A Day for Praise!

Some days we are tested more than others. Will we praise the Lord when things aren't going as planned? I had one of those days last week. The plan was to go to the pumpkin patch with a friend. Apparently, someone else had other plans.

When we left late, I wasn't worried about it. For once in my life, I wasn't anxious about being late. Praise the Lord!

We picked up my friend, got everything in the car, and headed to a local coffee joint to get caffeinated before dragging three children under three to the pumpkin patch, a mere two days after one of the biggest rain storms we've had in decades! Praise the Lord! The fire season is over.

I had forgotten the address and directions that had been posted for us by our group, but I had the iPhone, and the GPS (never need a map again!). I had been to the town the farm is in a billion times (more like three or four). We were running late, but it wasn't like it was a ten minute activity.

I typed in the farms' name in my GPS and it found an address! the first time! That rarely happens! Praise the Lord the thing finally did what we bought it to do!

So off we went, heading to the farm. We turned onto the road that was supposed to head into the farm. We turned left onto the last road! After thirty minutes of whining from the back seat about when we were going to get to the "punkin patch!" from the three year old, we were within a mile of the farm.

But as we turned the last turn, we were greeted with a golf-course and a gated housing community. Somehow I doubted that this very public, farm could be found in the middle of a gated, very private community. So, no big deal. We turned around, parked and I looked up the address on my iPhone. Turns out, the address was wrong. Again, no big deal, I plugged the address into my GPS, and it took us to the other side of the town. We headed through, and ended up in the middle of a farming community. A vineyard on one side, an orchard on the other. Private homes everywhere. But no halloween-y pumpkin patch farm. We were forty minutes away from home, who knows where the pumpkin patch was, but it was almost 1:00. The kids needed to eat. So, we decided to fore go the pumpkin patch. We ended up at a McDonalds (not the one I had planned on going to after the pumpkin patch) where the boys could get out and run around the play castle for a while. J, who is 1, spent the entire time splashing in a rain puddle. and Little Monster pooped in his pants. We decided it was "mommy time" and headed to Panera to get some good lunch, that wasn't fried in oil and processed beyond recognition.

Praise the Lord. For good conversations, a lesson in humility for both me and my son, a lesson in my dependence upon technology and getting to spend some time in the sun. And for good food. even if we didn't make it to the pumpkin patch.