Trip by the Numbers
We got home Sunday. It took about 3 hours to unpack the RV and clean it out.
We started thinking about all the stats of our trip. Here are some numbers:
3107 miles
388 gallons of gas (we will let you do the math on $$)
282 hours not wearing socks
4 hours wearing socks (church)
9 states
3 nights in parking lots
3 nights in state parks
2 nights in RV park
4 nights at friends homes
4 pastors visited in 4 states
1900+ blog visitors
1 sermon preached
38 families at HoPE conference
7 loads of laundry
1 clogged toilet
1 set of keys lost
1 beach day
3 museums
1000s of priceless memories
We are so thankful to our church family for sending us and allowing us to be gone on this journey.
We are grateful to the Krauss family for watching our perro!
Naghma (our awesome neighbor) helped us keep our house together. Thanks, Naghma.
Mike Hollifield cut our grass while we were gone. Much thanks!
Thanks to Advanced RV Rentals for giving us such a deal on the RV. It has been so helpful to travel with Kennady this way.
Check in tomorrow. We will post a video tour of the RV sweetness.
Summer Trip | The Final Descent
I would like to start this blog off by quoting what my husband said to me.
“be funny, babe”
Hmmm. Not sure I am gonna pull that off folks. But I will give my best at being real.
Disclaimer: this is not the normal traveling arrangement. Usually, Avery is seated with a belt on, and Robin looks much worse.
We made it to Spring Hill on Thursday and settled right in to finding a sitter for the kids, so that the adults could go and play.
Our kids adore each other and love hanging out, which makes the time there so sweet.
Human Sleeping Bag
The adults headed to P.F. Changs for a delicious dinner and then over to Puckett’s downtown for coffee, dessert, music and great conversation. You know how it is when you just get someone? That is how it is with the Lowery’s, they just get us and we get them. It makes time spent with them easy.
The constant travel leading up to getting to their house made the time there wonderful. When we are at their house, we can lay around and not feel like we have to do anything. That is a great feeling.
Thursday we got up and Lori and I went and “got our nails did”, which was a wonderful treat. However, I am certain that the main working on my feet was a.) disappointed when I would not upgrade my services and b.) discussing the very horrible state of my feet. I looked at Lori and then looked at them, trying to give them the “I know your talking about me” look. I have heard that sometimes that is convincing and people will quit talking about you RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. It really didn’t help though. Lori did confirm that I looked serious though, and that is a bonus.
When we got home, the men headed out to the movies.
I was exhausted and needed a nap due to staying up so late the night before. I thought that I would sneak in a short little nap on the couch while Lori ran to the produce stand. Little did I know that this would not be a good plan.
I layed on the couch and snuggled in. Ahhh, sweet rest.
I was out, when all of the sudden, in my deep sleep I hear “ppfffllluuppp, pppffflllupppp, hhheeee, hhheeee, ppfffflluuuuuppp”.
I start to feel something on my face. Open my eyes. Reach for my nose where a nice giant blob of white face cleaner has been squirted.
You see, my sweet precious 8 year old son and his equally sweet and precious 10 year old cousin decided, was that it would be sooooo funny to pull a prank on their mother/aunt while she slept.
Let me assure you this is not a good idea.
It is always funny for the onlookers, but never the victim of said prank.
I got up, wiped my face off, and without saying a word I looked at them and pretty much gave them the “daggers are shooting out of my eyes” look.
I mentally reminded myself that they are kids and I should be laughing, however, try as I may, no laughter would come. Every party has a pooper.
Obviously, no sleep would come after that, so we packed up and headed to the pool.
We had a great time swimming and came home and had a wonderful veggie meal.
Our brother-in-law Jacob, plays bass for Michael W. Smith, he had to get on the bus that night. I (robin) took Jacob to a Walmart parking lot in Franklin, TN. Do you notice how often Walmart parking lots come up in our trip? It is a common thread. At 11pm all the band and MWS meet and load the bus. I got to meet the other band members and tour their really cool bus. Ok, back to Erica…
On Friday, we hung out and did a whole lotta nuthin. We left the Lowery clan around 5pm and headed to the western side of Nashville to visit our dear friends, John and Kristin Ragsdale. We have been friends for almost 18 years!
Kenna Chillin’ on Rags’ couch
They pastor The Hills Fellowship in Nashville, a church they planted last year.
It is awesome to sit down with friends and talk about life, love, heartbreak, church, friends, kids, and everything else. With folks like this, we catch up and it feels like we haven’t been apart.
We left their home around 10:30 and drove two hours to Jackson. TN.
short Robin trying to clean tall windows
We found a Cracker Barrel parking lot and crashed for the night.
We woke up today, called in a ‘to-go’ order at Cracker Barrel, went and picked it up, ate, and hit the road!
Today, we make our final approach home…
The Mighty Mississip!
Summer Trip | Day 9 and 10
Kennady meets a new friend. A 5yr old darling! She brought back so many memories of Kennady 5 years ago.
NASCAR driver Josh Timmerman reads a book to the kids (and adults). He has been a huge help to the HPE family.
Kennady gets a baby with HOPE!
The dads got together and shared thoughts on raising kids with HPE. We had a great time getting to know each other.
It was difficult to leave all our new friends at the Families for HoPE conference. Wow, it was an emotional and educational few days. We hit the road around 7:30pm and drove to Knoxville, TN. While on the road, we have about 30 minutes of AMAZING sunset and fog!
We spent the night at a Walmart parking lot. Erica and I argued over which spot was the best. I was voting for the outer edges of the lot. She wanted closer to the store. We compromised. I almost went into Walmart in my PJs to get some milk. That would have been sweet. We woke up around 8:30am and drove 3 hours to Spring Hill, TN (very close to Nashville)
We love hanging with the Lowerys! (Robin’s sister and family) Adults talking. Kids playing. We will be here for a couple nights and then move on.
Summer Trip | Day 8
Today, we had our first full day at the “Families for HoPE” conference. Families for HoPE is an organization for families affected by HPE (holoprosencephaly – Kennady’s condition)
They offer activities for the siblings and kids with HPE. They offer great information on medical treatment and research for the parents and care givers.
Right after Kennady was born in 2001, we heard of Dr. Max Muenke who was one of the foremost researchers for genetics in HPE. For years, we have looked had his research. Today, we actually saw him speak on the latest genetics testing and findings.
During the middle of his speech he shows this slide with Kennady’s life as an example of a child with the most severe type of HPE and how her face is normal. You can see her brain scan (from several years ago) above her pic. We were honored to be a part.
Several years ago, his team took our DNA and found that Kennady’s condition was a gene mutation (ZIC2) that began with her. This means that we would not pass this on to other children and more importantly that our boys would not pass it on to their kids.
Some other interesting stats about her condition:
- 1 in 250 embryos have HPE (98% of embryos with HPE end with miscarriage and most of these are before 4 weeks of pregnancy)
- 1 in 10,000 live infants have HPE
- 1 in 100,000 live births with HPE to be at least 1 year old
The fact that Kennady is 10 years old with the most severe type of HPE (alobar) is a miracle!
We had some music therapy today, but Kennady wasn’t all that amused by it! She slept most of the afternoon! Ha!
The singers and musicians were phenomenal with the kids!
“this is boring. i want to listen to Toby Mac!”
After the conference today, we headed to the theater and watched Ice Age 4! What a blast. We ate a lot of popcorn and drank too much Coke.
laying out on papa’s big belly
We would like to leave with you this special thought… our toilet was sort of blocked today so I (Robin) and Avery went into the woods to find a stick that we could massage the paper with and cause it to flow properly. I think we will not show a pic if that is alright with you. We are all good and going to bed now.
Summer Trip | Days 6-7
Giant peach on side of road
We drove to High Point, NC to spend the night with our dear friends, Michael and Annette Kelly and their very sweet kids. We love hanging out with them and laughing very hard at all our “church stories”. We pastor churches 1100 miles apart and there are so many things similar.
Central Triad Church in High Point/Winston-Salem
Sunday, we were given the opportunity to speak at their church and instead of Robin preaching solo, we decided to speak as a couple and tell our story about life with Kennady.
getting in and out in the RV with Kennady.
It was our first official time to speak like this and speak of God’s meaning throughout this process. Wow. What a great service. The praise and worship was anointed! What a great presence of God in that place. After the singing and offering time, there was a special guest singer that began to sing powerfully and people started coming to the front for prayer. We were introduced around an hour and a half into the service. (They are used to 2 hour services!)
We spoke about Kennady’s story. Pregnancy. Tests. Surgeries. We talked about the doctor’s comments. We spoke about the Apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” and we also spoke about 1 Peter 4 suffering. God was revealed in the place and we ended with prayer for people. We brought Kennady to the front and gave people the opportunity to pray with her. What a great moment. Two kids came up and put offerings in her hands. It was so surprising. What makes a child want to give another child their money? God. For these two children, this is what was immediately available to them, when God gave them a compassion for another person, they responded. It really touched our hearts.
Kennady and the offering she was given
After a great lunch with our friends, we headed to Concord, NC.
I banned Robin from driving this afternoon. He ran over two curbs and barely missed a tree or two. I can only sit by quietly for so long (quietly is basically me not yelling, which does not exclude the occasional outburst of “what on earth!!” or “baby, watch the road!”)
We arrived in Concord at the Families for HoPE conference and were immediately greeted by a slew of handicapped vans! Home sweet home.
We got in the building and saw lots of other families just like us. It was so soothing to really, truly feel like we were just like everyone else for the first time.
There are 38 families here all with children that are currently living with Holoprosencephaly or have passed on. That makes for a whole lotta kids and parents.
One of the first things we got to do was go around and get to know everyone.
We all got together and took a giant group picture.
During the group picture, Kennady reached over and grabbed her new friend, Chloe.
We wrapped up the evening with a very touching balloon release to honor he children who have passed on. Each balloon had a name and a sweet note attached to it.
Avery finishing the milk off. mmmmm
We got back to our new campsite, got the R.V. all leveled, and set up for the night. The boys had their obligatory bedtime snack and then hit the sack.
Summer Trip | Day 5
Today started (1am) with us getting a key made to our RV (if you missed that story, click here)
At 2am, we finally found a safe place to park our RV. We landed at a Wal-Mart in Northwest Atlanta. We slept until around 8:30am. Erica went into Wal-Mart and bought groceries. (This is Erica and I would like to have an official disclaimer that I only went into WM out of pure desperation. Thank you.) Then, we headed to our spot at the campground on Lake Allatoona on outskirts of Atlanta area. We were supposed to spend last night here too, but they locked the gate at 10:30pm and we couldn’t get in.
It was a very relaxing day! Swimming in the lake. Doing a few loads of laundry. Reading. Building a fire. Roasted Marshmallows and s’mores.
very cool, old-school lake front beach area
Fan the flame!
the smoke stinks
He insisted on wearing his shades to protect his eyes from the fire 🙂
That’s a happy boy
mmmmmmmm! That’s what I’m talkin bout!
Kenna chillin’ on the couch
We capped the night off with a good ole fashioned game of Skip-Bo. As a parent/grandpartent there is this unspoken rule that you should always let your kids/grandkids win. I say, kids need a good dose of reality, they can’t always win. But this time, I really wasn’t trying to administer said dose of reality, I simply won by pure luck. There you go folks. My kids didn’t even cry about it like my husband did.
So, just before we started our game of Skip-Bo, Jude comes out with multiple pairs of socks on. This R.V. is 32 feet long and only 18 of that has linoleum on it. But leave it to the boys to turn their super padded feet into skates. Avery jumped up within seconds and donned at least 6 pair of his own, so that they could skate together.
After their skating duel, I walked back to find Avery kicking Jude and declaring, “look mom, I can kick him and it doesn’t hurt him!” Oh the joy.
Boys’ 10 layer socks
Summer Trip | Day 4
Oh. My. Goodness. This day will go down in our history.
I (Robin) had a training day with Tony Morgan. He works with pastors and ministry leaders to help them develop as leaders.
here we are training.
So, while my husband was training, I was packing up the kids and getting the R.V. ready to go to the Morgan’s pool in their subdivision. We got everything all in order and headed out. About 5 minutes into the journey Jude starts scrounging around for something to drink.
