Delaware did they go?

It's Friday night and the children and I have been in Delaware since Thursday the 4th.

Well, where to begin. I can't thank all of our friends enough for all the help. The Discher family, the Miller boys and Mr. Fenner worked so hard to help me make my goal to leave Florida Wednesday morning. They were at our house until past 11 pm, but we didn't quite make it. The kids and I made a palate of blankets and pillows on the floor that night and slept our last night in our house. The next morning I ignored the alarm on my cell phone. Fortunatly, my dear friend Mrs. Hagen called around 8 am to see where we were. She felt bad for waking me, but I was grateful. Beth and Eddie Discher arrived as I was getting out of the shower and we finished loading the last few items into the trailer. Mr. Fenner came back as well. In the end I only missed the mark by a few hours (we left about 3:00 that afternoon).

I was so tired when we started out. Again, I made a goal of getting to Georgia before we stopped for the night. We ended up stopping around 7 pm and getting a hotel room. We were still in Florida. I should stop making goals : ) We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pretzels for dinner. I took a shower and we all went to bed in our clothes. I set my phone for 4 am. This time I didn't ignore it. As a matter of fact I woke up at 3:45! I took the dogs out to do their thing, filled our coolers with ice, loaded the car back up and woke the kids. We were back on the road by 4:45 and soon discovered that I was only about one exit away from the Georgia State line (and better hotels). Oh well.

I tentatively set another goal of making it to Delaware that night. We filled up the gas tank just past the state line and the kids fell back to sleep. Around 10:30 we stopped for gas again and then hit the McDonalds for the bathroom and food. None of us were in the mood for breakfast, but they weren't serving lunch yet. I told the kids we would have to settle for breakfast, because we weren't stopping again until we needed fuel. Just as we walked up to order I heard the employees commenting about being out of most of the breakfast items and then a girl walked over to the board and changed it over to lunch. God is so good! We ordered our burgers and got back on the road.

We hit the DC Beltway (I-495) around 4:00. We were making great time! Patrick was expecting us to be at least one more night on the road and then we hit bumper to bumper traffic. We stayed outside of DC until after 6:00 :( But, I made my overall goal. We were in Delaware with Patrick by 8:00 Thursday night!

We are again without our own Internet connection. I have borrowed my dad's laptop to make this post. My folks are leaving on the 30th to report to work on Long Island. They will be there until December 24th. I suppose I can take our laptop up to the McDonalds in Milford every so often. They have a big sign in the window advertising that they have Wifi. Please keep checking in on us and I will try to post whenever I can.

Since our arrival, we have been busy. I spent the first day getting settled in the camper. My mom and I have been sharing the meal prep duties. She cooks part in her camper and I cook part in mine and then we eat together. The big annual tractor show was the first weekend. Saturday night we had a concert with the Inspirations, the Chuck Wagon Gang and Ryan and Friends, a very good ventriloquist act.

Patrick has been very busy working on the finish work on our friends' house as well as his duties with the store and the concert hall. The campground was full the weekend of the tractor show. We have one camper staying tonight and a group of about four campers next weekend. We had two big rainstorms two nights in a row and now the temperature has dropped. It was quite warm when we first arrived, but it is 47 degrees outside right now. Unfortunately it is 68 degrees in our camper because we are having issues with the LP and are spending our second night without any heat. Patrick finally found a guy who could come out this evening to look at it. He is returning tomorrow afternoon and we hope he will get it all fixed. Again we are grateful that my parents are up here so the kids have a warm place to sleep and tomorrow we have a place to take a hot shower.

Before I wrap this up, I need to send a personal message to Sandy. I brought my desktop computer up here in my car, set it up in our camper, it worked just fine for a couple of days and then just up and died the other night for no apparent reason. I tell you this because you made a comment and asked for our new address. Your e-mail address is locked in the address book in that computer. Please send me a personal e-mail and then I can respond back to you. Also, Aaron if you read this, HELP my computer is asking for a boot disk. I have never had this happen before. Any boot disk I have would be locked in our trailer in Florida. Can you help in any way?

Until next time...