Gone

Well, Mom's gone home for now. I've actually been gone for 4 of the last 5 days. Mom came last Monday to lend a hand here. I earned a trip to Chicago through recruiting with my Avon business. We were getting to go on a tour of our "branch" there that does both manufacturing and distribution.
Mom and Joshua took me to meet up with 5 other reps down in the Hudsonville area last Wednesday around noon. We drove over to Chicago in our uplines minivan. The trip went fine. Even with construction there wasn't any problems. There was a pizza party at the branch Wed. evening and then some shopping as well as visiting at a Ruby Tuesday in our hotel. Thursday we toured both areas of the branch, had lunch, and headed home. Coming home didn't go as well as getting there. It took us 2 hours to go about 40 miles through Chicago. We stopped for more shopping at the outlet mall in Michigan City, IN and then had dinner before heading home. The ladies finally had to be done shopping because the van was so full we almost had to put some bags on their laps. I know that my feet were a bit squished from packages. Mark ended up picking me up at about 10:45 p.m.
Then on Friday, I had to unpack and repack. 3 other moms from church and I were taking our girls to a "Secret Keeper Girls" Conference in Fort Wayne, IN. It was a complete surprise to the girls! We pulled them from school early and were already packed and ready to leave town before they knew anything was going on. This is a conference designed for 8-12 year old girls and has to do with dressing modestly in order to keep the "deepest most beautiful part of themselves" for the man that they will marry. More info is available at www.purefreedom.org. The same author offers retreats for older girls which some of the teens went to this winter so we wanted to check this one out. It was really great and a lot of fun!
The conference was from 7-9:30 and then we had a hotel room at a Holiday Inn. It was a fun time! We had 4 moms & 5 girls and were able to travel all in 1 van. The girls were able to go swimming for a while on Saturday after breakfast. Then, since it was 1 of the girls birthday, we had cake in the hotel room before we checked out.
We only had about 2 snags. The rooms were supposed to have 2 double beds but instead had 1 queen size. The 1 mom had brought an air mattress so it worked out fine for them. In our room, we had them bring a rollaway bed. Rachel used that and I just crashed in the recliner. I was so tired that it wouldn't have mattered where I slept. Rachel wasn't too thrilled with the bar supports of the rollaway though. The second snag came when we were trying to start the van to leave the hotel and come home. It wouldn't start. The battery was dead. (We had forgotten to turn off a dome light we needed to read the directions the night before.) Thank goodness for a AAA membership. After the hotel couldn't get it jumped using their mini-bus we called AAA. They were there within 1/2 hour and since I told them battery problems they sent a van that carries them around. He was able to test the battery. It showed only 25% charge but the health of the battery was at 0%. His batteries would have been over $100 but he was able to tell us where an AutoZone was easy to get to. He gave us a jump and while part of the moms stayed at a playground 1 block from the hotel, 2 of us went to AutoZone and got the battery replaced for $50 and we even were able to get him to put it in for us.
We took our time coming home. We found a gokart place and stopped to race. Then we had to stop for ice cream before getting home. It was a good time but was 8:00 before we got home on Saturday. I was too exhausted to do much of anything yesterday.
I'm still pretty tired today but have to get myself moving. Lots to do. The nice thing is that I don't have to worry too much about laundry because Mom keeps up with that and keeps my kitchen clean. What a blessing!
Well, I better get at it.