On the road again.

Captain C was finished with his week at camp on Friday at 10:15. We decided to drive up to Bolivar, MO to pick him up and spend the weekend in Branson together.  Bolivar is about 3.5 hours away so on Thursday evening, we set our alarm for 4:45am in order to the be on the road by 5:30. We were taking the motorhome so wanted to allow plenty of time for....anything and everything that could go wrong.
Friday morning, we got up and woke the kids, dressed and loaded up the van and motorhome (we learned our lesson about traveling without a spare vehicle last month!). I came in to shut down the computers and they said 3:59am. Hmmm...that can't be right. Or can it? Somehow we had set our bedroom clock ahead an hour when setting the alarm the night before. So now, we are all up and ready to go a FOUR AM. wow. Oh and a side note...I set the bread maker up to have a loaf of warm bread ready for us at 5:30, but it turns out I never turned ON anyway so nothing lost there by being an hour early. We finished loading up and got on the road, but I remembered that we didn't have cash for tolls. I swung into the bank only to find that my debit card expired in May. Oops...I wondered why they were sending me another one when I hadn't lost my first one ;) UGH - not having a great start to this little road trip!! I ran back home and grabbed cash (we sold our eliptical on craigslist this week so had cash at home, at least) and met up with Winnie the Winnebago tooting down the road.

Tricky T wanted to ride with me and Princess P wanted to ride with Daddy. They both get car sick so had split a little pill to help with that. The pill, along with the early hour, made for some sleepy kiddos!

We stopped for gas and even WonderMutt was sleepy!

We made great time getting to MO and with our extra hour, even had time for a little shopping before picking up C. I'm happy to say that C had a wonderful week and we all survived our first time apart. I am also happy to say that I did get that big hug...and I don't even care that Big Daddy suggested it to him ;) So happy to have our family back together!

After we picked up C, we drove about an hour to Branson. He talked non-stop the whole way...it was GREAT! I think if we had come straight home, we would have all gone about our day and not got to hear all the fun details of his week. One thing he was really upset about though was that he had lost his Bible before he even got to camp. We had just bought a new Bible and case for him when he was baptized a few months ago and he was really upset about losing it. I KNOW he had it when he got on the van to go to camp because I had put some money it the case for him for snacks, souvenirs, etc. He said he had looked in the van several times and all over and then left his name and church name with the campus when he left. I asked him if he had prayed about it and he said no, so we prayed right then that God would "bring hidden things to light" and his Bible would turn up for him. We kept talking about his week and about 5 minutes later, his camp leader called and said that...guess what...they found his Bible in the van about 2 minutes ago. Why am I not surprised? Praise the Lord...as soon as we asked, He answered! Woohoo!
We got all set up at the campground and headed to Moonshine Beach to hang out. It was so much fun.

The next day we hit Silver Dollar City. It was so much busier and hotter than when we went in May but we still had a great time. The family talked me into riding Tom and Huck's River Blast. We might as well have jumped into a river for how wet we ended up. Gross...but a good memory with the fam ;)

A few more pics from the day....

We had a great day and were ready to crash when we got back to the campground. We drove up to WonderMutt staring out the windshield of the motorhome waiting for us. I think she sat there all day long! I wonder what the neighbors thought ;)

We made it home safe and sound today after a great weekend that also included a little shopping, a little Cosby Show (picked up a DVD of the "best of" and the kids are loving it...actually they are watching it now while I am typing this), a little reading (I read two more novels this weekend!), too much sugar (I fell off the "no Coke" wagon during my 4am drive...but am climbing back on it tonight), and a lot of family fun. We bought this motorhome for "forced family time" and it is working! How often in the real world do I take time to sit and watch Tricky T build the Great Pyramid and Sphinx out of rocks? I so love our new adventure!