What a Trip!

I can’t say that the last day has been easy but we are praising God that we are all safe and together. But Satan is crazy and trying to get at us, we (Tom and I) did both expect some sort of attack on our family after this, we just didn’t expect it so soon.
I’ll back track just a little. Wednesday night did not go as *I* had planned. Long story short, I got our van stuck in the back alley, my neighbours tried to help me get it out but I ended up having to call a tow truck to pull it 10 feet. Sigh. I was pretty sad, I just hate throwing away money like that and it was such a silly thing! Then Kellen and Bella were up for almost 2 hours in the middle of the night, this is very unusual. I was so tired and just praying that God would help me to be okay to drive to Calgary (2hrs) the next day. I get tired easily when driving for long periods. LOL
I slept in a bit and got the kids up and going. We left Lethbridge at 8:30am. The trip was uneventful, which I was thankful for. Kellen was a little cranky due to his middle-of-the-night-party. But nothing I couldn’t handle. LOL
We drove to our friend Buffy’s house and spent two hours visiting with her and her sweet babies! It was so nice to meet her newest little one, Callie. What a dolly! Kellen had a great time playing with Conroy, it was such a blessing for him to be able to run around and play for a couple hours. Kellen and Conroy both love Transformers and Cars so they hit it off right away. Buffy made lunch for us and cupcakes too! Thanks again Buffy!
At 1pm we headed to the airport. We got there and discovered that right beside Tom’s arrival gate was a kids play area!! What a blessing!! And… the Wiggles were on the TV! (this is Kellen and Bella’s fave show!) The kids played there until Tom’s flight came in. Then we waited, and waited! Kellen kept running back and forth, from where we stood to the sliding doors. Adriana and Erilyn waited with a big sign Adrie made that said “Welcome Home Daddy!” Finally he came!! We were all so excited. It was so amazing to see him again! He already had his luggage, so we didn’t have to wait for that. We got in the van, after the kids showing Tom the cool play area, and got on our way. We decided to stop and grab lunch for Tom and a snack for the kids, they had an early lunch and didn’t eat a lot cuz they were wanting to go play! LOL Back on the road again, we were about 15 minutes from the airport, we heard a loud POP, like we ran over something. Tom and I both looked at each other, no way. We had heard that POP before. But the van continued to drive okay and we were stuck in rush hour traffic. After about 10 minutes, Tom was able to get to a spot where we could exit off. We no sooner got off the exit ramp when the van lost all gear control. We stopped. I got out and looked, sure enough, we were leaking transmission fluid – bad. The littles were sleeping. Tom and I just stopped a quickly prayed with the kids, that God would help us.
We weren’t even sure who to call. Suddenly someone pulled over in front of us. A lady got out and came over to our van.
She asked if she could help us, she gave us the phone number to AMA. AMA couldn’t help us because we weren’t members but they gave us a company to call. The lady, her name was Shamrina, gave us her home phone number and told us to call her if we would have a long break and she would come get us and bring us to her house.
We were trying to decide what the best course of action was. Since all the children were with us, we couldn’t even call anyone from home to come get us as we would not all fit in anything. We didn’t know if we should have the van towed to somewhere in Calgary or home. Tom called our friend Mark, also a mechanic, he gave us some good advice. Have it towed to a Transmission mechanic (he gave us the name of a company) and rent a van to get home. We called the Transmission company and they called out a tow truck to come get us. We were just going to start calling rental companies to find one close to our location when Shamrina showed up at our window. Shamrina brought small bags of chips, granola bars and juice boxes for the children!! What a blessing! I cried. I cannot believe her kindness! Shamrina then offered to take Tom to a nearby rental place. The children and I waited in the van. Shamrina and Tom went to a nearby rental car place but they had no vans available, so Shamrina drove Tom to another place quite far away that had a van for rent. It took quite a while for Tom to rent the van, I think he was gone for a good 1.5 hours. The tow truck showed up, the man was so nice and was really worried about our van getting hit, we were sticking out halfway into a lane due to snow piled on the side of the road and it was rush hour. He parked hi huge truck behind us and sideways so that no one would hit us. The children were so amazing during this whole time. It was a looong time for them to be stuck in a van. I am so thankful that it wasn’t very cold as we didn’t have the van running. I let the children out of their seats and they climbed all over. We sang songs, Adrie and Erilyn counted cars that drove by… they stopped after 190. LOL Suddenly there was a knock at my window. It was Shamrina, she came back after dropping Tom off to let me know, and asked me to call her when we were on our way so she knew that we were safe. Tom arrived back a while later with a very nice, new rental van. Only downside, it was pretty small. We could only fit two carseats for Bella and Kellen and barely fit Tom’s suitcase in the back. We all piled in and were on our way. I called Shamrina to thank her for her kindness, words were just not enough. Not far down the road I made a wonderful discovery, this fully-loaded, heated seat van had….wait for it….a DVD player!! Thank You Lord! Everyone had to go pee, Bella needed to be changed (SO glad I brought more cloth diapers than I thought I would need! LOL Turns out I needed almost every one!) so we stopped at a Superstore, got a couple snacks for the children, used the facilities and bought a Blues Clues and Barbie movie. What a blessing for 5 tired and cooped-up children!! What a blessing for Dad and Mom! LOL

Tom and I had lots of time to talk on the way home. I’ve so missed talking with him.

We are asking for prayer now. We need to decide what to do with this van. A transmission is an expensive fix – $2000+
We have a reason to want to sell the van in the nearer future and want to know whether we should try to sell it “as is” or to fix it and then try to sell it. The catch is, we have no money for neither, to fix or to buy something else. We are truly not worried. God will provide. We are asking for your prayers to cover our family and to give us wisdom as we decide what to do.
We are so thankful for all the ways that God provided for us yesterday!

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