Our journey

We arrived in Oregon yesterday after an exhausting day of travel (details to follow) and are thrilled to be here. Today we went to Saturday marked and got the girls tie-dyed outfits (which I would have posted a picture of if we had unfortunately not left our camera in Georgia!!) and played at Skinners Butte park. I have LOVED being here and feel like I am a sponge soaking in all the beauty and enjoyment. It is a gift to be here and I am grateful for all of our experiences.

Now, about our day of travel. UGH!!! Getting ready to go out of town is always crazy, but I had done almost all of the packing on Thursday and felt well prepared. So, Friday morning I got up and went running and watered the plants. Then, I saw that David was not on pace for where he needed to be, so I offered to mow the lawn for him. I figured that we needed to leave at about 10:30 in order to be there about an hour before our flight and thought I'd have enough time to get everything done. I did not, however, figure in to my calculations that David needed to run by his parents house, the bank, his office, and Ashton Woods prior to driving to the airport. So, to make a long story short, instead of arriving at the airport at 11:20 for our 12:20 departure time we arrived at 11:50, which would have been okay had Delta not changed their check-in policy. Unbeknownst to us Delta now requires that you be checked in 45 minutes prior to your flight time, so they would not let us check in (even though we were there and could have made our flight!!!!!) Instead, they made us miss our scheduled flight, and since there were no available flights to Salt Lake (the only airport with connections to Eugene) from Atlanta, we had to travel first to Denver, then to Salt Lake, then to Eugene, with a FOUR HOUR layover in Denver. Can I say UGH again? In the process of rebooking our flights they also cancelled Emily's ticket altogether, which we had to fight to have fixed once we got to Denver. The entire experience was exhausting to say the least, but I did learn a few things in the process. The first (which I already kind of knew) was that I have AMAZING kids. They were as near perfect as any 7, 5, 3, and almost 2 year old can be while traveling for 14 hours. They were helpful, cheerful, cooperative, and did not whine (even when I felt like whining).

The other lesson I learned is more of an object lesson. I figured that by missing our scheduled flight we made a "four hour mistake", because after four hours we were back on course and where we wanted to be. And let me tell you, those four hours were painful!! Now here is the object lesson: If you think of life as a journey with eternal life as the destination, each mistake we make takes us a little off course of where we want to be. The longer we wait to repent or the more severe the consequences, the longer we are off course. Some people make one year mistakes, ten year mistakes, or even eternal mistakes. Our goal should be to minimize the length of time we are off-course, and thereby minimize the pain that delay causes.

So, there you have it! I will continue to report on our Oregonian adventures as they occur and will pass along any more life lessons I glean along the way.