a difficult vacation.

The World's Largest Suspension Bridge -Hurrah! *sarcasm*

Ahh, the difficulties of vacation…

Last week the fam went up, up, up to the Upper Peninsula of MI over the  scariest bridge of all time Mackinaw Bridge.  I should have known the week was going to be bad when a) we left 4 hours late b) I realized I had forgotten all of Ransom’s underwear & my toothbrush and c) it was rainy and dark while we went over the bridge -at 10:30pm- and I was so terrified I had a panic attack.

From there it just got worse.  We stopped at a teeny-tiny, ghetto, poor looking rest stop where I was literally afraid to get out of the car.  (I’m sort of scared of being “up north” in general –all I can think of is the KKK, bears, dangerous or otherwise recklessly bored semi truck drivers, people who don’t like black people, rapists or unidentified animals that may kill me in painful ways.  Forgive me, but I’m a city girl.  I’m safer in Detroit thank you very much).

So, we get to said scary rest stop and there’s a GIANT 150 pound dead stuffed baby wolf on display.  Wow!  Thank you so Much! *more sarcasm*  It wasn’t so much an issue except that when Dave started to read about it we learned the pack was growing & this “little fella,” got hit by a car only a few years back. Terrific.

We were up at InterVarsity’s Cedar Campus for Dave to do a week of student training.  The plan was that the kids & I would accompany him for a vacation since we all love Cedar Campus and after 14 years of going there have never had a bad time.  Until this year.

I hate to be a Debbie-Downer but it was a difficult vacation. Mostly, because I didn’t actually get to vacate.  I spent almost 5 days of cleaning up the barf of my 4.5 yr. old, my 6.5 month old AND my 35 yr. old.  My baby boy wasn’t sleeping well & my toddler wasn’t eating well, my husband was super stressed being sick and having to lead 6-7 hours of content each day.

I think what made it all the more difficult was being exhausted.  Rhys has been sleeping all night for awhile now so reverting back to Rhys waking up every 3-4 hours was just too much to allow me to keep my sanity.

Midweek, a dear friend died.  A friend from seminary, Chuck Breen was young, godly, kind, wonderful and died way too soon after a fairly brief battle with Cancer.  He was my third friend from seminary to die in the past year following Ryan & David.  It made me very very very sad.  And, then due to the logistics of travel, I couldn’t attend the funeral.

The next day, I got a call from home that one of my dear family members was in trouble.  This also had me worried and very very very sad.  And, did I mention, I was all ready so tired.

That night, some of our students communicated some disappointments they had with us.  It was totally deserved and appropriate, but on top of everything else made me very very very sad.

Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to get home.

The ONE redeeming part of the whole “vacation” was my desire to get pictures of the boys by the cross.  If you read the post There\’s no place like… then you saw the pictures of Ransom at the cross every year since he’s been born.  Therefore, I made it my mission to get those pictures!  Enjoy…

The pics actually make it seem like we had a good week…

The good news?  We made it home all of us safe and sound in a little under 10 hours!   My mother-n-law, Sara came over the next day to help us get our lives back together, we had a restful Mothers Day followed by a lunch/movie date on Monday.

Tagged as: bears, Cedar Campus, Cedarville, Chuck Breen, Detroit, InterVarsity, KKK, Mackinaw Bridge, pictures at the cross