My oldest son JJ (11) and I returned a few days ago from a long, exhausting, wonderful trip.

Starting at 7am on Saturday, October 21, we first drove four hours south to our home in Perrysburg, where we packed additional items we would need for our trip. I was just finishing up the last week of my firm's "busy season," and I literally worked through the night to get my work caught up and get packed for the trip. Erin was nervous that I was too tired to drive, but I was full of nervous energy and told her not to worry. After 15 minutes of driving in the darkness, though, I was very sleepy and was getting nervous myself. JJ was too tired to be useful company, and the black decaf I was drinking was powerless. I stopped a couple of times and got out of the car to wake myself up. We started to wake up a little more after eating the healthy breakfast we'd packed, but it still seemed like we would never reach Perrysburg in time. Finally, after an hour we stopped for gas ... and more importantly, for peanut M&Ms, a couple of donuts, and one of those cappucinos that's loaded with sugar. Between that and the sun coming out, that did the trick - we were now wide awake and WIRED for the trip. JJ started reading aloud to me from White Fang, and we were so engrossed in that that we missed one of our exits. The rest of the four-hour drive was so enjoyable that we were almost sad when we arrived.

We were a little behind schedule, so we raced around like crazy getting packed, and then went to the bank plus four stores to make sure we had everything we needed. And we arrived at the church only 15 minutes late, and it wasn't even so late that people were getting concerned.

Our church is really cool - it does a great job of reaching out to unchurched people, sharing the Gospel with them and then helping them become fully devoted followers of Christ. It's one of the things that makes us hesitant about moving so far away. Since we haven't permanently moved, we've stayed connected with that church, and for a long time we've been looking forward to an opportunity to go on one of their short-term missions trips.

While I've had the desire to go on a trip since 2004, I felt God didn't want me to until I could take at least one other member of the family with me. This year, JJ was old enough and had proven himself enough in various volunteering activities around the church that the trip leader agreed that he could go on an in-country trip (as opposed to a trip outside the U.S.). So we were very excited for this opportunity to go to New Orleans and help people rebuild their homes that had been devasted by the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina.

(Rest of this entry was lost because I waited too long between "saves," so I'll have to re-write it some other time. Argh!)