Vida. Risa. Amor.

Decisions, decisions...that was basically the theme of my past couple of weeks.  To go, or not to go.  Sometimes when an opportunity comes along, if I ask myself, "when I'm 85, and look back on my life, won't I be glad to see that I atleast gave it a try?"  The right decision usually is when choosing the "wrong" one doesn't feel right.  So this time for me, staying home just didn't feel right.  Not only did I need to visit my sister and her family in Colorado, but I also needed to find out something...I just needed to see if I could do it.  The 12 hour drive with just me and my kids.  There and back.

Of course I played out all the worst-possible-case scenarios which of course included us being stranded in the middle of the miles and miles of farmlands in Colorado with a flat tire, or I'd run out of gas in the rain, or one of my kids could get lost at a rest stop, or the train table that I didn't bring would fly off the top of the van and flip a few cars behind us, or I'd lose my purse or cell phone, or UFO's would abduct us in New Mexico, or, or, or...

The truth is that if I make decisions not to do something out of the fear of something bad happening, I think I might spend most of my life at home, and spend most of my life just wondering: what if.  What if I had said yes instead of no. 

There were a lot of reasons I decided to make the trip.  The biggest reason was because I just wanted to:  my heart actually hurt sometimes at how much I miss my sister and her family, and my kids felt the same way.  The second reason was curiosity:  I just needed to see if I could even do it...800 miles isn't that far is it?  Everything else just worked out with timing:  we had nothing important on the calendar, we could afford the expense, and I was able to borrow my parents van while they were on their vacation.  Now that I'm home I realize that we most definately would not have been able to make it without a decent vehicle and I'm thinking I could get used to a newer van.  Dad's always have the cooler cars.

So the trip turned out to be well worth it.  The drive was a challenge, but not impossible.  2 words:  Portable DVD's.  The weather in Colorado in July actually let's kids play outside so they had a blast playing treasure hunts for hours in the backyard together.  We grilled and ate outside every night on their new deck, spent an afternoon pulling weeds for my sister's future gardening plans, and got "prettied up" to pose in a beautiful field for some amazing pictures that she took for all of us.  I don't remember the last time I had someone pick out my outfit, style my hair, and put make-up on for me...but I loved it.  There's something extremely hilarious about having someone put ten layers of mascara on you.  And it feels really good when you can actually fit into your younger sister's jeans.

My girls haven't seen me laugh hard in a while.  They both saw that I would drive over 800 miles to see my sister and so I hope that if anything they remember about this trip, that they would remember that I made the effort.  (Hopefully they will block out my anti-eat-anything-with-your-mouth-open rules and crazy babbling and arm dance moves to keep myself awake through the drive.)  So maybe in only 15 years or so when they have their own families someday, they remember that it's important to be there for each other...because a 12 hour drive is a short distance to travel for that quality time.  And a really, really good laugh. 

Most journeys are possible when you finally make up your mind to just get on the road.