Today was the big day for Ben and Nancy! What a beautiful couple they made. I won’t post many of their wedding pictures as that is for them to do, but I can post pics of my own family having a good time.

The wedding was absolutely beautiful. Their Catholic faith was very present in their nuptial Mass, and I pray that they may be blessed with a good, solid marriage based on God.

All 9 of my children were there. I guess I should say 10, as I know Damien was with us too. He would have loved today as he definitely considered this family as part of our own. Nicholas and Nathanael were groomsmen. Isaac and Dominic served for the ceremony. Damien would have been all over being able to serve. I can still picture him standing there in his cassock and surplice just absolutely in love with serving a Mass with incense. Ryon and Alexis made it down too.

Sarah and Amelia were able to have some extra time hanging out together. Amelia even stayed with Sarah the night before the wedding since the groomsmen (which included Nathanael) were hanging out with Ben for the night. We were supposed to remember to bring Amelia her appropriate attire for the wedding, but just as we pulled into the church parking lot, Annette realized that we had totally forgotten her clothes. Amelia and Sarah managed to pull something together for her anyway.

The reception was a lot of fun. We even had an unusual visitor.

It was good to see everyone having such a good time together. While it was hot (95 when I checked), the humidity still isn’t as bad as I’m used to, so it turned out to be much more pleasant than I thought it would.

Friday was the day we decided that we should hit the beach. Charlie really wanted to be able to swim in the Atlantic as well as the Pacific on this trip!  Since I’m not a huge fan of the beach (I don’t love sand at all), we decided I should stay at the camper and work on submitting the grades for my three remaining high schoolers to our homeschool association. This is never a fun process and definitely involves some concentration- something that is difficult to have when you’re one of 8 people in an RV. The word “Mom” is said and heard waaaay too much. 

After an hour or two and having gone as far as I could with the grades, my daughter-in-law, Sarah, picked me up to go to a used bookstore. I had evidently left at home a book that we were going to be reading aloud for a literature study. We arrived at the bookstore, Chamblin Bookmine, and went in – only to stop immediately and realize that I would need help in finding this book. 

I have never been in a bookstore like this one.  It was a maze with books stacked probably 8 feet high on shelves on both sides of every aisle. Things were labeled decently enough, but I was having no luck finding my book. I was looking for The Hiding Place and told to look either in Jewish History or Biographies. I must have misunderstood the directions as I was never able to find either section.

After 20 minutes or so of looking in the World War 2 and German History sections as well as wandering around looking for Jewish History and Biographies, I saw a woman who appeared to work there and asked her for help. She immediately knew the book I was speaking of, told me that it was in the Christianity section and took me right to it. Needless to say, I didn’t stay any longer because that place was sooo overwhelming, and I would have needed a whole day in there. Sarah, a definite book-lover, didn’t even buy anything because she was so overwhelmed. 

Having the book I needed, we headed back to the RV to get ready for the rehearsal dinner we would be attending that night. 

It was great fun to see our close friends and how much their children and grandchildren have grown. Ben is the last of their seven children to marry, so we were marking the end of an era. The rehearsal dinner location included a pool, so three of the kids enjoyed the cool water. We are so grateful for these close friends who have supported us through sooo many years of parenting. It truly takes a village. 

Our first night in the RV went really well.  A couple months ago, we decided to get a campground membership that would allow us to stay for free in various member campgrounds throughout the country.  One of those campgrounds was right along our route to Jacksonville – about half way between home and Jacksonville.  We were able to easily get a last-minute reservation and pulled in around 9:30.  

We all settled in fairly easily as we had taken a practice run in our RV at the end of February at the same campground.  The RV cooled down nicely, and off we went to sleep, except for AnaClaire.  She had probably slept since we left Cracker Barrel, and when we arrived she was ready to be awake and watch her favorite TV program.

