Snow! And Indiana

 We got our first snowfall of the year last week. It started on Thursday and continued on Friday. 

Thursday the kids headed to youth group and enjoyed packing shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. They had a lot of fun and made some new friends along the way. I am so thankful for our church and how the kids have connected with people there! 

Our flight for Fort Wayne departed on Friday. This lead to a long delay, but we made it out, which was great because there were a lot of flights that were canceled. Our flight was from Denver to Chicago, from there we picked up a rental car and drove to Fort Wayne. I was thankful we didn't have a connection, because I'm pretty sure we would have missed that. As it was we didn't get into Fort Wayne until 2:30 am. Fortunately that's only like 12:30 am Mountain time, so it wasn't too bad. But I did have to drive through a lot of fog and it was an unfamiliar fancy newish (2023 camry) with various bells and whistles that were super frustrating and I couldn't figure out how to turn off. Such as automatically turning on the high beams for me, brilliant in fog. Or turning them off when it saw a traffic light thinking it was another car. Anyway, we made it out of Chicago with lots of people passing us with their hazards on (what's up with that?!) and saw three deer and hit zero. We crashed in the hotel and then started bright and early visiting with friends. The boys let the hotel Saturday at 8:15 am and didn't return until Sunday at 11 am. Where they showered and crashed until 4 pm and then were not back at the hotel the rest of our time in Fort Wayne. They had a ton of fun with friends and had two sleepovers with very little sleep. Evie took an hour and a half nap Saturday and then was off to see her friends in Mill Girls for both the matinee and 7 pm show. The director was kind enough to allow her to hang out with people while they were eating between shows. After the 7 pm show we went out to Culvers and hung out with people there until almost midnight. Evie and I enjoyed having our own bed in the hotel room while the boys had a sleepover. Evie slept in on Sunday, while I got up and went and picked up the boys. Once I got back I got Evie "breakfast" made sure the boys were actually going to get some sleep and headed over to some friends for football. It was a low key afternoon with some cookie making, which was great.  We then picked the boys up and saw other friends for dinner, the kids headed to youth group and we hung out a little more after youth group and the boys slept over. Monday morning was low key with some other friends and just what everyone needed. We headed back to Chicago with the sketchy drivers (one person decided to pretend to shoot us making a gun with his fingers! And we nearly got into an accident as someone pulled out in front of us when they shouldn't have, I had to swerve and hit the breaks hard enough that the ABS engaged), and made it to the air port. Thankfully the flight home was uneventful and Nathan had picked up the minivan (the dealer was fixing a few small things for us) and picked us up in that. Having the extra room was amazing! Did I mention the minivan is from Honda of Clear Lake, as in Clear Lake Texas, right by our house when we lived there? We had actually looked at minivans they had when buying our first one. Such a small world  sometimes. 

Evie got this amazing picture with the big dipper out her plane window on the way home! 

We flew Frontier airlines, which is super cheap and I also appreciated because without paying for seats they seated me with my kids that were under 16. Which meant Evie could sit with the boys and I could take Evie's random seat with the scary strangers 😁 The kids enjoyed sitting together on the flights.

The boys after their first sleepover with their friends

Evie, at the show with friends

Snow!! There is still a little bit around here and there, but Charlie and I went for our Tuesday morning walk and even though there was some snow I was in a t-shirt and it was a beautiful sunny day!!

Nathan and Hannah made it through the weekend without us and Nathan at least was happy we were back, but I think that Charlie was the most excited that we had returned, she was jumping for joy when we came in! 

Today we were back to our regularly scheduled program and I was thankful for the extra vehicle and not having to bring Nathan into work before heading to theater with the kids.