3 states in 10 hours

Peter has this deep Clark Griswold streak in him. In case you don’t know who that is, please go rent National Lampoons Vacation and Christmas Vacation…it will all become very clear. So, in keeping with the idea that a holiday is not a holiday until your children have looked at you and thought “Dear Lord, please don’t let me grow up to be THIS person”, we decided that the only way to really bring our family closer was to get in the truck and drive in three different states in one day!!

And by “closer” I mean “ready to leave our children at the Georgia border rest stop”.

To give you an example of what our day was like, this was Rachael’s prayer tonight….

“….and, please, help Mommy and Daddy not to be so mean when we ask them how much farther it is…and help us not to ask so many times…and for us all to just get home soon. Amen.”

Do I need to shed any more light on that one?

Thanksgiving was great! We went to my parent’s house, my sister and her family was there, my brother and his family was there and Peter’s mom was able to drive over to join us for dinner. My parents don’t have a large house and there were 18 people in attendance. The food rocked…my contribution was driving over to pick up the Honey Baked Ham…don’t judge me, I had to stand in line for like 20 minutes! My sister’s daughters blew me away by how much they’d grown and changed and become EXACTLY like her….they will probably want to disown me from the Aunt Guild after this, but looking at her kids is like looking into the face of the person who drove me insane as a child. I’m glad to tell all of you parents….like me….out there with bickering children…like mine…there is hope that your children will eventually grow up to like each other…a LOT!

The reason that we had to make another quickie trip to Atlanta is because Peter has to be in place and ready to start his job on December 5th. Now, enjoy this little piece of divine work. Peter had been talking to a person in the new HR department about his need to find a place to live, and one of other HR people jokingly said that he could have her apartment. It turns out that not only is her apartment perfectly located, priced right and available for move-in next weekend, BUT the lease is up in May…just the time we’re planning to make the big move up. Sweeeet! Like that? So we had to come up and meet Jennifer and organize her move-out and Pete’s move-in. She’s actually going to let him move in on her lease so that there doesn’t have to be a transfer of lease, because it’s darn near impossible to find a place willing to rent for less than a year.

So, now he has an apartment to move into next weekend. We have to get him some essentials to make it through the next six months. The kids are now realizing that this separation is really going to happen and it’s tough on them. It’s tough on Pete and me, but Rachael keeps acting like each time Pete leaves the room it might be the last time she’s going to see him and Peyton is just clinging to him when she can. Peter’s going to miss Peyton’s 4th birthday, we don’t know how we’re going to make the Christmas holiday and we’re both going to struggle with compensating for all that other brings into the relationship…I won’t have anyone to open really stubborn jars and he won’t have anyone to nag that he’s left his socks on the living room floor. How will we survive?

The kids are not coping well with the temperature change. When we got out of dinner tonight the thermometer in the truck read 40 degrees. As we were driving back to the hotel, Rachael made a very profound commentary on weather.

“Hey, that says 37…did that just go down?”

“Yes, it did.”

Pause

“Well, crud.”

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
—Anissa