I was so proud of how quickly we pulled up stakes and left the campground that morning.  Charlie was sitting at the picnic table having a conversation on the phone, and the next thing he knew, we were started and ready to go.  There is definitely something to be said for traveling with kids who can help disconnect, clean up, operate vehicles, etc.  Not that we didn’t have some older kids who could do that the last time, but there were still an awful lot of diapers and toddlers making messes faster than anyone could keep up with.

Since we were only 2.5 hours from Jacksonville, we had time to take a detour.  We headed to the Okeefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia to see the alligators.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but there are evidently different areas of the swamp that offer tours.  We had taken a boat tour back in 2012 at the swamp, and we wanted to do that again.  We ended up at a different location, the Okeefenokee Swamp Park, and had a great time.  

We took a boat tour, watched a presentation on various wildlife creatures, and had a train tour that gave us some of the history of the area.  We were fortunate enough to see maybe 10 alligators as well as a doe and two beautiful little twin fawns.  Of course, none of my pictures of the fawns turned out, but they were so cute to watch. Charlie took some beautiful photos of water lilies.  It wasn’t even nearly as hot and humid as I was expecting.  

Following the swamp tour we headed off to our campground in Jacksonville.  Cities aren’t exactly on our list of places to go, and Florida on Memorial Day weekend definitely wasn’t one of our priority vacation spots BUT…  Ben, a young man we’ve known since he was a toddler, is getting married.  Ben and his family have been a part of our family for over 20 years, and we wouldn’t miss his wedding for anything.  We’ve been to all of his family’s weddings, and they have been to ours, with still many more to go, I’m sure.  Events with these friends are always events for the memory book.  As a matter of fact, if you read about our travels to New England and Canada, it is Ben and his parents that we travel with.  https://kiddingaroundfarm.com/2017/08/04/day-11-monday-july-31-2017/

We settled into our camping space at the Jacksonville Equestrian Park and prepared to have a fun-filled weekend with our closest friends.

Thankful and blessed,

Rebecca

Ten years ago, we took an amazing trip across the country to see several national parks. We had all ten children with us. At the time they were: Ryon (15), Nicholas (13), Nathanael (11), Alex (10), Annette (8), Isaac (7), Amelia (5), Dominic (4), Damien (2), and AnaClaire (1). We had a travel trailer that slept 10 and pulled it with our 15 passenger Chevrolet van. We traveled for 6 weeks and had an amazing time. (You can read all about it here: https://kiddingaroundfarm.com/2015/05/08/5715-the-first-day-by-cpt-america/)

We promised ourselves at the end of that trip that we would do it again in 10 years. Dominic, Damien, and AnaClaire were really too young at the time to remember any of it, so we wanted them to have the opportunity to experience seeing so much of the country too. 

So here we are – 10 years later – doing it again. It won’t be the same at all. We only have 6 kids with us, and one of the kids who was supposed to be on this trip isn’t here. The older three boys are at points in their lives where they have responsibilities that keep them at home. We have with us: Alex (20), Annette (18), Isaac (16), Amelia (15), Dominic (14), and AnaClaire (11). We don’t have any kids in diapers or that need to sleep in a pack-n-play. We won’t be carrying any little kids on our backs while hiking, although there is always the chance that we might have to carry Alex off a trail 🙄, and although she doesn’t weigh much, she definitely weighs more than a 2 year old. 

I’ve been making lists and getting our new-to-us RV organized to work well for our family for the past couple months. We had finally decided on a used Class C RV that sleeps 8-10.  Since an RV isn’t ideal to drive through some of the narrow roads in national parks (especially since we’d like to set it up at a campground and leave it there while exploring the parks), we decided to bring our Honda Pilot with us.  I was all for towing it, but Charlie thought it would be better to drive it separately.  When he pointed out that a teenager could drive it and it would give us the opportunity to separate children that may need a break from each other, I was all for it.  The downside to the Pilot is that it seats 8 tightly and there are 8 of us.  We’ll just have to get used to being in close quarters at times.  

