Flooding in Oklahoma

Today is Day 3 of our trip, and none of us has lost our temper with anyone yet!  I know my mother would tell me to “Knock on Wood,” but I am going to choose to say that as a celebration of how well we are doing so far.  Yay!  The only grumpiness that we have really had is AnaClaire getting tired of sitting in her seat.  She also hasn’t been getting her typical beauty sleep.  She has been waking up at 7:00a.m. with the rest of us instead of sleeping until 11:00a.m. like she usually does.  Of course, she has plenty of opportunity to sleep in the car when we are spending the majority of the day in the car, but I am sure she will get used to it at some point.

We made it all the way across Tennessee yesterday and part of the way through Arkansas, the state of my birth and a great deal of family heritage.  The kids all seemed to think that because we were going to be in Arkansas that we would be able to stop and get some Spudnuts.  (For those of you not familiar with spudnuts, they are a doughnut made of potato flour that we were able to indulge in anytime we went to visit family in El Dorado, Arkansas.)  Well, they were really let down when I explained to them that we were hours away from El Dorado, and that they didn’t have spudnuts in the other areas of Arkansas that we were driving through.  I guess we will have to make do with the homemade spudnuts Ryon has attempted for us, but that is definitely not a cooking experience for the camper.

Damien sleeping in the van.

We spent the night in a WalMart parking lot in Lonoke, Arkansas.  Fortunately the storms waited until we were all settled in bed to come through.  Charlie and I woke to some terrible thunderstorms this morning, enough to knock out power to the WalMart – another blessing: the parking lot lights went out so we were able to sleep in darkness!

After we passed through Little Rock, Charlie and I both looked at each other thinking about how we were finally on new highway that we had never travelled.  Growing up, I used to spend all of our family trips with my nose in a book.  As an adult, I can’t stop looking out the window to witness the beauty of this world that God created.  We are so blessed to live in this country.  However, I spent most of our drive from Little Rock to Oklahoma experimenting with blogging.

We stopped at the Oklahoma Welcome Center for lunch and were able to talk with a wonderfully knowledgeable woman about the Cherokee Indians and The Trail of Tears. The kids and I were just doing a study on the Cherokee not too long ago, so it was very interesting for us to see where they were forcibly relocated.

The kids at The National Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague.

We had quite a wonderful experience when we made an unplanned stop at the National Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague in Prague, Oklahoma.  www.shrineofinfantjesus.com  We went in for a quick visit and saw that they were having Confirmation at 5:00.  As we were walking out, retired Archbishop Beltran walked in.  He stopped and visited with the children and then urged us to stay for the Confirmation.  How can you say no to an Archbishop?  The Mass and Sacraments were beautiful, and we thoroughly enjoyed visiting with some of the congregation afterwards.  The people were wonderful, inviting us to the reception, and even giving us a place to throw away our trash and do our dishes. It was a great way to ride out the extensive rain storms in the area.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all mothers out there, especially my mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, and grandmother-in-law!

Rebecca