grow

im watching planet earth on discovery channel.  i think this is the most amazing thing i've ever seen in my life.  i want to buy a huge digital television just so i can enjoy it more.  i just love seeing so many different things.  its just so amazing.

timmy and i took our junior high students to get-a-way this weekend. it was pretty intense.  it was about 7.5 hours to joplin with all our stops and everything and the whole weekend just flew by.  we had a GREAT time getting to know our junior high students a little bit better as well.  when we got about three hours from home, the 15 passenger van timmy was driving (i was driving a mini van behind him) broke down.  so we pulled off in jefferson city mo and thought it was just low on oil, close to ceasing up.  so i went to a gas station and bought a ton of oil.  then the problem kept happening, so we pulled over again and while timmy called some friends at church to figure out what to do, i drove kids to the bathroom and back to the van.  one guy stopped bc he thought we needed directions, when he found out we were broken down, he couldn't really help so he took off.  but then this guy who's like a master mechanic stopped and helped us try to identify the problem.  

we ended up staying at a friend of our childrens minister's house.  they were out of town, so we got to just hang out and play games and we watched cool runnings* it was great.  a blessing in disguise, really.

two men from church drove the three hours south to us that night (last night, actually) and worked on the van as much as they could then stayed in a hotel.  then this morning, another guy from church drove another 15 passenger van down and drove our kids and trailer back to iowa.  our broken van made it back, but the guy who drove it said that it was still acting up on the drive and he doubted that it would have made it with all the weight of the students and the trailer.  it was pretty wild.  

anyway.  lots of excitement.  it was hard to be so close to arkansas without going home.  and to be in joplin where there are so many people i want to see, but no time to see them.  i did get to see my friend lindsay for a while and she was a huge encouragement.  there were so many friends i wanted to see.  they sure do pack a weekend together for those retreats.  

timmy and i learned so much this weekend.  we have lots of ideas for next time.  we may even start scheduling an extra night in on those weekends so we can spend some "relaxed" time with the students.  it just gave us such a great opportunity to hang out and talk and everything.

anyway, planet earth is on.  and its just so amazing.  

love.

*"ya ded mon?"  when i was a little kid watching this, i cried a whole lot.  RIP john candy.