We spent a good bit of today getting all of the last things into the RV, cleaning up the house, doing some animal chores, and running a few last errands. We finally left the house around 3:30 with Jacksonville, FL as our first destination. Of course, we got about 10 minutes down the road when Charlie realized we had left an important food item that he had purchased, so the Pilot was sent home to retrieve said treat, and the RV was off to be fed with that commodity that it gobbles up so quickly, gasoline.

We met back up with the other half of us when we reached our first stop, Cracker Barrel.  For some reason, it has become a tradition to eat at a Cracker Barrel while we are traveling.  It’s usually our dinner stop for the first night because we typically don’t manage to get anything prepared after only traveling for just a few hours.  They also have great RV parking, and everyone can browse through the store while waiting for their food to arrive.  Now we just need them to start carrying gluten-free pancakes!

It’s been years since we did much traveling.  I took the kids to Arizona in early 2020 before Covid was part of our lives.  We had a great time, but we had so many problems with the camper on the way there that we sold it when we finally arrived in Arizona.  And if you want to watch anything about the craziness of that trip, I did a vlog on YouTube

Since then we’ve stayed closer to home and used rental houses if we did much in the way of traveling.  This trip will be difficult for all of us without Damien, but it’s also a great time for us to travel since we’re taking more of a break from homesteading to focus on family time.  Keep reading along as I post.  I promise these adventures will get more interesting!

I didn’t intentionally set out to write/publish this blog on this day, but that is how God worked it out. A year ago today, my family each experienced the worst day of our lives. 

It started out being a very normal day. It was a school day, but we were wrapping up the school year and for some reason, we ended up with a chiropractor appointment first thing in the morning. That was unusual, but we needed to get in to see our chiropractor, so we let our school day go and went. 

I was joking around with our chiropractor and asked him to tell Isaac and Damien that they were probably injuring their necks by constantly flinging their too-long bangs, that they didn’t want to cut, out of their eyes. He was picking on them about their longer hair, and we were all laughing. 

Eventually we made it home, but I had decided to let the academics go for the day. I had looked for a specific tool the day before and couldn’t find it in our feed shed. It does become difficult to find things when everyone just walks up to the shed and throws in whatever they are supposed to be “putting away.”  Needless to say, we were going to clean out that shed and find that tool!

The younger kids and I worked on it together. We eventually found the tool, got the shed organized, threw out the trash, etc. It had been a very successful day. We’d even managed to all work and still be in good moods. 

We wrapped up and the kids headed off for a swim. I went inside the house. Later on they were asking to take a ride on our utility vehicle that we call “V”. They were taking turns and having a great time on a nice spring evening. I went and enjoyed a relaxing bath. 

While I was in the bath, Charlie received a call from one of our daughters. She had been driving V, made a hard turn on slippery grass at the edge of a terrace in our back pasture, and V had flipped over. Charlie assured her that he was heading down there to help. 

A few minutes later, I decided that I needed to get out of the bath and see if they needed anymore help. I had just made that decision when my phone rang. It was our daughter. “Mom, I need you to call 911!  Damien’s not breathing.”

Simultaneously toweling off, getting dressed, etc  with my phone on speaker, I called 911. I knew no ambulance would be able to make it back there because they were at the very back of our 25 acres and we’d had a great deal of rain leaving a great deal of mud. They also had to make it across an overflow ditch that had gotten quite deep from our pond overflowing its banks. I didn’t know what we were going to do. 

I was assured that help was on the way, but I could only focus on how in the world to get that help down there. The keys to both of the 4×4 trucks weren’t where they were supposed to be, of course. So I went yelling through the house that I needed help NOW to find the keys. Eventually someone found them for me and a volunteer firefighter showed up in his 4×4 truck. I hopped in to show him how to get down there and left kids at the house to just figure out what was going on. 

