A New Year

Happy New Year everyone! We had an exciting New Years week. We left that Monday from Grandview, WA with the destination of Klamath Falls, OR. Josh's church in Grandview voted to buy us new tires, so Monday morning we packed up and headed to Yakima to get our new tires. After that we left and almost didn't make it to Oregon. We got stuck on Hwy. 97 and Caleb had to put our chains on. It took him almost 30 minutes to get them on, and then when we got over the hill we didn't need them anymore! But at least we made it over the hill. Once we hit the bottom of Oregon we started seeing snow again and for some reason everyone wanted to go 35 mph on the highway. It was very frustrating because the roads were dry with no ice whatsoever and there were still vehicles stuck in the snowbanks. We were trying to figure out how in the world they went off the road, but I still don't understand it. We finally made it to Klamath Falls, and met my old friend Bekah Donaldson (Frain) at a restaurant with the rest of her family. We haven't seen each other since I was a Junior in HS so it was really nice. Her mom and brother are living with her, so it was good to see them again too! We had a nice meal, and then we crashed at our hotel!
The second day, Tuesday, our destination was Bakersfield, CA. The GPS said it would take 10 1/2 hrs and it was pretty close. It was a loooooooooong day, but we made it. Caleb's Granny (great-grandma) lives there and her church let us use their Missions Apartment. We went to see her the next day, Wednesday, and had a great time. Most of you will know that our oldest child, Noah, is not a hugging person. He doesn't like to hug or be touched, but he gave Granny a big hug (for Noah) right away. It was so sweet and I almost cried! The kids were really good and we had a great time with Granny. She is so sweet and I felt like I've always known her even though I had never met her before. I started to do the lunch dishes until she told me that was the only thing she could do and she was going to be completely bored the rest of the day if I took that job away from her! haha, she makes me laugh.
That night we went to Granny's church, McKee Road Baptist Church, for their services. I was having really bad indigestion and could barely sit up straight, so I took Lela back to the apartment. We cuddled and rested until Noah and Kayla came running back in all excited and exclaiming "We're going to stay up until midnight and play games and eat food and make popcorn and watch movies!!!" I was about to call them crazy nuts until I remembered it was New Years Eve! The apartment is attached to the Fellowship Hall and the church really did stay up until Midnight doing all those things! So we didn't get much sleep Wednesday night.
Thursday we drove from Bakersfield, CA to Flagstaff, AZ. This was probably our worst and longest day. I don't know why this drive was so hard, but it seemed like we were never going to get there! We finally arrived at Bro. Feaster's house at about 7:30pm and they showed us the apartment where we would be staying. It wasn't anything more than a few mattresses on the nursery floor, but we were so exhausted we were just thankful for a warm place to lay down! I probably would've slept on a pew. We did drag ourselves out to eat since we hadn't eated since 11:30am and we were thankful we still had some Chili's gift cards left!!
Friday morning we were a little more jazzed about traveling and we left pretty early in the morning. We drove all the way to Pampa, TX (a little NE of Amarillo) with a few stops at some trading posts along the way. Caleb has decided he hates New Mexico. Every time we stopped for a bathroom break, we had to drive around to five different places before we could find somewhere that was open AND had a bathroom! I guess if I were more willing to use a port-a-potty we could've gone earlier, but I'd rather wait, thank you! We finally drug ourselves (dragged, drugged?) into Pampa around 10:30pm and crashed in the lovely Missions apartment there. I don't even remember putting the kids in bed, I was out as soon as I laid down (lied down, layed down? my mind isn't working grammatically tonight).
Saturday morning we were more than happy to get on the road because our final stop was Mustang, OK!! Caleb was up and got the kids into the van before I had even moved from the position I landed in the night before. We left Pampa by 7:30am which was a good thing, because we didn't find a place to stop for breakfast until 9:30am. We all decided we just had to have biscuits and gravy and what better place to get it than Braums!! We knew we were close to home when we saw that Braums. The rest of the drive seemed to drag, but we were in Mustang by 11:15am. We went to the church and saw Miss Vicki who was watching the kids for visitation, and then we went to lunch with Caleb's parents.
We had a good week of traveling with no major setbacks. Noah got his school done while traveling, we didn't have any car problems, and we never left anyone at a gas station. We are so thankful to the churches that let us crash in their Missions apartments. Churches may never how much of a blessing it is to be able to stay in one, but I feel it is a necessity in a church! Even if it's a few mattresses on the nursery floor! =)