What happens when you combine these three things?…
A thirsty child
A moving vehicle going around a curve
A thirsty child opening a refrigerator with a pitcher of formula in it
hmmmmmm.
Ah, you have already found the answer. The next thing I heard was “mom, come back here now!” I very quickly replied “I can’t, you are going to have to clean it up”. The boys got after it and got it done!
We got to the pool and started getting ready when I realized Kennady’s extension tube for her feeding pump had come off and was leaking onto her blanket. As I started cleaning it up I realized her diaper had leaked too!! What in the world. When it rains it pours! So, needless to say, we were ready to play at the pool and relax a bit.
Here is what Erica and the kids did while Robin trained!
The kids and I (Erica) hung out with Emily Morgan and their two youngest girls at their super awesome pool. The moms had a great time chatting while the kids swam laps around us. We are so thankful for the Morgans and their generosity! Not only did they have us over to swim, but they let us use their van too! Awesomness!!
Avery went down this super cool slide.
Then, we headed to downtown Atlanta to visit the Georgia Aquarium. We were very excited to get to go to the aquarium, the kids had just recently seen a special on T.V. about it being one of the largest aquariums in the world! We were anticipating bad traffic on our way in, but it actually wasn’t too bad. Check this out, 14 lanes of traffic! (but that only lasted about 5 minutes for us)
When we arrived at the aquarium, we started unloading from the R.V. and realized that we had left Kennady’s wheelchair at the swimming pool! What a disaster. Of course, Erica (being the trooper she is) said we should borrow one from the aquarium. Thankfully, they had extras. So, I carried her several blocks to the wheelchair and then she toured the place in a massive chair. Erica and I traded off turns holding her and getting pushed around.
Not sure how Robin got first dibs on sitting with Kennady while I pushed him around!!
Amazing whale shark
We saw all kinds of cool fish and sea animals. The boys were able to touch some stingrays and hammerhead sharks.
As we left the aquarium, we had to leave the chair there, so I (Robin) started carrying Kennady 4 blocks back to the RV. About half way there, I realized that I couldn’t feel the keys in my pocket! They had fallen out of my pocket! We started searching the ground all the way back to the R.V. At that point, I (Erica) took the kids and Robin headed back to the aquarium to do a search there.
Lucky for the kids and I, we were sitting right smack in the middle of Centennial park!
Within 5 minutes of being there, we heard an announcement saying that the show would begin in 90 seconds. How fun!
The fountains then became a light/water show that was choreographed to music. Very cool.
When the show was over the kids went crazy and played in the water with all the other bizzilion children. It was a fun time for all. Kenna and I hung out on the sidelines and waited for Robin to return. That didn’t happen for another hour and fourty five minutes!
The kids thoroughly enjoyed the water
Kenna and I chillin on the sidelines
The boys were doing one armed push ups/no arm push ups? This sweet little girl in the back joined in with them
And this is what an R.V. looks like when you can’t get into it. (pretty much like any other R.V.)
Robin never found the keys so he called a locksmith and he picked the lock on the outside door within about 20mins. However, he couldn’t make a key for the ignition. We called another locksmith and it took him about 2 hours to get here.
At this point it is ten minutes until 1 a.m. here in downtown Atlanta and we have the keys to the outside of the R.V., a generator that is running (Thank you Jesus!) and a man working on getting us a key for the ignition.
We were supposed to be sleeping at the camp ground tonight, but we had a little setback.
See ya tomorrow folks.
UPDATE (Friday)
We had a key in hand at 1:30am. We drove to a Walmart and camped out there until 9am today.
Summer Trip | Day 3
Avery fell out of the top bunk twice on night 1. At the beginning of night 2, we asked him if we wanted a board added to the bunk to keep him in or would he rather fall out. He said he would rather fall out so we loaded the floor with pillows and he never fell out last night. Love that attitude!
We hit the road and headed to Montgomery, Alabama.
That was the half-way mark in our day’s journey and we wanted visit some of the historical parts of the city. Little did we know how much civil rights history was in that one spot. Wow. It was a great opportunity to tell our kids the dark history of evil and the bright spots of Grace that showed up in Rev Martin Luther King Jr and so many others.
