Our Craziness

Well we had been planning a trip to Seattle to visit my family for Christmas, but I didn't post about because we wanted to surprise my parents. Stir Fry got his cast on about a week and a half before we left. The splint had caused a sore in the crease of his elbow, so they put the cast below the elbow and only after about 4 days it was getting loose, just before we were about to leave. The last thing I wanted was to be in Seattle and have a cast fall off. So we went to the doctor and it was loose enough the doctor just pulled it off. Since the sore was better they put the new one above the elbow and we were ready to go. It snowed the night before we left, and since we leave at 0'dark thirty there was still snow on the ground that hadn't been driven on and weather was pretty bad, until we hit Idaho and the sun came out. Speedy didn't tolerate the 16+ hour trip every well, but the other two did good. My little brother came with us and he was a good help, because I was losing it towards the end. My older brother and family went to Seattle for Christmas and knew we were coming and were at my parents house for a couple days before spending some time with her family, so they made sure my parents were around. We FINALLY got there! We debating on how to surprise them, besides just knocking on the door. I brought one of our big moving boxes from the move and we had Stir Fry and Baluga hide under it and we rang the door bell and hid around the corner. So my mom answered the door to have this big box just sitting on her doorstep. She lifted it up and there were my two oldest. She was in shock and couldn't believe it! Pretty good Christmas present if you ask me. Back to the craziness, so moments before we showed up my brother's oldest child threw up, their second child threw up during the night and first thing in the morning Baluga threw up. After that things were pretty calm for a few days. Stir Fry started to get cough, but nothing horrible, it was usually just at night. A couple days after Christmas (which was just a couple days before we were to leave) Speedy threw up a couple times in the middle of the night, and it also looked like he was starting to get pink eye, which then spread to the other kids, but never got really bad. So we had the doctor call in a prescription, which we had to pay for, $40 for a LITTLE bottle of eye drops! We got up again really early to leave for our trip home. Needless to say after the first trip I was a little overwhelmed of the task ahead of us, and this time my baby brother wasn't with us. I had my dad give Speedy a blessing ended up getting one myself. We were getting ready to go and Stir Fry threw up! Then he ended up getting a blessing and then we said a prayer before we left which was different than expected and had a lot of detail. Anyway so we were on our way. We made our first stop of many to feed Speedy. We stopped on Coffin Road exit, which is like a ranch/farming exit. We should have known better! Stir Fry threw up while we were stopped! And then we got ready to leave and our car wouldn't start! Of course this put in my tears! What were we going to do? We were on a road that didn't get used often. Part of my father's prayer before we left told the Hubby to listen to the spirit. He saw a car coming and took off. These people decided to stop and help some strange guy on a rarely used road, which they questioned but did anyway, which I am grateful for. They tried to jump our car, no luck! Luckily they were from a ton 10 minutes away and knew a lot of people. They knew a guy who had a tow truck and a man who owned a battery/starter shop in town and called them for us. By the time we would have gotten to the shop it would have been closed, but they told the owner to wait for us. We got a new battery and we were back on our way. About 20 minutes later we saw a REALLY bad semi truck accident, which left me just too overwhelmed and thankful to contain myself, I lost it! If our car wouldn't have died, who knows where we would have been if we got back on the road when we were ready. Speedy did a lot better this time than last, which I am grateful for, because I couldn't have dealt with that. We got about midnight and all of our smoke alarms were going off! Fortunately no fire. Although Stir Fry said this loud noise made him throw up again! We had been gone for over a week, who knows how long they had been going off. And because of the time we got home all the stores in town were closed for the night, so Jeremy had to make a trip to the next city over to get new batteries, since we weren't sure how much of the battery had been used. We eventually got to sleep. Lots of craziness, but all and all we had a good Christmas and good time with family. Definitely one we'll remember through the years. It just makes me very grateful for an earthly father who listens so closely to the spirit and gave the blessings and prayer he did that day. It also make me grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows us and watches over us. I'm grateful that he watched over us that day and protected, and that if he couldn't have made our car start he sent us "angels" to help us. My testimony was definitely strengthened through these trials. How can you question if there is a God and if he cares and listens and watches over us when something like this?