The Flu and Other Blessings

My busted refrigerator,
littered with sweet memories!

The joy of travel is something we absolutely love in our family. We will take any kind of vacation there is. I feel like it makes us and the kids better people by subjecting them to the world around them, hoping to instill some sort of understanding of cultures different than ours, and giving them a chance to see the world through the eyes of those who live and care for the beauty around them. Oh, it's never easy toting three children around. There's the list-making, the packing, the transporting, taking the trip and all of its glory, then the travel home, unpacking, washing, and coming home head-first to life as we knew it before stepping out into our grand adventures. Like last week. 

We took off the day after a whirlwind Christmas of celebrating with everyone we could manage to see. I don't even know if we cleaned up the massive piles of gift wrap and careful packaging that surrounded the gifts on everyone's wish list. We left the tree up, but the hubs took down our lights in a sped-up frenzy like I've never seen before. Because we would be gone for 12, yes 12 days. I felt like we were part of the Wise Men's caravan - we would be home on the Epiphany. So, I suppose it was certainly something a little shy of what they experienced, but with modern conveniences like indoor plumbing - oh I am soooo incredibly thankful that I was born in this era. 

We had air travel delays that were probably unmatched, but certainly matched by the 4 rescheduled flights that left plenty of other folks stranded like us. We spent two hours in a hotel and slept for every second that we could. We lost a pre-paid night at a hotel. We were flown to an airport that was not our intended one and rented a car, at our expense, to get our luggage that was flown to our intended destination. We had motion sickness driving through Nothingland to get to Yosemite, a virus (presumably the flu) that slowly crept its way through the children and landed on me. Our last flight had a 40 minute layover that ended up around 20 minutes (and you know they close those gates at 10 minutes prior to take-off), so my poor flu-stricken family ran as fast as we could and made it! And when we got home, our refrigerator was busted. (Once I came home to a dead rat in our toilet -poor baby drowned, and it was our only bathroom! It was the worst!) But you know, the kids did great. They were joking about things the very next day. They came through the sludge and honestly, they just remembered the good stuff. It was another "Griswold" family vacation. Gosh I love those shows. So painfully real!!! 

They were given opportunities to grow. They were given times of trying situations that gave them a certain appreciation of the simple things that DID go their way. They're still battling stuffy noses as this virus crawls out of their little systems, but it's crawling out. And we all know how good we feel after a cold has run its course. And we are blessed to be better, inside and out.

But you know what? We were given the opportunity to travel. We were able to see places that not many have seen. We were given gifts far beyond measure in the simple things. You know what our youngest remembers most about Yosemite? A ladybug. There we were among the most majestic of marvels my simple eyes had ever seen - we were wandering near waterfalls and pristine streams, high above the world as we know it. And Maggie found a ladybug. A tiny little ladybug at the bottom of Yosemite Falls. We were taking a rest while the bigs climbed up the rocks, and there it was, perfectly imperfect - right in the heart of the Valley. And had we not taken a break, we would have missed one of the tiniest, yet just as beautiful, creations of the Father. 

My reflection today - man, I don't know where I'm even going - but perhaps that is the sum of it all. We don't know where we are going. And that's ok.  We had hiccups, but despite all of them, we still managed to find a sweet little ladybug. And then we made it home, where we all had a new-found appreciation of our amazing ordinary lives. 

And guess who got a new refrigerator!!!! Aw, yeah!