I’m not sure if we’ve ever really questioned our sanity too much based on the time of day we are doing something. it is usually other aspects of circumstances that are more problematic for us. last night it was a certain troublesome address and a very cantankerous GPS… let me give you a little background.

as we’ve gotten older and had kids we’ve made a conscious effort to stay flexible and spontaneous. when we’re at home our kids go to bed at 8:00, but we just have our little routines that work no matter where we are so they are used to being flexible. we take advantage of this for all sorts of spontaneous adventures, and sometimes we’re able to convince other people to join in

last year our friend, Jeff, was getting off of his bus driving shift at midnight so we decided to meet up with him and his wife, Rhonda, for a little midnight snack. our kids were a little confused when we got them out of bed at 11, but they enjoy adventure, so they were soon chipper. (I told them about how sometimes when we were getting ready for bed when I was a kid my dad would suddenly yell up the stairs “road trip!” and we would all pile in the car and go into town. I am pretty sure these trips were virtually always based on my dad’s wanting to rent a movie for him and my mom to watch, but I think we usually got ice cream cones or something on the way back – I didn’t tell our kids that part, though, lol)

yes, I do believe we were rather tired on the way home (we had certainly not gone to bed before we left or anything like that) but it is a fun memory to have, and beats a few extra hours of sleep on that day. [sidenote: don't you just love my little brown child's hands on my poor crazy-white ones? cute!]

so fast forward to now, and how those silly friends thought they had to up and MOVE 9 hours away… while we were in Costa Rica, no less. (well, they tried to wait for us, but plans fell through once or twice…)

in any case, on Sunday night we were talking and decided it was high time we skedaddled up to visit them, and why not just do it when we could help them with moving into a different house? so our intern, Krista (who happens to be Rhonda’s niece), sorted out her day job work shifts and not too many hours later we all embarked on a mission to surprise the socks off of our wayward friends.

on the way we guessed what they would look like/say if we got there late and had to wake them up for the surprise. we figured that Rhonda would look all squinty-eyed, smiley, and confused, while Jeff would say some version of “what are YOU guys doing here??? I’m sleeping!”

we should have originally arrived before 11:00pm, but wouldn’t you know that their address had to go and break the GPS? first it tried to take us to some Mexican restaurant in New York, which really, doesn’t sound like a bad plan. then it just generally went downhill from there. at one point it told us to turn into oncoming traffic on a one-way.

traveling tip for the wise: when your GPS tries to kill you, it’s time to use a regular map and the handy dandy brain God gave you.

too bad that our God-given brains function best in broad daylight and with our original eyesight as opposed to these crappy old people night vision type of eyes that have found themselves misplaced into our skulls.

the Michigan map people need to band together to sue themselves and those regular online maps. I would hope a judge would sentence them to all get on the same page. when one road/highway/street/avenue is called by more than 2 names, I submit that confusion abounds. we should be awarded a hefty sum for the hour and a half we lost bodinking around the flat lands.

the good news is that we DID finally make it, and we did end up waking Jeff & Rhonda out of their peaceful slumber, and they DID respond almost identically to our predictions. it’s fun to know and be known to that degree.

I am currently falling asleep like crazy while writing this post and have no idea how it is going to sound when I read it again in the morning. I only know that spontaneity and lack of mobile online access is like online suicide, and it’s been like 4 days since I’ve had decent access, and now my projects are backed up. I feel it is necessary I go to bed now before I say something that sounds like complete nonses (that is apparently how one types “nonsense” in one’s sleep, so I’m going to just leave that there to help you understand my situation, LOL, and why I’ll have to wait for another post to add in pictures/video from our trip)

I’ll hopefully be back on and getting caught up on all the things people are waiting on tomorrow,,,, (yeah, those commas are also from my sleeping brain straight to you. so not joking.) GOODNIGHT.