Destination: Arkansas

Well-traveled as I might consider myself, I know next to nothing about Arkansas.  I’ve never seen a PBS travel show about it.  I’ve never thought, “Oh, man!  Add it to the list!  I gotta’ get to Arkansas!”  Razorbacks and Hope: that’s the extent of my Arkansas trivia.  I’m not hating on Arkansas; it has just never made it onto my radar.  At all.

So it has been with some mirth that we’ve responded to inquiries about our holiday plans this week with a chipper, “We’re going to Arkansas!”  And with even more mirth we began to pile up the incoming brochures and travel guides.  They were ordered for us by my brother, who came up with the perfect home base for our Arkansas adventure: Devil’s Den.

There is actually more to recommend Devil’s Den that you might imagine, or more than I ever imagined, anyway, especially given the name.  There’s the Ozarks, with plentiful hiking, and river activities, and even the intriguing possibility of a zip-line adventure.  There’s also a nearby Civil War battlefield to visit, and somewhere in the vicinity are some presidential relics from the Clintons.

Of course, the biggest reason to visit Arkansas this week, is Texas.  It’s a 14 hour drive from my house to my brother’s - not an impossible distance, but certainly a challenging one for our two larger families.  It has been two years since I last saw my nephews and my niece is almost a year old without my having met her.  So we agreed to meet up half way, and Arkansas was the ticket.  If the only thing I get out of visiting Devil’s Den is a three-day-long game of Skip-bo with our combined 7 offspring, I will come home with glorious memories of Magnificent Arkansas.

And that could make me become a regular.

“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’ Hosea 2:1

I've been slain by an aluminum bullet.

Just imagine tooling down the highway, the whole family is singing On the Road Again in chorus together, and tagging along behind is that shiny aluminum bullet of Americana – an Airstream camper.  It is something we’ve dreamed of since the success of our first tent camping trip.  It was wildly successful, despite long nights of thunderstorms, foul pit toilets, and inescapable mosquito clouds that threatened to carry our babies away.   If we can have that much fun on the meager sleep and damp accommodations a vinyl tent can provide, imagine the possibilities with the relative comfort and ease afforded by a classic, beautiful camper, with its on-board facilities, functional kitchenette, and enormous shade awning.  Take a moment and dream with me…

Of all things, an Airstream turned up last week, parked along the highway with a “For Sale” sign.  After driving by for a week and averting our eyes, my husband and I both came clean the same day that we’d had our eye on that most beautiful incarnation of outdoor accommodations.  We pulled up next to it and found out that it was actually being offered at the kind of humble price we could consider.  We took my dad by, a guy with plenty of experience buying campers, and he didn’t find anything to stop us, not from the outside anyway.  We made another visit to our Landyacht when someone was actually there to let us in, and it was exactly what we expected inside – outdated, but clean and usable.  No odors, no water damage, all the windows opened and closed, the owner says all the systems operate: an incredibly functional camper for an incredibly accessible price.

This is a little bigger, but similar.

So we’ve spent the last two days mulling it over.  The first, biggest, and most absurd con: we don’t have a truck.  The camper would have to sit on our property as a children’s playhouse until our Caravan dies and warrants a new vehicle purchase (this could happen soon, but how soon is an unknown).  The other cons are less absurd, but important non-the-less.  In the last eighteen months, we have had a baby, bought a hobby farm, sold a house, traded a convertible in on a minivan, and bought a tractor – oh, and I’ve quit my job.  In the next six, we still hope to build a chicken coup, get chickens, build a lean-to, and add at least one grass-eating livestock to our family – oh, and finally get the basement boxes unpacked.  In addition to all that, we’re seriously, seriously considering a kitchen remodel.  Every time I can’t open the door of the fridge far enough, because it’s crowded up against a wall, or I have to run the dishwasher twice in one day, because the “Spacesaver” under-sink model has only half an upper rack, I’m reminded of the need to put all our spare pennies in the kitchen fund.

If we don’t buy the camper, I know, with some certainty, that the day will come when we will look at each other and say, “Man, if only we’d bought that camper.”  If we buy the camper, I know, with some certainty, that my kitchen is going to stay in its current state for another year.  Of course, that may happen anyway – we have a chicken coop to build after all.  But knowing that only makes it harder to pass on my Airstream dreams.  Self denial stinks.  Really really.

a time to search and a time to give up  Ecclesiastes 3:6

We're tablet addicts.

It was too late to head out.  My husband had a horrible day at work and was just too exhausted to load up the car and drive the first few hours of our Spring Break road trip.  Rather than push it, and potentially get the trip off to a horrible start, we decided to get a quick dinner and get everyone to bed early.  Then we could take off first thing, well rested, as the sun came up.  Or, as I like to call it – because it amuses and motivates the kids – the Butt-Crack of Dawn.

My husband’s day really didn’t improve when the IHOP waitress dumped an entire large soda on the baby and me, then cried while she served us the rest of our meal.  At least it wasn’t coffee, but it seemed ironic that we actually hadn’t ordered a pop.

