiting in traffic. 

On the round-about route, I was coming around a corner and a dog ran out in the road in front of me!  Almost threw me into the ditch.  When we got to our turn off I missed the first exit and stopped at the next turn off to check the map.  Scott didn't see me stop and almost plowed into my rear.  Smoke was flying out from the back tires because he hit the brakes so hard.  We finally got back onto the highway by 11:30am and were only about 2 hrs north of home.  Scott had worked till midnight the night before we left and didn't get much sleep.  I was driving in the center lane of a three lane highway and got into the fast lane to pass the vehicle in front of me.  I looked in my rear view mirror to see if Scott would follow and managed to look just in time to see his head fall back on the seat and his car to veer over both lanes of traffic and into the grass.  Kayla, who was in his car, must have screamed pretty loud, because he awoke just in time to swerve the car back onto the highway before hitting the wall of the overpass.

To say our drive up here was eventful is an understatement.  Besides the afore said, we had to stop every two hours for potty & breastfeeding breaks.  The 8hr trip had turned into a 12hr trip by the time we arrived last night at 8:00pm.

This morning was interesting as well!  With my three youngest siblings (10, 8, & 4yrs) still living at home, the total at breakfast this morning was 8 children and 5 adults.  Not to mention that all children are age 10 and younger, can you imagine the scene?