Year 3, August 30th, 2018: Labor Day Weekend, Part 1, Good Grief

Are we going? Are we not going? What time are we going? Is Mom and Dad going and when? Back and forth we went, which only served to drive me crazy! Any kind of deadline and lack of plans causes anxiety, which in turn causes me to not have nice words to say. But, we did end up with a lot of down time waiting on Benaiah and Jared to get home from school. Justin spent most of the day at Grandma's house mowing, while Keturah kept Abishai busy I could get all the last minute things done. Since we weren't leaving until 4:30pm, I had more than enough time to move slow and to think. In this case, having the time to think about other things besides leaving soured my mood because I couldn't wrap my mind around some things I learned on Wednesday. I won't articulate them here, but I was upset, depressed, fearful, and grieved. Grief has so many emotions, and I'm pretty sure I have felt them in the past 24 hrs again. Most of all, it makes your world stop, and you don't know how others can keep moving on around you. It distracts you from the here and now. And this current set of different griefs slowed me down a ton. And any time I'm out of it, a single change can shake me up and make me anxious and mad. So, that's how the day started, but as I slowly got things together, I moved on and focused more on the tasks ahead and we got out of the house one time.

However, it still took us 7 hr to take a 5.25 hr trip. Traffic was slow in Indianapolis and we stopped for nearly an hour for supper at Wendy's. Gary and Leah didn't end up leaving today because Gary has had a tough schedule this week and he was exhausted. We had all the kids come with us so we could get as much lake time as possible before 60% chance of rain comes on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Keturah and Abishai slept for 2 hrs, which was a good and bad thing. They had a hard time sleeping again until reached the cottage, which is in Walkersville, one hour from Muskegon, Michigan Abishai kept saying, “It's so far away!” What Jared thought he said yesterday was, “GROW up take long time!” when he really meant was, “GO up (to the vet's office 30 minutes north of us) take long time!” And he said these things with a very heavy sighing voice. We got to the cottage abour 11:30pm and quickly whisked everyone off to bed. A tree had fallen on the road to the cottage a few days previous, so Uncle Ron had to meet us a mile away from the cottage in order to show us the back roads in. Well, the backroads were other private driveways and a backyard! Wow! But we made it.

It's always fun to pass the Indianapolis northside campus of Indiana Wesleyan University.  Jared went to Lincoln Christian (College) University for his freshman year, and then trasnferred to this campus for his sophmore year because he was aiming to get a degree in criminal justice because he wanted to get into the police department.  So, when for the first year we were dating, he was commuting the 30 minutes back and forth to his parents house.  When I came out to visit him, he took me to a philosophy class one morning.  I think that was spring 1999 and I was out there for the high school conference at the main campus of IWU in Marion, IN.  And because IWU was the only Christian school I knew of that had a pre-veterinary program and an extra special newer program called Honors College, I applied there and was easily accepted there.  Then Jared and I both attended IWU Marion campus that fall of 1999.  We returned for 2nd semester and within 2 days Jared had decided to drop the criminal justice degree and head back to LCU to get a bivocational degree in business and Bible (his dad helped start that program I believe).  Jared did not like the snottiness of some of the kids at IWU and it was almost twice the price of Lincoln.  But I had scholarships and loans tied up at IWU, so I remained there that semester.  Therefore, he was in Lincoln, IL, and I was in Marion, IN for the next 1 1/2 school years.  So, every other weekend, he would drive the 3 1/2 hrs from Lincoln to Indy, and then drive 2 hrs north to come get me and take me back to Indy (there's no straight route from Indy to Marion).  That's 8 1/2 hrs of driving on a Friday.  Then on Sundays, he would take me back to IWU, (4 hr round trip) and then on Monday morning he would drive the 3 1/2 hrs to Lincoln.  Classes at Lincoln didn't start until late morning/early afternoon to allow preaching students to get back to campus and be well rested if they had preached on Sundays, especially Sunday nights, up to a few hrs away.  Same on Fridays.  There were no classes on Friday afternoons.  IWU was a regular M-F school.  Jared graduated in 2001 and we got married.  I transferred to UIndy near our first apartment and home near/in Beech Grove and finished my last two years there.  I pass by that school sometimes, too.  Back and forth we went, but we both graduated with Bachelor's degrees within the normal 4 yrs including getting married and having Benaiah and one of us having great grades (that would be me).  Oh, and we both worked of course.  And volunteered at church.  And, we still have a different but similarly busy schedule.  Yikes!

Keturah didn't like the sunshine on the way up to Michigan.

We squeezed all 6 of us plus our luggage into our van.  And I'm glad we went together because then we had all day Friday to play, which was the best day for weather for the whole weekend.  And we all napped, except Jared of course.  Even I slept for a few minutes.  Car rides are exhausting!

If you can't have Chick Fil A, Wendy's or McDonald's are my safest gluten free option.  But why are Wendy's always so cold?  It makes the fries get cold too fast.  At Wendy's the others get the 4 for $4 deal and Jared usually gets it for Abishai, too.  Then he trades the nuggets for the extra sandwich.  You can get 4 items including an entree.  So typically that's fries, a frosty (or pop), chicken nuggets and then your sandwich of choice.  I can't tolerate the frosty or any of the breaded chicken options, so I typically get a baconater fries (although who knows what's in the cheese sauce) and sometimes chili or sometime a salad.  I always forget the chili can be pretty spicy and that I really shouldn't be eating any creamy dressing and cheese sauce on the fries.  Bellyache city.

On the dark roads heading to the cottage we all saw the moon!  Because the kids had taken naps, they were all wide awake after our dinner stop until our heads hit the pillows at the cottage, which was 11:30 pm!  And I think I wrote about it at some point, but US-31, our 4 lane undivided road in Greenwood and south goes all the way straight through to north of the cottage!  Well, it gets interrupted by Indianapolis, so you usually take 465 around the city, and again, you can a highway around other major cities, but how cool is it that the same numbered road (which isn't always a divided interstate road) goes for 100's of miles?  Awesome!