By the time the kids were all in bed, we were exhausted, but still a little wound up from the day’s aggravations, so we got our tablets out to unwind for a few minutes before trying to go to sleep.  Suddenly my husband says, with alarm, “Do you know how late it is?”  No, I didn’t know.  I was just using up the last of my 150 moves on Tripletown and assumed it was getting close to 9:30.   “It’s 11 o’clock!  We better get to bed!”  Our oldest daughter had already set her alarm for twenty minutes before Dawn’s Butt would be Cracking, so there was no revising our departure.

The question we had to ponder was, where did two hours go?  What makes the whole thing even more pathetic is that we don’t even have wifi at our house – we were playing with the off-line features available on our tablets!  Lord help us when we stop at a McDonald’s with free wifi.  We may never actually arrive at our destination on this road trip.

If we had not wasted all this time, we could already have been there and back twice." Genesis 43:10

I'm itching for a road trip.

Between the baby, the move, and financially preparing for me to quit my job, family vacationing has been off the table for the last couple years.  Granted, and my husband would be quick to point it out, we did travel with the kids each of the last two summers, to Arizona and to Wyoming, but both times it was on short notice for a memorial service.  We tried to make the most of the time off and family togetherness, but, in my mind, it really doesn’t qualify as a true “family vacation.”  We have thoroughly enjoyed a few weekend visits to neighboring cities, and I wouldn’t complain about Minneapolis, Chicago, or the Wisconsin Dells, but, again, these short, fun weekend trips were really more “getaways” than “vacations.”

Mostly, those occasions served to remind me how awesome it is to hit the open road with the whole family in tow.  I love those long carefree days of seeing new things together, listening to old school music on the radio, eating deviled ham sandwiches for lunch, and taking turns watching Star Wars movies in the back seat with the kids.  There’re KOA campgrounds calling my name, World’s Biggest Balls of stuff to be photographed and explored.  There’s national history to be learned in person, hotel pools to be cannonballed into, mountain paths to be hiked, and, I hope with all my heart, an ocean to be splashed in.  I don’t care whether we go east, west, or south; I just have that deep hankering to go.

It’s not entirely reasonable.  The baby’s still small.  The house isn’t unpacked or organized.  The summer is still months off.  It always costs more than you budget, someone inevitably spills, craps, or vomits in the back of the van.  At some point, your will to rough it breaks down and you spring for a two-room suite that gives you a locking door between yourselves and the kids.  Yes, I know all the limitations.  But the heart wants what the heart wants.  I long for a 2-4000 mile, 14-20 day adventure, together with my favorite people.  I think it’s road trips that make us American; it’s our patriotic duty to explore this vast and beautiful nation.  Are you buying this?  Because I really want to go.

You brought us here and gave us this land rich with milk and honey. Deuteronomy 26:9

I'm going to steal a child

We were on vacation and took the girls down to the hotel pool for a swim.  There was a father there with his daughter and she quickly made friends with our girls.  Within minutes of seeing that our children were happily engaged with one another, he gave my husband and me a knowing look, and disappeared out the door before we could even blink back an S-O-S code of, “Wait!  What do we know?!”  Maybe it was a phone call, maybe a beer run, but he didn’t come back for half an hour.  It seemed exceptionally trusting.  Perhaps he was lulled into a sense of security by the fact that we apparently already had two little girls of our own, but we thought it would be funny to tell him that we had been collecting little girls at hotel pools from Davenport to Sioux Falls.

It amazes me how often young children befriend us at places like the playground and the zoo, with no apparent guardian in site.  They tell us their names, birthdays, phone numbers, and social security numbers with complete abandon.  When we play games with our kids, they beg for a turn; when we break out snacks, they sit down for their portion.  We wonder how far we could take it before someone would finally approach us and suggest that we give them back their child.

I know its prejudiced, but I usually, mentally, attribute these orphans to that guy hanging out in the shade by the shelter, talking loudly into his Bluetooth earpiece.  Even when they aren’t neglecting their kids, the guys at the playground with their Bluetooth sets bug the crap out of me.  What are you signaling your kids when you take them out to play with your phone attached to your ear?  “Hey, kids, let’s go have a great time together!  Unless, of course, someone calls my phone.  I won’t even have to look down and see who’s calling, because I already know I would rather talk to a telemarketer than play with you.”

Of course, I admit, I’m not perfectly attentive to my kids, every moment they’re at the playground.  I’m sure someone has at some time seen me checking to see if my witty status posted when I should have been commending my daughter for her exceptional cart-wheeling (or preventing her from cart-wheeling down some piece of equipment that could have killed her).  But I generally prefer spending time with my kids over beer runs, phone calls, or YouTube.  I hope that is what I generally communicate to them – and that you do the same for your kids.  Because someday one of these little playground orphans is going to be too darn adorable to cut loose, and I’m going to take him home.

