the journey’s worth it

Nothing compares to the feeling of knowing something wonderful is ahead of you. Like the excitement of Christmas Eve, when you anticipate the magic of the morning after just “one more sleep.”

This is where I’m at…counting down the hours…and there are many of them. Twenty driving hours to be exact. Then tack on two to three hours of stop time and one night in a hotel. Sometimes the distance feels unbearable and the hours unending. You may be wondering what is waiting at the other end of this journey. Well, it’s a large contingency of my amazing family and wonderful, old friends. We’ll be heading to our Northern boy’s home first. He and his lovely wife are heading to England for a music tour, and we get to spend ten glorious days with our precious grandlittles! We’ll be hanging around for another week, heading south to see our cb girl and our techie boy and their spouses, visit with extended family, as well as a few friends. My heart overflows!

You may also wonder how we keep sane during the long hours of travel. My Love does the majority of the driving, while I spell him occasionally so he can stretch out his legs. In case you don’t know, we drive a Honda Civic. Great on gas…not so comfy on long trips. [edit: we now have a lovely van, complete with DVD player…YAY!]

Thankfully, my youngest children are old enough to entertain themselves, without too many “how much longer?”s. When they were younger, I’d make up twenty tickets (or whatever amount the length of trip warranted) for each of them. Each one was worth a dollar of spending money. Whining, arguing and the like would be cause for forfeiting one of their tickets. At the end, they were given their reward. Yes, it’s true, I am not above bribery. This actually served a twofold purpose, though. It kept the how-much-longers and bickering at a minimum and gave them responsibility for choosing wisely when it came to parting with their hard earned spending money.

Now that they’re older, in order to keep screen time at an acceptable level, I try to be prepared in different ways. We are trying to finish up school for the end of May, or early June so we can prepare for some work teams coming to help us reach out to the community, so a few hours are taken up with that. (Just one of the many perks homeschooling offers). Reading is always a good way to spend your time, but my df girl gets a little car sick if she spends too much time at it. I printed out some fun “would you rather” questions. These generated a few laughs! Some scavenger hunt pages for my cl boy kept him looking around instead of being glued to his screen. (You can find an assortment of ideas on my Pinterest board, kids {road trips}.)

As for me, I’m often worse than the kids for getting antsy. But I came prepared with some wool and my needles. My daughter-in-love inspired me last year to take up knitting, particularly baby socks. It’s a good project for someone who has trouble staying focused. They’re quite quick to make up. Rolling the skeins of wool into a ball took a good deal of time, especially in such tight quarters. I’m using Briggs and Little wool. It is produced in New Brunswick and is very reasonably priced in the east coast.

I needed to do two skeins because I like to knit two at a time toe-up socks. I appreciate that there’s no worry that my socks won’t match, as I’m working on them at the same time! I’m knitting a modified version of these baby socks, and trying my hand at a fleegle heel for the first time. I usually do a work sock type pattern that can’t be adapted for the fleegle heel method. I must tell you, as well, that the Knit Picks interchangeable needles are worth the investment! The cables are so long and flexible…there’s just no comparison for two at a time knitting.

While I knit we often listen to Adventures in Odyssey (I think my Love and I enjoy it more that the kids) and pod casts by Ravi Zacharias, Charles Price, Focus on the Family, etc. I also have a book on the iPad that I’ve been reading for quite some time. Throw in a little phone time, and the trip is over before you know it.

Besides, here’s what’s waiting for me at the end of my journey: