On the Road Again
It’s been a bit, so 
here is a springtime family update. At the start of spring, we headed south with all the kiddos. My husband was going to be taking the older children to an event for youth, and I was going to be taking care of all the younger ones. After the event, we planned on having some family time all together. It’s never an easy task preparing and leaving for a trip with all of us, but this time it was especially challenging. It was so challenging that I almost stayed back with the younger children.
It was a parallel to our last trip, we had sickness that ran through the house before leaving, and bad storms with flooding. It was weird. It was really a last minute decision for me not to go, and then to go. I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy trip on me. The plan was to rough it a little (due to lack of housing options) in an RV for the weekend. I thought it would be something fun to try. When I booked it, the only concern I had was the weather. I did not want to be stuck in a bad spring storm in the South with my kiddos in an RV.
After a lengthy, but luckily somewhat uneventful trip we finally arrived. We found the RV site and got out to temperatures in the upper 80’s, a stark contrast to our below freezing nightly temperatures back home. We all went into the RV to check out where we’d be staying, it wasn’t long (minutes) before we realized it had problems. Pretty big problems.
Upon entering I quickly noticed it was not very clean. I tried to remain optimistic, but as I looked around I noticed several rodent droppings on the kitchen surfaces and then on the floor. My husband looked around for some lights, some of which were blown out. I was holding onto my baby, it was hot and stuffy. Joshua looked for some air vents. Our oldest son was on a bunk and reached up to open an air vent he found. At the same time, Joshua turned on the A/C, and debris from what appeared to be a mouse nest started flying out of the vent into the RV.
About that time our 10 year tells us he has to pee, so we point him to the bathroom. A few seconds later we heard the toilet flush, what happened next, is hard to put into words. An explosion of sewer gas filled the RV. it was nauseating! Then Joshua, who was on the other side of the bathroom wall declared that there was sewer water coming into the RV and spreading across the floor. He went into the bathroom to investigate to see if he could quickly fix something. The sewer gas was getting worse, we all had to evacuate.
While Joshua was looking into the problems and trying to contact the owner, I got out a sleeping bag and laid it down on a flat area in the dirt because one of the kiddos was tired. I changed our toddler who was still wearing fleece footy pajamas and changed some diapers. I also looked for a shower room on site so the older kids could quickly change because I realized the event they were attending that evening was starting soon.
To keep the story short, let’s just say, the RV was not going to work out. I would much rather camp, but we didn’t bring stuff for all of us, and it wasn’t a large enough lot for that anyway. Someone was sent out to look at the problems, but could not resolve them. So we scrambled to find a place to stay. The few rentals I knew about in the area were booked, and I knew most of the hotels were booked that weekend also. I told Joshua about a hotel to call that I knew to be the best in the area. I knew it was a long shot. He handed me the phone, and by a miracle, they had a few rooms left that they said we could have! They even gave me a pretty notable discount!
I must add that the owner of the RV was very nice. They apologized and said they would give us a full refund. We will keep their name anonymous.
So, after being temporarily homeless, hundreds of miles from home, we were eager to get to the hotel. However, we needed to get our older kids to where they needed to be first. We then drove to the town we thought the hotel was in, then we drove to the town the hotel was actually in.
The Storm
Did I mention that we have the greatest kids in the world? They were real troopers, except maybe for our toddler, but hey how much can we expect? Joshua helped us get settled into the rooms and went back to be with the older kids.
Later that night, Joshua came into my room, he and the older kids had just gotten back. He told me there was bad weather headed towards the area, so they were told to leave the conference and take their children somewhere safe. He called our oldest, who was not staying with us, to make sure she was safe.
I finally got the kids down to sleep, not an easy task with four young ones in the same room. As I lay there with my toddler I heard the storm getting worse. As with most hotels, there was one large window and some beds. The wind got so bad that I thought for sure the window would break! My kids were somehow sleeping soundly. I laid there thinking how thankful I was that we were not in the RV right now.
Joshua came to my room for a moment and said there was a tornado headed towards the RV site! After everyone was in bed, the storm grew worse. This mama bear was pondering how I was going to snatch up 4 children and take them all to safety if things got worse. The wind was terrible! I went down the hall to talk to Joshua, who was also sleeping. I woke him and asked him if he thought everything was okay. Some people were in the halls heading downstairs, did I mention we were on the top floor? I’m a calm person by nature, but because Joshua can fall asleep standing up, I’ve always taken the night shift.
He agreed it was bad, but assured me that we were fine. I went back to bed, the winds got up to over 100 miles per hour that night. My family, like Jesus in the boat, slept well. I on the other hand, did a lot of praying.
God is so good! After a rough day and night, morning came and the sun was shining over the small mountains around us. It was a beautiful sight. We later found out that the people at the RV park had to flee for their lives and found shelter in a Taco Bell bathroom nearby. I never thought I’d be thankful for rodents and sewage problems.
I’m thankful to say that the remainder of our trip went well. The younger children and I found a very nice park to explore. We had some picnics and times of relaxation.
On our way back home we stopped for a picnic and explored “Natural Bridge” in Northwest Alabama. Click on the video below to see more of our time at this beautiful park.
What's New?
As shown by the video above, we started a You Tube channel “Happily Outnumbered.” So, of course, we would love for you to subscribe! We also have the “Back to Homemade” You Tube Channel up and running, and of course, we would love for you to subscribe to that too! No pressure of course, but go ahead and subscribe!
The Channels are in their baby stage, but it is something that’s been in our thoughts for a long time. I enjoy working on it and I’m excited to get more videos published soon. I’m also excited to update our equipment soon. This will not take the place of the Blog, just be an addition to it.
We had some blessed family time during Holy Week this spring as well, due to the holidays and some traveling I wasn’t blogging as much. The delay makes this post a bit lengthy. To sum up a bit more of our springtime family update, here are some pictures.
Some recent hiking pics in Eastern Missouri:
It’s planting time! Some pics below of getting the garden ready.
Well, it’s been an eventful springtime around here so far. We hope you have a great spring and I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, if so, feel free to comment or contact us by e-mail. We love hearing from you!
Until next time……
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