On the Road Again

On Wednesday evening, May 20th, we left Matthew's parents house to go and spend one more day in the Guilford area where much of my family is. We spent the day doing a mixture of relaxing and some last minute packing and reorganizing. That evening was one of my favorites - my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and my cousin along with his family, came over and we made homemade pizza together, talked, looked at pictures, and had a wonderful evening together. I was having so much fun and enjoying myself that I forgot to take pictures!

The next morning, Friday the 22nd, we began the trip back to South Dakota...."On the road again" was pretty much our mantra for the whole 35 days of traveling!!! Less than two hours down the road we stopped at a rest area and met up with my Uncle Sheldon - he's not to much older than I am so we were more buddies than anything else and I've always treasured our relationship. That evening is when the trouble began.....Here's the full story for those that want to know. We were on the highway going anywhere between 65 and 70 mph and were trying to decide if we should stop for gas when we planned on stopping in about another hour for the night anyway. People needed to stretch and the kids were hungry so, after passing 3 or 4 exits, we decided to go ahead and pull off and eat our packed lunch at the gas station instead of at the hotel. At the end of the exit ramp there were 2 gas stations, one on either side, and we chose the one with cheaper gas. Once we pulled in we saw a police car who was there for a fender bender that had just occurred in their parking lot. As he was filling up, Matthew noticed the wheel of the trailer - the hub was completely ruined! He looked at me and said "We're done".....We parked there and, upon further inspection, Matthew noticed that the bearing were gone - as in they were nothing more than dust. He headed over to talk to the police officer who was just getting ready to pull out and over the coarse of the next 45 minutes or so, while the kids and I ate supper, the officer called tons of garages and was trying to find anything that would be open. Nothing was. Keep in mind it was after closing time on a holiday weekend. During our conversation with the policeman he told us what we sort of already knew - in this type of situation the entire wheel and hub come off of the axle and, at highway speeds, the axle drops and digs into the road causing the trailer to flip, often taking the vehicle with it. Finally we decided to call a wrecker who was located just across the road and he towed it over to his place and parked it for the night. The officer gave us a list of all the local repair shops who, in theory, could help us and away we went to look for a hotel. We got the last available room at an expensive rate because of both the holiday and the local West Point graduation taking place the next day. At that point we were being told that we wouldn't be able to do anything before next Tuesday and then we may need to order parts that would take even longer. The hotel we were in told us we had to be out that night, they had no rooms open. Matthew woke early Saturday morning and began calling the list of garages in hopes of getting a hold of one that might be open - again, nothing was. (In the meantime we had been talking to my parents who were pulling strings on their end, as well as the pastor of the church in Ohio where we were scheduled to be the next morning for services) That's when the doors began to open....we finally called the wrecker to see if he knew of any other options. Almost on the spot the owner of the business himself said he knew where we could get the parts today and he would fix it - his hobby is building custom race cars and he had all the tools you could possibly want. By 2pm that afternoon we were back on the road and made if safely to Ohio in time for our meeting! Do I even have to point out how many times throughout this situation that the Lord had His Hand on us? It is so humbling - one of those situations where you want to literally fall on your face before Him and Praise Him, Praise Him, Praise Him.

The man who fixed it showing Matthew the exact part we needed to pick up and he also gave us directions to get to the location 45 minutes away where we went to get it.

The mess of what was left - the dust on the ground is what was left of the bearings.

The spindle

And the church in Ohio - we had a wonderful time and were so blessed by this family of believers whose generosity in the middle of our situation was amazing!

It was such a beautiful day and I snapped some quick pictures of the kids.

This is one, if not the, favorite picture that I've ever taken of Zach - I love it!

After church we had lunch with a group of church people at the pastors house - fortunately for our kids they are grandparents and had lots of backyard fun for little people.

This lady was Alana's Sunday School teacher and couldn't remember having ever held a frog so Logan talked her into it=)

Well, folks, I know that was lengthy, but for my own sake I wanted to have a written testament of what happened during that leg of the trip. I wanted all of you to know what a great and merciful God we serve!