Here Robin is trying to bring up the topic that ‘a lot of white people were mean to black people’
This took our breath away. Water pours down this fountain. Beautiful.
I (Robin) did not realize how dark and twisted that part of our history really was. I generally knew what happened, but to see the actual spots where it all went down brought it to life.
Here is the church where MLK pastored:
We toured the home where MLK lived while he was pastor. We got there about 4:05pm. I want to give you the dialog of me and the lady at the desk.
Robin: “Hi, is this the entrance to the house museum?”
Lady: “Yeah, but it’s after 4pm, so what’s going on here?”
Robin: “Uhhh…”
Lady: “Do you have reservations?”
Robin: “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had to have reservations.”
Lady: “You don’t, but we close at 4pm.”
Robin: “Ok, I’m sorry, we didn’t know.”
Lady: “Where are you from?”
Robin: “Austin, TX”
Lady: “Ok, we can give you a 5min tour, I don’t want you leavin’ and thinkin’ you were going to get a tour.”
We were very grateful! We had a very quite, private tour with a nice gentlemen. It was quite and peaceful. Intimate. It had a classic (good) old house smell to it. Most of the furniture was authentic King owned. They even had Life magazines and sheet music from the family.
This table is where he met with other leaders and made plans for marches and other parts of the movement.
Here is his kitchen where he had a revelation from God and had the peace to move forward knowing that death was eminent. He received around 40 death threat phone calls a day!
Then, we headed for the Atlanta area were we will spend the next 2 days.
The boys were PUMPED up about the season premeire of NINJAGO tonight. They were able to watch in the RV as we drove down the road. It has DirecTV. So sweet.
Summer Trip | Day 2
Gulf Shores here we come/came/are going/went/left. None of the previous line should make any sense, so just disregard it.
We had a great day.
We got up early and left the Lejuenes’ house and hit the road.
Robin said “it’s not too far, probably 3 or 4 hours” which I then relayed to our children.
Do you see what is coming here? If you do the math, and look at the map, you realize that it is not exactly 3 or 4 hours but more like 6 or 7, which to a 6 and 8 year old, is about 300 more “are we there yets??” UGGGHH.
Here is a picture of our youngest trying to drink the hours away.
Very cool tunnel. Seems like we should have seen Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones cruise by in their sweet black car.
Awkward photo op with me applying sunscreen on Kenna.
Absolutely the best picture of the day. <3
Our spot for the night. (about half mile from beach)
Dinner’s served! Everyone else managed to get rinsed off and in a new change of clothes except mama. Not really sure what my son is doing in the background, it may be some sort of gang sign, but it looks more like the walking dead.
Tomorrow, we head to the Atlanta area!
Summer Trip | Day 1
Today, we began our trip! We loaded the RV and started east on I10. When we got to Houston, we hit a major rain storm, but it only lasted about 15 minutes.
We both had a turn at the Wheel!
We continued on and had dinner with our friends in Lake Charles, LA. Paul, Charity, and their lovely kids.
We HAD to eat Cajun food in LA!
We did not have specific plans as to where we were going to spend the night. We had heard from several people that sleeping in an RV at a Walmart parking lot was acceptable. So, we were thinking of going that route in Lake Charles or Lafayette. However, during dinner we heard all these stories of people being shot and robbed in LA so we decided to make other plans. I (Robin) remembered a good pastor friend, Clifton LeJuene, who lives and pastors in Jennings, LA. I called him up and he said, “Sure, come on down and park in our driveway.” He and Paula (his wife) were such great driveway hosts! They showed us around their lovely house and then we went back outside and slept in our RV.
Actually, the first night in the RV was really sweet. (this is Erica, and if by “really sweet” my husband is referring to freezing our buns off…then yes, it was “really sweet”. I woke up in the morning after being mostly frozen, to find out that the ac was set at 68! The problem has been solved and is now a balmy 74) In a few days, we will post a video tour of this thing, but suffice it to say, everything we need is right here.
All for now! See you tomorrow. We are headed to the beach!
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