After almost 4 weeks on the road, tonight I am sitting in my own chair, I am putting my clean clothes away in my own drawers and I will be sleeping in my own bed! And I must confess, the feeling is wonderful.
I have so much to process and share with you all - and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with trying to up-date all of our comings and goings. Plus, while we were in Marysville, I purchased a new computer. I’m excited about it, but am still working on the big change-over. (Like my pictures are on the old one, and I’m typing on the new one!) So, please be patient with me, I’ll get more pictures and details out soon!
But for now, we’re safe and sound back at Teen Challenge. The truck was finally fixed “all the way”, and we had a safe final leg of our month long journey.
Home. A very good word.
I don’t know if it was being on the road for 12 hours, the long line of traffic ahead of us, or just the exhaustion of such a wonderful couple of weeks with family, but Gary agreed (suggested even!) to staying at a hotel tonight (as opposed to driving all night and just stopping to sleep in the truck if we needed to)! So we’re all nice and cozy at the Carolina Inn in Orangeburg, SC. Our destination tomorrow is Jacksonville, FL - where we will have the truck (yes, it is still giving us trouble!!!) looked at by a Dodge Master Mechanic (who is the son of some very dear Sower friends!). We’re keeping our fingers crossed!
But right now we’re enjoying the Eagles game (and they’re only losing by a touchdown. I guess that’s good since they’re playing New England).
I really do feel some zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz’s coming………
I will praise you, Oh LORD, wiith all my heart:
I will tell of all your wonders.
I will be glad and rejoice in you;
I will sing praise to your name, Oh Most High.
Psalm 9:1-2
It’s the end of a beautiful Thanksgiving! We woke up to Christmas morning, had Thanksgiving at 3, and then joined some of Tammy’s family for dessert. Today is Madelyn’s 2 week birthday, and Saturday is Hayley’s third birthday party. I don’t think we can fit anymore fun into a day. The house is quiet and we’re all getting ready to call it a DAY, but I jus wanted to share with you all how very thankful I am for this beautiful family that God has blessed me with. How very good He has been to us!
Did I mention we can be pretty silly, too?
More Thanksmas pictures to come, I promise!
WE MADE IT! And here’s the proof - a picture of Maddie taken with my own camera!
All of the Conrads are in the same time zone, and by Wednesday will all be in the same town. 
….long drive…off to bed!
OK, so my bag is not quite packed, but Gary assures me that HIS is, and all of the Christmas gifts and other sundry stuff that we have accumulated during our two weeks here is already filling the back seat of the truck. Gary figures he might as well remove the rear view mirror since it won’t be any help in the drive to Ohio.
My two weeks here (and Gary’s week and a half ) have been just delightful. Of course, the first week was spent in busy anticipation of the Abby’s wedding, the wedding weekend was full of family and “warm fuzzies” (not to mention the wedding), and this week was just a sweet gentle time of kick back and recovery from the busy-ness of the wedding preparations. We did a little shopping (where I was able to finish up the Conrad Christmas Shopping), did a little reading, ate a little too much (Joie hasn’t quite figured out how to cook for two instead of seven!), watched all 6 hours of Pride and Prejudice (we let the guys watch all six hours (or so it seemed at least) of Gettysburg) and ended most days with a quick match or two of Speed Scrabble. (We never keep score, just try to use up all the letters. So although it’s always a tie, she really wins with words like VORTEX and FRENZY to my VOTE and ZOO. sigh.). I took a day to meet my buddy Janet in Lancaster where neither of us really had any shopping to do, but we did enjoy our time together. I did manage to pick up some fabric for a baby quilt for Maddie, so that was pretty fun!
But tomorrow after church (and a church luncheon - more eating!!!!), we head west to Ohio. The truck has continued to have mechanical problems, but we THINK we might have finally fixed the problem. (The operative word here is THINK. I guess we’ll know for sure tomorrow when we start her up and drive to church.) Although it will be hard to say good-bye (well, Fitz will probably be happy to have Joie to himself again), we are very excited to be heading out to Toby and Tammy’s for Thanksgiving. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but between meeting little Maddie, seeing those other darling grandchildren, hugging all my dear children (I haven’t seen Lara in 8 months!), well…..guess you could say I’m just a little psyched!
Here’s a little sampling of pictures from these last two weeks - some wedding, some sightseeing, some just ’cause I thought it looked pretty cool. If you’d like to see the whole batch, check them out here.
But to start at the beginning……
Here is the view on our approach to Charlotte-
And much to my delight, Fall was still in full swing during our time here -
And the wedding? Well, to be honest most of my pictures were of people looking at other cameras, but I did manage a good one of all the Fitzpatrick Siblings -
Christiana, Jon, Abby, Mike, Hannah
I think they turned out OK!
And here is one of my favorites of the bride and groom….ah, interacting with the flower girl (niece Molly Fitzpatrick) and ring bearer (nephew Pierson Bookamer) 
And remember the “sisters” picture in my last post of Ellie, Hayley and Maddie? Well, here are the three sisters that were at the wedding~
Elna, Joie and me!
Better head off to bed - I still need to finish packing!
