I rarely blog about my "big" kids... Our older daughters are all grown and on their own, and I've just thought they probably would not appreciate being blog fodder, so unless it's something really big (like graduating from college or getting married!), I try to respect their privacy and keep them off the blog.
But E, my oldest daughter, did something so cool (and almost scarily impulsive) this week that I have to blog about it.
What did she do?
She dropped everything to drive across the country with her three little ones (R who is 7, J who is 5 and K who is 3), to surprise her husband who is in Florida on business.
It all started Sunday afternoon when she called asking how crazy I thought it would be for her to take the kids and go to FL as a birthday surprise for her dh. She would
have to be there by Wednesday morning because he was scheduled to fly home that afternoon. I liked the idea (I used to LOVE road trips before M got too ill, psychiatrically, to take them) but, since it's February and the weather is a concern, I thought she should fly out. It had been snowing lightly all day here, and the east coast had just been dumped on by that massive snow storm... so it seemed like flying would be the way to go.
Unfortunately the plane tickets would have been a LOT of money... more than she thought she should spend for a surprise.
But she really wanted to go.
So she arranged a pet sitter (not having time to bring the pets to me, her regular pet sitter ;) ) and left Colorado at 5:00 pm Sunday evening for Florida...
She figured she had about 29 hours of driving ahead of her, and not quite two and half days to do it.
Since she and the kids drove off Sunday evening, only half of me has been here at home, going about our daily routine... the other half (or maybe 2/3's) of me has been in that car, as it works it's way across the country.
It was still snowing when she left so Sunday was stressful... I spent lots of time pouring over weather maps, trying to track the storm that was bringing us snow... hoping the weather would improve (and NOT get worse!) as she drove east. She planned her route to get there as quickly as possible, but also to avoid the weather systems we could see on the maps. She texted me when they stopped for the night (Russell, Kansas) and I was happy that they'd driven out of the snow and hoped for good weather for the rest of the trip.
Monday morning I pulled out the big U.S. highway map and a sharpie and started tracking their path. She's called frequently during the trip, and it's been fun trying to help her plan a route. Her GPS was acting weird the first day or so, so she called so I could mapquest things, and send the results to her phone when she needed me to.
I kept the weather maps handy too, trying to decipher what the various colors and symbols on the different maps meant and watch for storms.
I (unsuccessfully) tried to help her find a teacher supply store of some kind in Wichita, Kansas, so she could buy small maps so the kids could follow the path they were taking to Florida and dad...
... and as they headed south out of Kansas into Oklahoma, I heard about how pretty it was (I don't think she was expecting eastern OK to be so pretty). Later in the day she marveled over how big the Arkansas River is, the huge trees in the
National Forest they'd driven through, and how beautiful Arkansas was.
~
As I followed the route she was taking on the map, I told her she was getting close to the Mississippi and I wanted to hear what it was like.
But they didn't quite make it to the Mississippi that day... They ended up stopping in Brinkley AK for the night. As we talked that evening, she told me about all the cars she was seeing in the ditch and wondered why that was since the roads were just wet, not icy. It was dark by then, and the weather was getting worse so she decided to stop for the night. She woke up to realize there was about 2' of (old) snow on the ground (and guessed that explained the cars off the road), and found that the motel parking lot could have easily doubled as an ice skating rink.
She quickly left Brinkley behind and headed toward Memphis... Unfortunately, the Mississippi River was a bit of a disappointment (she said it was so big it looked like a lake, and the bridge that took them took over it blocked much of the view), but she was taken by all the huge trees in that part of the country, (here on the high plains of Colorado it's pretty dry, so not too many big trees... not like back east), and surprised at how many lakes and marshes she was seeing.
She slipped through the corner of Tennessee and headed southeast and into Alabama and Georgia. (As I followed along at home, sharpie in hand!)
She told me that she and the kids were (unhappily) surprised that the McDonalds in the south seem to cook their food differently than the McD's we are used to. It wasn't a good kind of "differentness" and she and the kids vowed no more McD's until they were back home.
And mentioned how, when shopping in Alabama, she'd been surprised at how often "bless you" was used the way "have a nice day" is used here in Colorado.
When I talked to her last night, she was heading south through Georgia on a beeline to Florida... She had three more hours of driving to go, and even through it was getting late she hoped to be able to put the kids to bed in Orlando last night.
I woke up to this text, sent when they had stopped driving for the night...
"We made it ! We're just outside Orlando ten minutes from______." (where her dh is)
I would LOVE to be there when she surprises him (I think "shock" is probably not a strong enough word for the look he's likely to have on his face when E and the kids "drop in" this morning). I hope she gets a picture. :)
After a day or so spent at Disney World and just enjoying the Florida sunshine (it was about 8 degrees
here this morning!), they'll be making their way home (in a more leisurely way!), following a different route... so they can see as much of the country as possible.
M's illness may keep me close to home, but being able to "tag along" (from home) on this trip was SO much fun... although I still can't believe how gutsy that girl is... and I will be happy when they are all back home again!
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Raul
