Crazy People Drive all night

...and God must like crazy people. We left Nashville at 11:00 am Sunday morning, and we planned to end our day in Valdosta Georgia, just north of the border of Florida. We also planned to stop at Cloudland Canyon along the way, a Georgian state park that is "off the beaten path" and very beautiful.

But the crazy part came in when we spent more time at Cloudland, just because of the sheer beauty of the whole place, and the friendliness of the few people who happened

 to be there with us (including the

 owners of this Porsche parked next to our van, which put me in a precarious  situation...which one to drive back down the mountain???). 

Anyway, we where still pretty far from Valdosta when the kids were begging for sleep, and I was not interested in

 driving another 6+hours on the day we were supposed to be arriving in Florida. So we stopped, got the kids as ready for bed as we could, brushed their teeth with plain water, filled the little kid potty (ewww) and got them in their PJ's (for Maria that is just undies and nothing else :), tipped the kids seats back as far as we could with all the luggage and food behind them, then daddy got some Mountain dew (ignoring the calories for the caffeine), and off we went. Anna was a real trooper. 

We only stopped

 for who hours along the w

ay from 2-4am, Anna slept on the floor under the kids feet while I tosse

d and turned in the front seats. I don't think we would request to sleep like that again under norm

al circumstances. But it worked this time.

I woke up refreshed (no joke) at 4am to the crickets chirping on my phone alarm. The only thing we weren't too sure about was checking into the hotel. We apprehensively called at 5am to ask what our options were. We are told 4pm was normal check in time, but w

e could check in as early as 7am. I was overjoyed.  

And by golly we arrived in Orlando at 6:30 after a 20 minute 

GPS mistake which took us to the wrong Lake Street in a little neighborhood that looked scary in the dark.   As we pulled in to the Embassy suites at 6:30 the kids started waking up, to them it was normal to wake up and be safely in Orlando where mom and dad told them they would. But we don't want to take for granted all the little details that God worked out for us along the way. Yes, God really blessed us, either in spite of our craziness or because of it.