Sweet Home Alabama

What I found about long road trips with a vehicle full of kids is this nugget of wisdom: It’s much like having a baby, definitely a labor of love and by the end all you care about is getting the kids OUT!

Truly, the kids did well with the trip, we managed to get up in just a little over 8 hours…Pete does it in 6 hours. It was a torrential downpour for half the trip and the road construction through part of it was miserable….Rachael says “Why don’t you just go faster?” Because the state patrol frowns on going monster-truck-madness on the Ford Escape in front of me.

But we made it, safe and sound and it’s awesome to be together. We’re in Valley, AL…feel free to look up the metropolitan area and check out all that it has to offer. Good luck with that search. It’s a sweet little town, tiny and very rural, but I personally find it fantastic that it has more WAFFLE restaurants than any place else on the planet.

Today we drove around and checked out the area together and Peter was able to show some gorgeous places he found and some properties we wanted to see. We’re out, trolling around and just seeing what there is to see and we turn a corner and THERE IT IS! I look over and I see a house that looks familiar…then we get to the perfect angle that the water tower is prominently displayed behind it…”Pete! Pete! It’s our meth house! That was our meth house, wasn’t it??”

Yeah, we got to see it in person….it was just what I’d dreamed it would be. Like an Extreme Home Makeover reveal! Only without the big bus, the people screaming and shouting OR the beautiful mansion…but there was that faint fear that we would break down and get stranded in that neighborhood. “Lock your doors, kids, and don’t make eye contact with anyone.”

We’ve been having a blast breaking in the Wii. I’m a little sore, the kids are showing their overall ability to whip my butt at any game and Rachael was thrilled to find out that she can bowl a perfect strike from the bathroom! Love that wireless. It is so cool, I’m thrilled that we got one and ALL the kids, big and little, are having a blast with it.

We don’t have much planned for our stay, we’re just planning to enjoy each other and this much-missed together time. I’m doing a little work to get Peter’s apartment in living order, he’s in the middle of a very Spartan life. I know that after I returned from Wal-mart today that it was the most food this apartment had seen at any one time. The kids ate dinner on an ironing board because Pete hasn’t gotten a table yet, but they found it to be an exciting adventure. It’s all good…there’s a Wii!

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
–Anissa