The Night That Almost Wasn't

For weeks we had waited for the weekend to arrive. It was circled on the calendar and we had counted down the days. We were going on a family weekend with our friends, Matt and Lori. Never mind that it had taken over a year to find a weekend when both families were available to go. The important thing was, it was on the calendar. Matt and Lori own a beautiful mountain home and they have 5 kids close in age to our 6. So all of us taking off to the mountains for a weekend together sounded perfect. Even more perfect?? Matt had garnered us some tickets to the Comedy Weekend at the Grove Park Inn near their mountain house. We would spend one night with the kids, then leave the olders to mind the youngers as we went to the comedy event on Saturday night. Perfect!



Then we got a call from Matt and Lori, who had gone up the night before... and ended up all getting sick. They were wiped out, but being their generous selves said we could still come. This was late Thursday night. We were supposed to leave Friday morning. We told them we would try to scramble and find sitters for our kids for the Saturday thing, but we didn't want to mix it up getting our kids around their sick ones. If we could find sitters, we would still come on Saturday, but the family part of our family trip was off. Bummer.

So we spent Friday at home instead of at the mountains and we were sad. We felt bad for the kids, who had gone to bed Thursday night giddy at the thought of getting up and taking a trip the next morning. (We don't travel much.) It was like Christmas with the amount of excitement there was in the house! It was anticlimatic for them to get up and find out that the trip wasn't happening. Curt took them to the dollar movie theater to try and make up for it, but of course that wasn't the same as a whole weekend.

So Friday night we were just about asleep when our 10 yo daughter ran in the room to report that our 4 yo daughter was throwing up. We looked at each other in disbelief. Seriously?? She ended up throwing up all night long. Somewhere in the night I realized that the latter half of our weekend wasn't going to happen either. I resigned myself that for some reason, us going to the mountains wasn't in God's plan. I went over the list of things He was probably protecting us from and tried to have a good attitude. Curt let me sleep in the next morning since I was up with her a lot and he sort of slept.

By the time I got up the next morning, Curt reported that he had everything worked out. The kids were spread out all over our city but they were taken care of. The one who had thrown up hadn't thrown up in 7 hours and had eaten several times. Shock of all shocks, we were going to be able to salvage the trip!! We farmed everyone out, got on the road and arrived in Asheville around 5, just in time to have a nice dinner at the Grove Park and see the show after. Sinbad was the headliner and he was so funny. If you ever get a chance to see him, do. He is just naturally funny and clean with his humor. We enjoyed it so much. The next morning we checked out of the hotel, had breakfast at Cracker Barrel and came home.

The night almost didn't happen... but I am so glad it did! I think the near-misses made us appreciate it all the more. Thanks Matt and Lori for making it possible. And we WILL get another weekend on the schedule soon!!

(Pictures are obviously of us at the Grove Park. Ever been there?? It's a beautiful place and I want to go back!)