When his parents found him, they were amazed. His mother said, "Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been very worried, and we have been searching for you!" Luke 2:48

I Ran Out of Compassion

After a tumultuous week of emotional ups and downs, with a long day of travel and to-do's ahead, I was not prepared for one of those flights where you end up with a headache and a voucher for 4000 extra frequent flier miles.  Being unprepared was never a good method of prevention.

Seated in the very last row of the plane with my girls on either side of me and my husband several rows ahead of us, we were just getting settled when a father boarded with his son, a kid about 3, I would guess, definitely an older 2 at least.  Said child was, already, crying.  Dad strapped him into his carseat across the aisle from us, briefly suggested that he look out the window (which someone else had vacated for him when they saw the kid was already crying), and wasted no time pulling out a bag of lollipops for his little guy to choose from.

As soon as the sucker was gone, the rage began.  For an hour and a half, the person in front of him got to enjoy the on-board massage chair - with little feeting pounding the back of his seat.  The youngster brought forth peal after peal of screaming.  Several times, he screamed so loudly that my daughter and I involuntarily covered our ears, because it physically hurt.

Now, I have great empathy for the parents of screaming toddlers normally.  I've been in that stressful situation where a little one loses it and you have to bring forth every measure of creativity to get them to calm down and stow their horns.  But when a parent starts to count, the child should know to what number they are counting, and that something is going to happen when that number is reached.  Dad kept starting over at one every time he hit five, but nothing happened at five!  He was helpless to prevent his kid from pounding the seat in front of him, or piercing all our eardrums with screams so loud they dulled the engine noise.

Call me a parenting snob, but my kids, even at their worst, were not allowed to treat other people like that.  Not even at 2 1/2.  Basic consideration is to teach your children that they are not allowed to hurt other people, no matter how upset or angry they, themselves, might be.   I wanted to offer Dad my seat, between two kids who were behaving with absolute decorum, even while undergoing auditory torture, and give his son a firm, but gentle reminder that strangers might not be as nice as Dad if he kept up his shenanigans.

Others on the flight were so considerate, I nearly cried.  They suggested that his ears were hurting and offered pieces of gum.  They offered their snacks and electronics.  Nearing the end of the flight, with no remedy working, the flight attendant suggested to the father that he pick up a bottle of kiddie pain meds before he put Jr on another segment, if the problem was ears; Dad says, "are you telling me to give my kid drugs?"  His snotty response to her empathic plea really topped it off for me.  The flight attendant, to my amazement, kept it discrete when she brought out "we're sorry you were on the flight from hell" vouchers.

My head pounding, I tried to remind myself that my 2 hours with this family was a small punishment compared to living 24/7 with the monster-child they are creating.  But as we sat on the tarmac for a 1/2 hour and his scream didn't not abate, I heard the words slip out and hoped no one else did, "It's not your ears now, Buddy.  How about another sucker?"

Two tips: one, don't count up, count down; two, when you get to zero, the consequence should not be another sucker.

Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. Psalm 34:11

I Think I Can Do It All

Before you laugh at me and say, "No, you can't!" You have to realize that, most of the time, I get it done. Anytime I start to think there is too much on my plate, I remember commuting 3 hours each way to go to seminary in Kansas City, while working part-time at the church and having babies. It took 3 ½ years to get my M.A., but I did it. We did it. My husband and church family certainly get some of the credit, too. To use my husband's corporate lingo: I deliver on aggressive goals, especially when I am called.

I don't think I'm a yes-girl, though. I can generally say "no" to anyone but myself. I want to do it all. I'm called, passionate, and dedicated to being a wife and mother for my family. I'm also called, passionate, and dedicated to the ministry I serve. But then there are so many friends and adventures out there to savor! Time is my most treasured commodity, because if there is something I want to do, I will find a way to fit it in. My encouraging Facebook friends don't realize the rest of the story, when I post the conundrum, "do I take the kids to the beach or do laundry?" I've already chosen "beach" (or park, or bike ride) over "laundry" about a dozen times or it wouldn't be a question. If we weren't running out of undies, I'd already be at the beach.

We took this week off and made our usual plans. We were going to Kansas City for a weekend of roller coasters and visits with friends and family. We would come home for a day to reload, then drive up to Lake Okoboji to camp for a couple nights, stopping at a waterpark on the way home for one more day of summer fun.

Then I got word that my grandpa is in hospice. No one can guess what the time table will be, but we know that at some point, with short notice, we are going to be making a trip to Arizona to say good bye. Instead of cramming camping and waterparks in, we decided to save some money and get ahead on things, so that if we head out on short notice, it won't overwhelm our entire summer. Instead of our vision of great fun and photo-ops, we've spent the week sleeping in, getting the household chores caught up, and playing games with the kids. My husband keeps reminding me how pleasant it is to do nothing.

I'm already contemplating ways to squeeze in a night in a tent before another week goes by, but I'm adding it to my to-do list: schedule more time for nothing.

I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13