OK, when we last left off we were going to take the camper back in to finish the brake job on Friday morning and be on our way Friday afternoon. So, we woke up Friday morning and quickly got ready to leave to drop the camper off. As we tried to move in our slide, it didn’t budge. Tim and Nathan had to go outside and push it in manually. Well, can’t worry about that now – we needed to get the camper in before 9am, which we did. We also loaded up our car with kids and homeschool books to drive to the local library in Gallatin after we dropped off the camper. It was a gorgeous library, and the people were so friendly there. We were able to use a little conference room where the kids could spread their books out and use our laptops and get down to business. We finished school in record time, so after lunch, Tim took Nathan and Nicholas to the local YMCA to go swimming, while Noah and Nicole remained at the library with me to read books. The camper was supposed to be ready by 1pm, but as 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm came and went, it was looking like we weren’t going to be getting it back again that day. Sure enough, they weren’t done, and when we went to check on them around 5pm they had the wheels pulled off and parts all over the ground and the hood up. We weren’t going anywhere that day. We called our insurance company and it turns out they will pay our expenses (lodging and food) up to $2000 if we are in a situation like this. So while thoughts of renting out a huge suite somewhere and going out to a fancy restaurant danced through our minds, we used about 1/10th of that and got 2 rooms at a local hotel that had a continental breakfast, and dined at a very casual local seafood restaurant. It turns out, that hotel we were staying at has a sister hotel near the newly reopened Opryland hotel, so we could go and park there to take their shuttle over and avoid the $20 parking fee! So we did that, and walked through the 3 atriums there at the Opryland Hotel – they were really beautiful – all decorated for Christmas! It’s hard to believe it had been closed since the flood in May and only reopened since November 15th. We had a bit of a scare as we were trying to get out of the place in that we kind of sort of lost someone in our party (Noah). He’s usually just a little behind us, but he evidently became way behind us and when we tried to find him he was nowhere to be found. I was a little concerned at first, but then as the time ticked on and the minutes became 10 minutes I started getting a lot more concerned. I contacted security and was waiting for them to meet me, but couldn’t stand the thought of sitting there doing nothing, so I sent Nicole and Nathan back with my cell phone to retrace our steps and see if they could find him. They were looking around and finally stopped and prayed, and right after they finished their prayer they looked over and spotted his shoes and then his legs and then him! What a relief! We then headed to our hotel for a very restful night sleep!! Shortly after enjoying a continental breakfast Saturday morning, they called and said our camper was ready. Tim took Nicholas and proceeded to use the next 3 hours to fix the slide. Thankfully, the hotel let us have a 2pm check out, which is about the time Tim and Nicholas showed up to take us back to the camper. We filled up on gas and propane hooked up the car and we were on our way! We drove ½ way to the park in Alabama that we will be staying at and camped at Camp Wallyworld for the night last night. When we went to put out the slide, guess what? It wasn’t working again! Argh! We manually pushed it out, got a great night’s sleep, had a wonderful little church, and now Tim’s trying to fix the slide again. Well, this update is getting to be a book, so I’ll skedaddle, but leave you with a few pictures from our time at the Opryland Hotel, our friends who graciously let us park in their driveway this week, and Nicholas & Nathan in the parking lot here at Walmart (Nicholas said he is wearing pink gloves in honor of breast cancer awareness, but I think it is actually because they are the gloves that fit him the best and are the warmest - momma didn't raise no dummy). :-) Blessings!
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