Family Vacation 2012

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One of the reasons for my resent absence online was our family vacation.  This was actually a one week vacation traveling across country as a family out to Washington State, then another week of helping my parents move back here to the Midwest (They now live only 15 minutes from us!  Yeah!).  I wanted to share some pictures from the first half of our vacation.  The second half was 4 days of traveling all day to get back home and get my parents moved in.  I drove our vehicle so that my husband could drive the U-Haul…so needless to say I was too tired and unable really to take pictures on the way home :).

The whole trip I was just amazed at the beauty of God’s creation.  Just amazing!

Enjoy a little photo tour of our trip across country…

Mt. Rushmore….awesome!!!

Crazy Horse (it is not complete but still amazing!)

We only were able to go through half of Yellowstone National Park, but it was absolutely beautiful!

 Here is Old Faithful spouting water high in the air…

Multnomah Falls in Oregon

Mt. Hood in Oregon….picture taken from property close to where my sister and her husband live…beautiful!

Now the work begins….we loaded the U-Haul (in Washington) and then traveled down to Oregon for my Dad’s retirement recognition.

I am so proud of my Dad and Mom.  They have served the Lord for about 40 years and were recognized during their conference the day before we left.

I am so excited to have my parents living only 15 minutes from us.  This is the first time in my married life that my parents have lived close to us.  We are very blessed to have both of our parents living within 15 minutes of us…so awesome!  I look forward to the memories that will be made with the kids…learning more from my parents as an adult…and being there to encourage, love, support, and care for them when they need it.

God is good.  We had a wonderful trip and definitely knew God’s hand of protection was upon us.  We had a few instances where things could have been really bad….

Instance #1:  Driving along 84 in Oregon, with heavy traffic, we ran over an aluminum ladder that was in our lane.  Yes…a ladder!  It was stretched all the way across the lane and we had nowhere to go but over it.  We were afraid we were going to have a flat, but we continued on for about 1 1/2 more hours until we stopped at Multnomah Falls to visit the falls.  When we came back to the car we had a flat front right tire.  After my husband changed the tire he saw a large gash in the sidewall of the tire…not sure how the tire didn’t blow or how air stayed in it until we stopped.  No..I do know…I believe God had his finger in that gash and kept us safe until we stopped.

Instance #2:  After loading the U-Haul we drove down to Portland, Oregon (about a 2 1/2 hour drive).  That U-Haul was loaded to the max and my husband was not liking how one of the right back tires was squatting quite a bit.  We arrived at the motel for the night and the next day my husband went and bought a air pressure gauge to check the air pressure in the tires.  The inside right rear tire only had 20# of pressure (it should have 110#)!  Basically it was flat.  That was why the other tire was squatting so much.  My dad called U-Haul right away and a service guy was out within an hour or so to change the tire.  Again, God was protecting as we drove all the way from Washington to Oregon with only one of the dual tires on the back right.  How that tire didn’t blow we don’t know…God was protecting!

Instance #3:  We were on our 3rd day driving back here to Kansas, had been traveling for a couple hours, and blew a tire on the U-Haul.  We were in the middle of Wyoming..if you know Wyoming there is not much between exits.  Well, my husband was able to get the truck over to the shoulder without losing control.  We were only a couple miles from the next exit so we limped it along so he could get it off the interstate.  He had to drive the truck half on the shoulder and half in the right lane of the interstate (with his hazard lights on) because he didn’t want to drive the side with the flat tire on the rumble strip.  He was doing fine and cars and semis were moving over to the left to get around him.  But just as he was getting close to the exit ramp, a semi had moved over into the left lane and then a pickup truck came flying around him to pass him in the right lane.  My husband had been checking his mirrors and saw him coming.  He was able to swerve the U-Haul over onto the shoulder, but he is not sure how they didn’t crash.  Again…God was protecting.  Another praise that just a few miles down the road from where we had the blowout was road construction.  Traffic was down to one lane and there would have been no where to get off the road safely.  Again…God was protecting.

I only share these photos and experiences to testify to the fact that we serve an awesome God!

I pray that each of you are having a wonderful week.  We are still in the midst of getting unpacked.  Several of the kids came down sick after we got home, so we are laying low and trying to recuperate.  Our homeschool will start back up again in a couple weeks, my oldest daughter will start a new job the end of the month…so many things to look forward to!

The Lord has been giving me some direction for my blog and I look forward to sharing more about all God is showing me in a later post.

Many blessings to you today!

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