We finally made it to the accident scene. Charlie was performing CPR on Damien, and the firefighter jumped out to take over. I have no idea how cops made it back there in their SUVS and cars. Lots of trucks made it back there too.  Charlie and I held onto each other and prayed. A few of the kids showed up here and there, but I wasn’t much help to them. Tears and prayers… begging him to take a breath. But nothing ever changed. 

I think they worked on him for around 30-45 minutes with no change. A helicopter was landing across the road ready to airlift him – no change. They finally put him on a backboard and into the back of a pickup truck. I rode in the front of the truck up to the ambulance where they transferred him to go to the hospital. I knew then that he was gone. They weren’t airlifting him – they were driving him. Then, the ambulance got stuck in the mud. We had a tractor to pull it out of the mud, but our chain was back in the pasture. It had been in the back of the utility vehicle when it flipped over. 

Finally we were able to use the found chain and tractor to pull the ambulance out of the mud and get onto the road. We had a police escort to the hospital. Everyone tried so hard to save this kid. The hospital was ready for him and got him straight into a room to work on him. I had to wait outside. A close friend showed up and just held me. 

Eventually the doctor told me what I already knew. They had done everything they could, but he was gone. My little boy… he wasn’t very little anymore, but he was only 11, and he was my youngest boy. 

We’ve spent the last year putting one foot in front of the other.  We’ve had amazing support from so, so many… our relatives and close friends, our church communities, football and cheer people, and many people that we didn’t even know. Our faith has brought us closer together and closer to God. 

Life has moved along, whether I wanted it to or not. When a tragedy happens, you expect everything to just stop around you, and maybe start again when you’re ready. But that’s not how it works, at least not for me. My first and third sons were married to two beautiful young women in this last year. And one more child has graduated from high school. We’ve made it through another homeschool year, and Charlie has invested another year of work in his business. Fortunately, we were already reducing the number of animals we had on our homestead before this tragedy, and now we’re down to only some poultry in mobile tractors. The homestead will grow once again when we’re ready. 

God has been so good to us through all of this. Sure we’ve questioned Him and been angry with Him, but we have the hope that we will each reunite with Damien one day and be made whole in God. We do ask for continued prayers. If you have the chance to spend time with us, know that we love talking about Damien. He will always be a part of us. 

Rebecca

Well, it has been a very long time since I wrote a blog or made a vlog.  The last couple years of our lives have been filled with a decent amount of upheaval.  That upheaval often led to a desire for more family privacy.  Now that we’re a couple years into things, we’re ready to share.

On July 22, 2022, at the age of 17, our oldest daughter, Alex, passed out at cheer practice.  Her coach called an ambulance and called us, so we met them at the hospital 45 minutes away.  We had been going through a great deal of extremely hot weather, so the hospital chalked it up to the heat and being dehydrated.  Charlie, Alex, and I really questioned the dehydration.  She had been diagnosed with dysautonomia when she was 12.  The recommended treatment for dysautonomia is to, “Eat more salt and drink more water!” as I like to say, so Alex was pretty good at staying hydrated at eating salty snacks.  Needless to say, she was sent home that night and just told to try to stay cool and drink plenty of fluids.

The next day, she was sitting in a chair at the table when she just slumped over unconscious.  We carried her to the couch and tried, unsuccessfully, to bring her back to consciousness.  EMS was called, and she again was taken to the ER, albeit a different hospital. 

They kept her for a while but couldn’t find anything wrong with her, so she was sent home.  We didn’t make it very far down the road before she was passed out again, so we turned around and went back to the hospital.  The doctors there decided to send her to a children’s hospital to be admitted for more extensive tests.  None of those tests came back abnormal.  Nurses were even able to witness her going in and out of consciousness for hours, but we were still discharged a few days later.  I asked what the situations were in which I may need to bring her back to the hospital, and they told me only to bring her back if she was struggling to breathe.

