A Long Journey Home

I have a new love-hate relationship with travel these days. While the prospect of seeing family or new places is inviting and exciting as ever, traveling with children adds a level of logistical difficult that can cross your eyes and leave you longing for the couch and remote! But alas, wanderlust and family ties prevail and we hit the road on a regular basis. What I’ve learned at this point is that patience is the key. Timelines, shimelines – those things will kill you when the family picks up to go! It is imperative that the male urge to conquer the road be quelled in favor of flexibility. Case in point: our current drive home from Arkansas.

We are setting a new record in the amount of time it takes to drive home from the family farm. The trip began innocently enough with aspirations of an early departure after breakfast. And, 10:30am is after breakfast. So far so good. But, right before lunch the events turned ugly – blow out, left rear tire! God was looking out for us: the tire went out without any sudden jerks or loss of control; we pulled to the side and immediately onto an off-ramp (we literally didn’t have to drive on the shoulder at all!); at the end of the ramp was a business with a parking lot where we were able to pull in and park completely away from traffic! Thanks God. With the spare on we knew we would be buying a tire, but lunch was the first priority for the kiddos. 5 hours in Rockwall later, we headed into Dallas. Realizing how late it would be getting in we decided to see if we could stop in Belton and stay the night with Cheryl’s sister, Karen. They were great hosts.

We are heading home this AM, but who knows where the road will take us!? Maybe we’ll take a detour for site-seeing. Patience and flexibility can go both ways, ya know!