A trip and the providence of God.....

What started as a nice trip to visit friends and family ended in a lesson in the providence of God.  What an interesting few days AND a wonderful visit with friends and family.

I have been wanting to visit my friend who lives in Austin, TX and has a new baby, and my brother and family and nephew.

My sister and I decided to drive instead of fly.  There were really good reasons to drive, or so it seemed.  Oh, did I mention its a 12 hour drive and we drove it in one day?  Did I also mention that we had a slight lapse of good judgement and common sense?  No, I probably didn't mention those insignificant facts!  We knew it was a long drive, but didn't know what was ahead and that's a really good thing.

First my sister, Cathy, was taking her car and had taken it in for some work to the dealership.  Her son, my nephew works there and was orchestrating the work.  Cathy told him she needed the car at least by the day before the trip so we could load our stuff and be ready to leave.  I drove over on Thursday, the day before we were set to leave.  

The car wasn't ready and the sister was having a meltdown......it wasn't pretty folks.  Dickie, her son, brought home a demo for us to drive.  Unfamiliar car + women driving = well, potential disaster.  We got the car late in the evening before we were to leave the next day and got a quick tutorial.....and may I say my nephew was very patient.

I actually liked the car; it had lots of room to load our luggage......not that we take much.  Car in driveway, we started gathering our things together to load the next morning, then sat to have a drink and relax.

Next morning, we picked up Mary Grace, sister of Emily, friend who lives in Austin.  Little Grady was less than happy that mama was leaving.

What a long, eventful day!  After driving through Alabama and Mississippi, we arrived at a rest area in Louisiana.  My sister took over driving at that point and almost had a wreck when we were stopping for lunch, drove for a while.  We stopped for a quick bite at the busiest Chic Fil A in America, then got back on the road and finally arrived in Texas.  God had his hand on us and we were safe and not a scratch on the car!

Here we are celebrating that we made it to Texas.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Houston at rush hour and the GPS kept directing us away from traffic delays into other traffic delays.......we drove around Houston in awful traffic for over two hours.  I wanted to roll my window down and scream Why would anyone want to live here and do this every day???  We finally got to a place we could get off the road and get a bite to eat and use the facilities and I was so relieved.  It was dark now and had been for a lot of the time we were getting to know the not so nice side of Houston.  Mary Grace took over and in about an hour and a half we finally arrived at our hotel.  We were too tired to take Mary Grace to Emily's so we all spent the night there and slept in a coma until morning.

We finally got to Emily's and were so excited to see her, Jeff and Georgia Grace!!

Sisters

Mama, Daddy and Georgia Grace

I know this post is heavy on pictures, but how can you not put up pictures of such a sweet baby?  

So we ended days one and two.......

This is too long to go on, I'll finish later.

Oh, one final note....because Cathy's car wasn't ready and we drove a demo that I fell in love with, we have finally decided on a new car for me!  I said it was all the providence of God!