For the next 10 months, Alex passed out every day, multiple times a day, without any warning.  She could be standing there having a conversation with you, and the next minute she was on the floor.  She might be laying down on the couch, and then she was out.  There were many days when she was in and out of consciousness so much that we struggled to be able to get fluids into her – literally conscious for a few seconds before she was passed out again.  We didn’t leave her alone.  She had an escort to the bathroom who waited right outside the door and often carried her back to her couch.  The medical system wasn’t much help.  Fortunately, there was a dysautonomia “clinic” made up of doctors of various specialties that I had managed to get Alex on the waiting list for in May of 2022.  Her appointment wasn’t until the middle of October, and that appointment was only for an intake!  The pediatrician that we saw there was great at listening to us and giving us some ideas of how to treat her and such, but none of it helped.

Next we applied to go to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and received an appointment in December of 2022.  Can you imagine a bunch of South Carolinians heading to Minnesota in December?!  While we were there, she was diagnosed with POTS.  We were given some “tools” to help her feel better: add electrolytes to her water (it’s pretty much impossible for her to have too much salt), wear compression socks and leggings to push the blood toward her head, and try to exercise.  Alex had always been active, but it wasn’t very easy to have her exercise anymore when she couldn’t walk anywhere without passing out.  Then we looked into physical therapy.

The physical therapy helped her to feel better, but she continued to pass out.  The Mayo Clinic suggested that she might be a good candidate for an outpatient clinic that they held, but then they decided not because they wouldn’t be able to follow her around and keep her “safe”.  The next recommendation was an inpatient clinic.  After lots of research, I was only able to find three hospitals that would take her as a pediatric POTS patient for inpatient services.  We decided on the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab in Chicago because they were the first one to get us in. 

Alex checked into Shirley Ryan at the very beginning of May and stayed as an inpatient for three weeks.  I made it to Chicago after she had been in there for a few days (Charlie was with her initially).  On a board in her room was a list of goals.  One of the first goals was “no passing out for 2 days.”  I looked at that and laughed, sure that she wouldn’t meet that goal.  Needless to say, she did.  After 3 weeks of inpatient care, she also had 3 weeks of outpatient care.  By the end of our 6 weeks in Chicago, we were walking around the city doing some shopping and seeing the sites.  This didn’t mean no passing out; she still did from time to time.  But we were able to get her to the point where she could recognize how she felt and try to take measures to avert passing out.  Worst case, she was able to get herself into a sitting or lying down position where she wouldn’t likely injure herself by passing out.

Two years later, we’re probably in about the same place as we were when we left Chicago.  She is much more independent but definitely has more limitations than the average 20 year old.  We are so grateful to be at this stage of her health journey, having made so many improvements, to give her a better quality of life. 

That first year dealing with Alex’s health was a very trying time in our family.  The stress that comes with unknown medical conditions and/or medical conditions that don’t have much treatment can really take a toll on a family.  In that first year, I was very impressed with how my children handled it.  They were so compassionate with Alex – willing to get her whatever she needed or help her get to wherever she was going.  Homeschooling wasn’t easy for anyone though (and didn’t even happen for Alex).  Charlie still had to work but tried hard to find extra time to get her to doctor appointments or just take her with him to work so that I could have a day at home focusing on homeschooling.  My spending 6 weeks in Chicago, away from the rest of the family, was another huge stress.  My days while Alex was still an inpatient were spent homeschooling kids over FaceTime during the day and playing Phase 10 with Alex in the evenings.  Thank our blessed Lord for the Ronald McDonald house in Chicago for giving me a safe, comfortable place to live for 6 weeks.

Anyway, this is nowhere near the end of our family saga.  Stay tuned for the next turn of events.

