Team Trip: Adventure in the Unplanned

This past weekend we had the privilege of taking our team on a little get-a-way with some dear friends.  This was our escape from the heat for the summer, and we surely did appreciate it!  :)  We stayed up in a huge house high up in the mountains.

 12 adults + 15 kids + 5 acres of forest + rain + 70 degree temps = FUN!

We were in the middle of nowhere without cell service!  It was a great place to unplug for a couple of days.  The boys loved spending time with their friends roaming around outside!  It was a much needed time to be refreshed for us all!

I have NO photos to show.  I took my camera, but never even took it out of my bag.  It's 1/2 broken because the batteries spontaneously fall out!  So hopefully some of my buddies will share their photos with me!  :)

The adventure part of the trip was the drive home and let me tell you, boy was it unplanned!  There was a rollover accident on the 17 and it was completely shut down for hours!  When we got to the backup, we were 10 miles from the accident and were completely stopped.  We were able to talk to a DPS guy and he said it was at least a 2 hr delay!  We couldn't think of many things WORSE than being stuck in the middle of nowhere on the highway with 4 children for several hours!  Seriously!  We decided to exit and turn around and wouldn't you know, we needed a potty stop!  Luckily, having boys make side of the road pit stops pretty easy!  So we got out and I got stung by a bee!

 Since, there aren't many ways to get into Phoenix from the north, we had NO idea what we were going to do.  We thought about heading back to Prescott and just staying the night, but we didn't really want to spend the money on a hotel.  So we decided to drive north to Camp Verde then over to Payson and into Phoenix that way!  Did I mention that all of our team gets carsick?  We had lots of Dramamine on hand and were passing them out like candy! :)

We hit a thunderstorm and our little desert dwellers were freaking out about the lightening!  Eli had a panic attack and thought we were going to get hit by lightening and die!  I think we actually drove through the same storm 3 times.

The whole time the boys were saying, "Where are we going?", "What are we going to do?"  We kept telling them we were having an adventure!  We were relying solely on our GPS to figure out how to get home.  (Thanks Poppa!)  We went from the mountainous woods to the mountainous desert.  Then made our way down to a valley, back to the desert, back to the mountains and woods and finally the desert again!  I think we saw every type of terrain that Arizona has to offer!

By the time we made it to Payson, the boys were done.  They were having meltdowns and fighting.  Of course I'm sure the music Jeff and I were playing didn't help.  We were torturing them with Alabama and Michael Jackson!  We added a couple of hours to our trip, but we figured moving is better than sitting!

Overall the team did really well considering that for all of the driving we did, we could have gone to Disneyland!  Everyone survived!  We had no puking and only a small amount of pooping (Micah)!  We definitely can laugh about the trip now, but there were many times that Jeff & I wanted to scream, "GET ME OUT OF THIS VAN!"

We had an adventure!  Was it fun?  Not really!  Was it memorable?  Yes!  I guess that's what it's all about, making memories.  In the end, I'm hoping that the boys can say that Jeff & I made the "unplanned" adventures in life, fun and not stressful!  I'll admit, I haven't always been able to handle the "unplanned" particularly well.  I'd like to think that has changed, but you'll have to ask Jeff about that!

Well here's to the "unplanned"....all 4 of them in fact! :)  What a blessing they are!