Ok. I have a whole list of things to post about--but it's at home and I'm not. So I'll go through some of the things now while i wait for mark to get out of a meeting so I can go home. yay! (I'm at church because I just finished leading a Bible Study on events in Jesus' life according to matthew.)

We drove down in a caravan of 4 15 passenger white vans with the back seats removed (so they were actually only 11 passenger vans?). Sometimes we zoned out while driving so much that we blindly followed the leader--they changed lanes, we changed lanes. Unfortunately, that meant that both Sarah and I nearly followed the wrong vans occasionally. There were vans from Willow Creek Church that we nearly followed on the very first day. On the way home there was a van that looked exactly like ours but didn't have an american flag sticker on it--and two vans actually did follow it for several miles before realizing it was not Josh (who was leading). heheheh!

We stayed overnight at Beulah Presbyterian church in Louisville. It was very nice--but there were several things that were indicative of the people we'd meet "down south". We tried to order pizza to be ready for us at Pizza Hut when we arrived. Mark said "we're staying at a church, here's my cell phone number: 773.......". The guy said "I don't need your area code." WTF? why not? The local area code was like 502 or something. discussion followed, at the end of which mark gave him the number without the area code. Then, figuring out the bill was crazy, because we'd been billed for one more pizza than we actually received. Mark spent at least half an hour with the guy figuring that out, and working out whether we could be tax exempt outside of Illinois.

Louisville was an interesting place. There's a place called "Cox's smokers outlet" which amused the kids very much. (just the sign...we didn't go inside).

sunday morning sarah and I went to the store for some last minute pre-drive shopping. We were all planning to go to church because the service was at 9:30. Just as we pulled up to our spot, someone else pulled into it. SO we start backing up to move into another one. Then we hit something. Something we're sure wasn't there just before...and it turns out that there had been a car behind us--that we couldn't see in any mirrors, I might add--and though we had been going only about 2.5 miles per hour, the car was quite damaged. The driver was a 77 year old man, and his wife was in the car as well. We could not have hit a worse person in that whole congregation. He was LIVID. His blood pressure skyrocketed, he kept saying how angry he was, and he wouldn't even talk to us. We tried to find out if he was ok and he only talked about his car. oy. so Sarah, mark, and I missed the majority of the morning service because we were outside dealing with this--he even talked a cop into coming even though it was on pirvate property and there were no injuries. The cop got an ambulance to come to check his bp, which was really ridiculously high...and there was much exchanging of info, etc. His car was quite damaged--but the van had the tiniest scratch ever on the plastic bumper. apparently he told his insurance agency that the van was totaled! Mark got a call about that yesterday from the rental place--they couldn't even find the scratch on the van. LOL. One of the other members of the church was very nice and helped us deal with the man, and actually apologized for his behavior later and told us that the lesson here is who the better Christians really are: those who care more for property than life, or those who do everything possible to remedy the situation even when they are at fault. He was very nice. It's a good thing he came up with that lesson because while we stood around in the parking lot, sarah, mark, and i tried to come up with lessons. 1. always look behind you more than once. that was it. LOL. We were just picturing the prayer list in the bulletin for the next week including the couple, and asking for prayers because of the "horrific accident they endured last week". I've not seen the bulletin for that day yet, but it's probably there. oy. Every time the whole rest of the week when Sarah had to back up a van, she would say to the kids, "let me know when I hit a man." That was our new euphemism for "look out the back!!!!!" heheheeheheheheheheheheh.

We left on time anyway--or so we thought. We had planned out how long it would take and it seemed quite short, which is why we'd gone to church in the first place. However, it took quite a long time for some reason and we arrived very late. I just need to note, too, that the van Joshua was driving (which I drove part of the way down) loses about 60% of the steering control when you pass 70 miles per hour. It was totally crazy to try to drive that van and keep up with the others. We were supposed to arrive in Jonesville between 2 and 4 pm...we arrived at 6. Since we were running late anyway, we decided to stop at the Cumberland Gap around 5:15 because Mark just had to have a group picture at the "Cumberland Gap" sign. It was very cool actually...this is the low point through the appalachain mountains where pioneers went through between Virginia and Ketucky. It was really pretty. anyway...we were late. then the real fun began. :-)