October 19, 2019

I am so happy to be back blogging again!  However, because of our new adventures (which you are about to learn about), I won’t necessarily be blogging more at this point in time.  Instead, I have wanted to find an outlet to communicate about life and adventures in our large family that involves my family more. Mom, sitting at a computer typing away, doesn’t really involve my children and my husband much.  A couple years ago, I stumbled across a YouTube homesteading page in which a man named Justin Rhodes was showing his family’s life on their homestead.  (Check him out:  Justin Rhodes)  He was doing something that is called a vlog – simply a “log” of one’s life in video format.  Ever since then, I have been praying about and considering such a venture myself.

So… we have made the decision to create a vlog!  This will allow us to give an inside glimpse into our crazy but enjoyable lives to people who want to know what the life and adventures of a large family are like.  Someone once told me that they would love to be a “Fly on the Wall” of our home when we were all trying to get ready and out the door on time for Mass on a Sunday morning.  So… I videoed it one Sunday morning.  You will see lots of craziness in these vlogs: trips to the grocery store, a visit to the dentist, meal times, school days, a typical Saturday, etc.  Just look up Kidding Around Farm on YouTube.  Please subscribe to our channel and give us some comments.  So far, I have really enjoyed doing this.  Don’t be surprised if you don’t see much of Alex in the vlogs as she isn’t really willing to be on video, and I am doing my best to respect that.  The other kids also really enjoy helping, so there are plenty of crazy times when they have the camera and are filming whatever they want to film (just watch First Day of School) .  Eventually, my editing and uploading of videos will catch up to the videos that I have filmed, and so what comes out as a new video on YouTube will indeed be a very recent video.

This is a brand new adventure for our family.  We hope you  join us for more adventures!

Blessings,

Rebecca

 

Here it is, already half through May. We are trying to finish up our homeschooling year, but I keep getting distracted. Our oldest son, Ryon, is graduating from high school. He has been participating in an online high school for the past 4 years for many of his classes. That online school, Mother of Divine Grace, is based in CALIFORNIA. Needless to say, Ryon likes to travel; he gets that from me 😊, so he decided to take a road trip to California for his high school graduation ceremony. Although we were supportive of this trip, Charlie and I wanted someone to go with him. Nicholas, being an avid homebody and our second oldest child, absolutely refused to go. However, Nathanael, our number 3, is very much like Ryon in his personality, so he jumped at the opportunity to go with Ryon.

They decided to blog about their trip, so I thought I would let you all know about it. You can find his blog HERE

Obviously, as a parent, we are doing everything we can from afar to assure their safe return home to us, but the most important thing we can do is pray. So, please pray for them on their journey, as well as for the rest of us to handle any issues well. This is a rare opportunity that we are glad our children are able to take advantage of as it will have a place in the formation of who they are for many years to come.

Meanwhile, as a quick update on our family, we have decided not to do any major traveling this summer and instead to stay home and focus on our garden and animals. We now have 6 cows that we are trying to mob graze (which means they are in a pasture divided into small paddocks and moved every day to fresh grass). We still have a lot of chickens (Tractor Supply had many visits from us this spring purchasing chicks). Our turkeys and meat chickens are on order to arrive next month. Currently, we are trying to incubate 13 guinea eggs that a friend gave to us. (This is our first incubation experience, so we are all fascinated by it.) We spent Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend harvesting our last 2 pigs, which generated at least 150lbs of sausage for future consumption. Now we are in pig pasture regeneration mode. One of our cats had 3 kittens a couple weeks ago. I absolutely think that new kittens on the farm is one of the most entertaining situations for kids. The first thing most of them do in the morning is to run out and play with the kittens.

And finally, I am so glad we finally did, we managed to get started on planting fruit bushes and trees. These are some of the fruit-bearing plants that we purchased and planted in the fall: blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, figs, peaches, oaks, and a few nut trees. This spring, we have been working on rooting and planting mulberries, elderberries, serviceberries, goji berries, paw paws, and maples. I’m so excited to think about what our mostly-pasture- land will look like just 5 years from now when some of these trees have grown to a more substantial size.

Anyway, I will try to begin blogging more as I enjoy it a great deal. I just have to get into that mode.

