Weird cousins in the wilderness

One of my goals during this trip is to do a daily devotional with the family.  This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but have never taken the time to create the time to do it.  Now there's no excuse.  The devotional today was talking about John, Jesus' weird cousin, living in the wilderness.  The devotional talks about leaving the safety of our known existence and leaving them for the unknown of the wilderness.  It feels like we've done just that... left our known existence for the unknown one of this one  We don't know what it's going to bring, what we're going to have to learn about ourselves or others.  We figured that we're the weird cousins heading off to the wilderness to see where we end up.  May God use us in however (s)he sees fit, scary as that thought may be.

Ok enough of the Deep Thoughts...here's how the last couple of days have gone.  We made it to Grand Prairie, Tx (burb of Dallas) on Saturday evening.  We had a moment of excitement on the drive when there was a sudden loud smack against the back window of the cab.  When we looked we noticed that Doug's rear back tire was completely dented.   We realized the the loose end of the ratchet strap around the bikes worked its way between the cab and the bed of the truck, got caught in the drive shaft and yanked the strap rapidly into the tire, then tore it off.  We were grateful the tire was there to take the brunt of the force, otherwise it may have shattered the back window and possible Andrea's head! 

Upon arrival in Grand Prairie we called some friends who live in the area and they came over with the smore supplies we didn't have.  It was quite cool, with wintery weather moving in.  We opted not to hook up the water as we didn't want to freeze the water pipes.  We joined our friends after breakfast for Mass at St. Josephs Catholic Church on Sunday morning.  This was a new experience for our girls.  I became somewhat emotional as I sat in the sanctuary, realizing that this trip was actually happening.  After church we went ice skating, lunch, shopping, then back to the trailer for fondue supper, provided by our friends.  While not directly related our girls refer to their kids as their cousins and they had a great time together.  We left this morning after a leisurely breakfast and traveled to Sulpher, La where we're parked for the night.  We'll figure out where we're going to go tomorrow.

I was going to add some pictures but the wifi here is too slow.  Maybe next time.