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Totally Worth It

I am going to keep tonight’s post short and sweet and still well worth your time.

See, I am currently on a winter trip with my hubby and our five kids.  What you should know about this trip is it is in the winter…and we traveled north…to the cold.  What you should also know is that I really hate the cold.  I hate winter actually.  There aren’t that many things that I know for sure just aren’t for me, but the winter and the cold are for sure not for me.

But here I am.  Thankfully, it snowed and snowed here last week and now it is actually relatively mild…so that’s good.  We did drive up a mountain yesterday to find snow…that was good for the family.  Once our four-year-old discovered snow is very cold and wet (and quite miserable) when it melts, he needed someone to sit with him in the warm car while the others played…which was also very good.

What you should also know is to get here we drove 15 hours in our small SUV with all seven of us crammed in there, along with our luggage, along with seven coats, along with four plastic sled discs, along with presents for our son’s 17th birthday.  I should tell you I was in tears the morning we left.  Not because I was sad to leave, but because I was certain everything was not going to fit in the car.  At one point, all of the luggage was in, but there on the ground on our driveway were three of my shoes (that’s right, three) that had fallen out of my bag.  My hubby was unsure of where to put the ice chest, the one I spent several hours shopping for items to stock it with so everyone would have car snacks. I was in tears thinking this just won’t work while hubby is saying, “It’s ok, whatever doesn’t fit we will just hold on our laps.” 

I should also tell you…everything did fit, we did hold things on our laps, and we are all having the time of our lives.

In the past few days I have watched our 14-year-old daughter share her music and her ear buds with her six-year-old sister sitting in her booster next to her in the very back seats.  I have watched our big 17-year-old son teach his four-year-old brother how to make a good snow ball…and then to chunk it at his sister!  Today I watched as our two oldest daughters grabbed each other’s hands and ice skated around an ice rink.  

There are some things that are just irreplaceable.  There are some things that are worth doing.  

Do I like 15-hour long road trips? Not necessarily, but I like where they take us, which is not about the destination at all.  

So tonight, I am going to keep this short and sweet and I am going to go join my family.  In a perfect world I would have written a blog post ahead of time and had it ready to go.  But I don’t live in perfect…I live in a world where we had Christmas, we cleaned up from Christmas, we washed our clothes, we packed our clothes, and we hit the road.  Since then I have driven through a monsoon, I have mapped our way across 1,000 miles, I have pretended to be in a good mood even when I was too cold to be having fun, I have picked up spilled Cheetos out of the car seat, I have made PB&J sandwiches from an ice chest in the car, and I have warmed tiny hands numb from cold and wet gloves.  So tonight, I write.  After I write, I will cozy up in between some teenagers and my hubby (because the little ones are passed out asleep), we will watch The Office reruns, and I will eat chips and salsa.  The night will be perfect as far as I am concerned.


The truth is, we need to slow down and enjoy whatever it is that is happening. The truth is, we need to see the best things are right in front of us. The truth is, we don’t live in perfect, but where we are might just be perfect enough.


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