Please check out Ryon’s blog to see what is going on in the world of two teenage brothers traveling together.

Blessings,

Rebecca

We had never stayed at a truck stop before.  I always thought it would be a very loud place to sleep with truckers coming and going and their generators running all night.  Fortunately that wasn’t the case.  I barely noticed the generator of the truck beside us, and there wasn’t a great deal of coming and going.  We had a great night’s sleep.  Charlie and I were so glad we had stopped when we did with that rain coming down as hard as it was.  We still had 45 minutes or so to go before we reached Harrisburg, but that was OK.

After driving for a little while, we stopped for some breakfast.  It was Saturday, so we bought the kids a treat for breakfast.  Unfortunately, we had blown another fuse, so we spent some time changing the fuse and trying to once again diagnose the problem.  Without making any real progress on the diagnosis, we got back on the road heading south.  The fuses seemed to be holding for longer periods of time, so hopefully we woudn’t be stopping constantly.  The van seemed to prefer to be on the interstate as there was less braking for stop lights and such. Harder braking seemed to trigger blown fuses.  We drove for several hours without any incidents.

We weren’t really sure if we were going to push to get ourselves all the way home today or not.  One thing was for sure, Charlie and I wanted to stop and do something fun.  Some of the kids were pushing to get home, but we knew some fun would be good for everyone after several challenging days, so we decided to stop at Luray Caverns.  We figured out that Alex had been a baby the last time we were there, so that was almost 12 years ago.  Even the older three kids didn’t really remember going – Ryon maybe a tiny bit.  The one thing they really remembered were some maze shirts that we had purchased there that they wore for years.  We found a place to park that was out of the way.  We wanted to have a picnic lunch, but couldn’t really find a place to picnic without hauling it quite a long distance.  The caverns were incredibly busy.  Of course, we were there on a Saturday during the summer, so what else should be expect?  We decided that instead of eating lunch right then, we would just take some snacks with us and go get in line for tickets.  I thought we would probably be purchasing tickets for a specific time to enter the caverns later in the afternoon and didn’t want our time to be later than it needed to be.

Fortunately, after spending 30 minutes or so in line, we purchased our tickets and got right into the next line to enter the caverns.  No “come back at the appointed time” tickets.  We entered the caverns at discovered that this wasn’t really going to be a tour led by a tour-guide.  It was really a self-guided tour with tour guides placed throughout the caverns to answer questions.  I was a little disappointed as I feel that you are able to learn a great deal more about a cave when you have a tour guide along the way, and we had certainly paid enough money for tickets to have a tour guide.  However, it turned out OK.  We were really encouraged to move along quickly so that everyone else behind us could move through the caverns quickly too.  It just so happened that this was the weekend of the anniversary of the modern-day discovery of Luray Caverns, so they had used candles in a couple areas of the cave to illuminate the caverns and give us a small indication of what it would have been like to explore the caverns by candlelight.  That was an unusual twist that I have never really experienced.  We were able to ask some questions, and the guides did volunteer a little bit of information.  Although the caverns were beautiful, that was definitely not my favorite cavern tour by any stretch of the imagination.

After the cavern tour, we went off to explore our way through the hedge maze that they have at Luray Caverns.  Damien and Dominic were particularly excited at wandering through a maze.

As we entered, we were given a small sheet of paper and told to find the four stops along the way at which we could stamp our paper to receive a special message.  We split up into different groups and hurried through the maze.  Well, at least we tried to hurry.  Isaac and I were partners.

We found the second stamp first, and then had to go back to find the first stamp.  We had a great time trying to find our way through the maze and made it to the middle of the maze before we ever found our first stamp.  This thing had us doing a lot of laughing and exploring.  We had a wonderful time.

