Trip to PA

We made a trip to PA for Christmas to visit my family for 6 days (2 of those were travel time). The boys traveled wonderfully (8 1/2 hours) and that made it much easier. Allan enjoyed pappy's fish tank and Daniel loved being able to explore unknown territory. This was my nephew Evan's first Christmas! Philip managed a herculean feat and actually was able to pack every single gift into our car. Both of the boys had things packed under their feet so that their legs stuck straight out in front of them, dirty laundry stuffed the cracks and crevices. I've never seen anything like it! God answered our prayers and we didn't have any flat tires during this trip... I'm not sure if our car with make another trip to PA or not.

My mother managed to stay out of the hospital this Christmas...though not without it's doubting moments. Thursday evening she gave us a scare with a pulse rate of 150 (that was as fast as my sister-in-law could count in a minute) which lasted 45 minutes. All of us were there that evening and so we gathered around her upstairs and asked God to intervene. He did and within minutes it dropped and she didn't have any heart episodes the rest of the time we were there. I'm convinced that if prayer didn't work my mother would have been in heaven a long time ago. But it does and I'm grateful for another Christmas with her.

We arrived home on Christmas eve, unpacked the car (and all of the fancy new toys), ate supper and the boys promptly began squabbling over who's turn it was to play with the old vacuum hose (I received a new one for Christmas). I have unpacked very few of their new toys (except their books) and they don't seem the least bit bothered.