Made It!!

The Greenville-bound van, with Sina Shuey, her four kiddos, and her sidekick (me) aboard made it safely to Greenville around 10 last night, despite a very VOCAL one-year-old who plainly wanted us to realize just how boring confinement to a carseat is... after 8 hours of buckled-in restraint, I can't say I blame her. Morgan tried a form of hypnosis involving a stuffed dog and a water bottle which produced much quieter bursts of chuckling. Babies do come in handy, though, when you need a cover-up for spilling something on yourself. Held on the side of the spill, and no one is the wiser! :) Jenna, a big girl at age 4, did WONDERFULLY in her carseat.

I was very proud of John's mastery of using finger quote-marks to denote sarcasm or irony in his oral story-telling. That was a practice I explained during our Sam's run last week, and was proud to see he's since mastered. Oh the things I teach them...

We listened to most of Ella Enchanted, to everyone's enjoyment-- if I'd been forward thinking enough, I would have checked it out at the library for them. As it was, we took advantage of Cracker Barrel's audiobook rental program. It's $3.50 for a week rental, returnable to any Cracker Barrel... only downside is having to pay for the book up front as a deposit. Audiobooks aren't cheap!! Anyway, our trip was fun and we survived my driving a van through the NC mountains (Sina hates mountain driving). The only downside was that our Arby's Jamocha shake wasn't nearly as jamocha-y as the ones in Louisville...as they SHOULD be.

I miss my husband... poor man, all alone after a weekend FULL of friends and family (not to mention explosives), in a house that has seemingly tripled in size and lost most of its familiarity. Good thing the kitchen is the same. And that I stocked the freezer with lots of ice-cream for him.

** EDIT: for those wondering who Abigail is and what she was doing in a carseat headed down to Greenville with us, she is the Shuey's 14-month-old foster daughter. She melts my heart when she waves at me or reaches her pudgy arms out to me at church. She recognizes & goes to Ryan, too... we think it must be the hair. :) She' s very adept at saying "hi," "hey," and "hiya!" Also enjoys "uh-oh" and "touch!" (usually referring to something she's NOT allowed to touch) and performs her bad-guy-laugh almost on demand. She really sounds like she's talking most of the time, but there aren't really many actual words in there, though she's a little parrot and will mimic just about anything you tell her to say.