Life as a Yowler

I chose this title to describe my outlook on life before and after caffiene. We are currently traveling and it’s not for the weak. I know pictures make it look amazing and fun and an awesome opportunity. It is all of those things, but it doesn’t mean it’s not hard and difficult and stressful sometimes.

Before coffee…..Isla has a bladder the size of a pea. Caed enjoys belting out country songs at the top of his lungs. If I hear one more country song, I will lose my Christianity. Our car looks like a hoarder’s home. We are packed to the absolute max. The kids are still expected to do school and to give a summary, a math cover got torn off in an effort to pull the book out of its bin. 🤦‍♀️ Yesterday our car top carrier froze open while we were loading our bags. It held our trip up 1.5 hours. Brandon and I couldn’t get it to close for anything. We didn’t have gloves and it was -10degrees. Our hands were frozen numb. We kept coming in the car to warm up then re trying and re trying. Finally we got it to close. Will we be opening the car too carrier the entire rest of the trip?…….ummmm nope! We drove 16 hours last night. We all “slept” in the car. Apparently Brielle’s favorite memory from trips past is when we sleep in the car. I do not share this same favorite memory. Every gas station last night was closed and we were worried we would run out of gas. We finally found a station open. Brandon drove until 2am then pulled over to sleep a couple hours. I woke up and started driving this morning. We still need to drive 9 more hours today. Yesterday(after I passed out sleeping) Brandon drove through snow in the mountains. Praise the Lord I was asleep or I probably would have stroked out. I reached my breaking point this morning. Everyone was asking me what’s wrong. I told them I’ll choose not to answer(as I would have vented a lifetime of complaints). Brandon decided to take me to Starbucks.

One coffee later and……I remembered how we saw a huge herd of elk running along a frozen lake. It was amazingly cool. We saw countless dear running all over the mountains. We saw Sioux Falls yesterday. We’ve seen it before, but never in the Winter. It was beatific to see the frozen falls. We saw Mt Rushmore last night. It was all lit up and it was so incredible. We were the only idiots there at night, in the Winter. We had the place to ourselves. We had a blast at The Mall of America this last week. This is a favorite memory of my kids. We used to come every time Brandon had a meeting in Minneapolis. We haven’t been coming as often anymore, and I’m thankful we could join this time. We did the theme park on Valentines Day(Brielle’s Birthday). We were able to get right on rides and the kids rode their favorites over and over. The next day, Brandon had meetings all day, but we went back to the mall in the evening after his meetings. We stayed at a very nice hotel. Brandon found a great deal and we had a huge room with beds for everyone. They had a nice pool, which we had to ourselves each night. Praise the Lord for that, as my kids are the loudest swimmers in the entire world. There was the nicest old man at a gas station we stopped at. He asked if he could buy the kids each a donut and let them pick one out. Then he added tons of extra snacks at the counter and said he wanted them to have a good rest of the trip. In Caed’s words “that was the nicest old man I ever met.” He really made my kids’ day. We head to LA next and as long as I continue to drink coffee, I really look forward to the rest of this trip.