Afterwards, the kids really wanted to go to the gift shop.  We had not really given them any opportunities to buy any souvenirs from this trip, so we let them spend some time in the gift shops.  Charlie had to go back to the van to replace yet another fuse and was going to try another fix, so he took AnaClaire back with him while Nicholas and I took the little boys and went off to the gift shops.  The older kids went off together to see what they could find.  After purchasing a couple maze books and T-shirts, Nicholas took the little boys back to the camper to fix lunch while I went to track down the other kids whom I knew would take the rest of the afternoon if I didn’t speed them up.

We finally finished our shopping, ate lunch, put a bandaid on the camper/van combo and got back on the road.  The van was doing well enough that we decided to just push for home that evening and pulled into our driveway just before midnight.  Yet another long day, but we made it home safely.  Although I love being on the road and seeing our beautiful country (as well as other countries now 🙂 ), even I was glad to be home!  Thank you God for this special opportunity that we had to spend time together and see more of our country, but most especially, thank you for helping us to get home safely!

Blessings,

Rebecca

Today started just as we planned.  We all got up about 6:30am and were in the van and leaving WalMart by a couple minutes after 7:00.  We went ahead and got gas as well as changed a blown fuse, and then drove toward the interstate.  When we almost missed a turn, Charlie braked hard and the fuse blew (within maybe 3 minutes of changing it).  We got on the interstate and stopped at the first rest stop, just a few miles down the road.  We got the kids out to play, and Charlie started trying to figure out what in the world the problem was with this silly fuse.  He found a lot of corrosion in the electric brake wiring harness and had fortunately already bought a replacement part, so he tore that apart and started switching everything out.  After at least 2 ½ hours, it still wasn’t working.  We managed to find a trailer place not too far down the road, so we pulled in there.  They spent about an hour helping us, and we left feeling confident that our problem was fixed.  It was now about 1:00pm.

In order to get to Albany, we had to take some smaller highways through the mountains.  I was so happy to have the brakes working and not have to worry about getting through the mountains safely.  Just as we came out of the mountainous drive, the fuse blew again.  We stopped at a Home Depot to buy more fuses and figure out what to do next.  I called probably 4 places to see if they could help us, but everyone was booked and definitely not interested in overbooking themselves on a Friday afternoon.  We kept changing fuses and talking about solutions while driving to try to reach Albany.  Charlie discussed options over the phone with his dad and came up with a temporary fix that would hopefully work.  At a rest area north of Albany, Charlie implemented his temporary fix, and we got back on the road.  That seemed to do the trick.  Then, of course, we sat in Friday afternoon traffic for a couple hours trying to get through Albany.

Once we finally made it through that, we had smooth sailing for several hours.  Then we drove into a bunch of rain.  That wasn’t too bad for a while.  The kids had been treated with numerous snacks trying to keep them happy while they were constantly waiting on repairs, so we waited until 8:30 to feed them dinner.   That part of the plan worked perfectly – they filled their tummies and then went to sleep.  We managed to drive another couple hours in peace and quiet with most of the van asleep.  Then the rain got to be so intense that it was time to stop.  I knew that convincing Charlie that it would be best to stop wouldn’t be the easiest (he likes to push through difficulties), so I started looking for the closest place that we could pull into for the night.  There were no WalMarts in the area, so I started looking into truck stops.  There was one just a few miles away at an exit for Pine Grove, PA.  Since Pine Grove campground in Maine had been a wonderful place for us to be stuck without the van, I quickly pointed out to Charlie that this was a sign from God that it was time to stop. Fortunately, he completely agreed and, we pulled into a truck stop probably 45 minutes north of our destination of Harrisburg, PA.  Charlie and I jumped up into the camper, opened the slide, set up the beds, and then began carrying kids in and putting them to bed.  The rain was absolutely crazy, but it stopped not too long after we went to bed and we managed to get a decent night’s sleep.  The blessings were many: Pine Grove had once again provided us with refuge; we made it there safely; and we finally had the brakes working well enough to get us home and could go to bed worry-free.

Blessings,

Rebecca