An adventure for sure!

We left for California last Saturday and returned late last night and it was an adventure for sure! The drive out was not too bad, the boys were awesome, truck did great! We arrived on Sunday evening, got showered and went to Central Community for the Children's Christmas Program. We all went home, I changed my clothes and went back to church so I could go to the streets of skid row in LA for Jackets for Jesus. I was so happy to be able to make this annual Christmas Party on the streets as I have for the last 4 years. The next day was busy with helping our friends get a storage unit for their stuff and I had a date with my small group ladies for dinner. It was so nice and refreshing to be around them and share what we have all been up to for the last 6 months. It felt like I had just left yesterday since most of us have been in touch. Tuesday was full with moving everything in storage so T & M could make the move to TX. Oh I also got my hair done and had lunch with Dorothy!! I love seeing my friends and spending time with them. Wednesday was more moving into storage! Went home around 7ish, had dinner, then started a game of Monopoly with the boys. That was fun. All 4 of us playing, on teams! We paused the game at 12:30 am. Went to bed. Was woken up at 3:00am Christmas Eve by Ozell, Mark's mom, fainting and hitting the wall and floor hard. We flew out of bed, Mark at her side trying to wake her, me on the phone with 911 since she could not talk and was laboring to breath. SCARY SCARY SCARY!! Fire dept came, ambulance came, they took her to the ER. Mark went with her, I stayed home with the boys, who never woke up during all of the drama, and I called the family to let them know what happened. A few hours later they were back home, Docs ruled out stroke and Heart Attack and said it was a BAD case of anti gas (??) that put too put pressure on her diaphrame and caused her to faint. WOW we were so happy to hear that!! Went to bed for a few hours, woke up Christmas AM for fun, food, and presents, and LOTS of calls from family checking up on Ozell. We planned to leave this day to go to my brothers in AZ but decided to stay the night to make sure all was well with Ozell. Up in the am, off to AZ. got there and had tons of fun for the next couple days. My whole family was there, Mom, Nat, Nick, Shane and all the kids. It was great! I hope we can do this every year. We should have left to come home on Sunday AM but we were waiting for T & M to meet us, however that did not happen. They were having trouble pulling the car and trailer with their big 4x4 truck. So we went back to Desert Center to help them but pulling the trailer with our truck. Our motivation was that we were scared they would fish tail out of control and roll the truck/trailer. We hooked up the trailer, got on the freeway and our worst nightmare came true. We fish tailed the trailer, lost control and almost went over the side of the freeway. We dented up the driver side of the truck and dropped the trailer for T & M to deal with. AAA came and got the car off the trailer, we went to Blythe to get a room. T brought the trailer to the hotel room and we all got a few much needed hours of sleep. Woke up Monday AM. T had to figure out what to do with the trailer, we left and went back to AZ to get our boys and get on the road to come home. We drove to Benson, AZ got a room, relaxed and got some good sleep, got up Tuesday AM and drove the rest of the way home. About 130 miles from home we stopped to get gas and heard our truck's valves ticking. Our hearts just sunk to the ground. We just wanted to get home. We had to put 4 QTs of oil in the engine. We kept driving just hoping we would make it home without the engine freezing up. We stopped about 20 miles later to let Z go potty and the ticking was gone!! Mark said we would be fine and I relaxed. When we pulled in the drive way we were so excited! We unloaded our cooler with our meat and went right to bed!!! A long adventure, lots of issues, but even more blessings. We are thankful for the time we had with our friends and families!