Exhausted but safe... in IL not ET :)

It was Thursday when we found out that we might travel to Ethiopia on Memorial day weekend. Yes that left us 10 days to plan everything and finish our paper work. Totally intimidated, it started to work all our fingerprint papers started moving via an amazing immigration official who adopted me. Then after spending a half hour dialing NVC and then a half hour on hold we got to talk to NVC people and it looked like we would get our information in. (that process was repeated every day this week). So, I have three kids at home, Caleb is traveling with us and the others are traveling to TN from Chicago to stay with grandma and grandpa. We got all packed on Tuesday and headed out by 2pm (after the conference call was supposed to start for that travel group). The call was delayed an hour and we decided to just hit the road.

We are driving to TN (normal for me, probably 4 times a year) when the traffic started backing up (normal for Chicago during 4pm rush hour) but it wasn't a car accident, it was a MAN HUNT! So they shut down I94 for hours and we ended up getting off the road. By the time we were headed south again on a more circuitous route, I realized we wouldn't arrive until 3am. Well... that wouldn't work with rest stops and a four year old. So we headed to my parent's home, (one hour closer to TN than we are). Spent the night and tried again the next morning.

Though I was up at 5, we didn't get out until 8, thankful and happy from a warm breakfast with my mom, who stayed up late to help me repack the night before. Again morning rush hour, (not too bad when you are used to it) slowed us down. About three hours into our drive I call my man and he checks the email (not a normal activity of his, he doesn't like web mail :) and finds the email from our agency AWAA informing us that we can not travel this weekend. We were just 30 miles from a cool farm with cows and a museum type of thing (Fair Oaks Farms, IN) We hung there for three hours trying to help the kids to realize that after 11 hours of driving we were still not getting to grandma and grandpa's for another week and a half.

Praises of course include only being 1/3 of the way to TN, Kent checking the email, and AWAA's email coming when it did. I am so glad we didn't get all the way there on Tuesday... sigh.

I am glad to have a couple more weeks to think though, that was a crazy mad rush, I don't know if I even read a book to my kids a couple days there.

We can't wait to go. I am calling our travel agent as soon as it hits her time zone.

God bless!