BEEN AWAY

There is so much going on these days around the Dillinger house.

John was gone most of last week to a work related meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.

We went to Arkansas for the first few days he was gone.

Sunday, his plane was to leave at 1:56, but I got us a little behind :) and we didn't leave until 11:30am.

Needless to say, John wasn't the happiest camper.

We "flew" to Memphis to catch the plane, since it's a 2 hour drive from here to there.

We were pulled over in Ripley, but the officer showed mercy and just gave us a warning.

We pulled into the airport drop off lane at 1:23, I was so praying that he didn't miss that flight because I have no doubt that he would have had me drive him to Nebraska.

That would not have been fun.

Thank the Lord, he made it and that there wasn't a big line to wait in.

After I dropped him off I headed to Trumann, where my Grandma had fixed Sunday dinner like old times.

When we were growing up she fixed Sunday dinner every week as long as I can remember.

I miss that.

She had tons of food as usual and we ate more than we should as usual.

Spent the next couple days hanging out around Mama's and shopping.

Came back home Wednesday in time for church, so that we could get the last minute kinks worked out for our trip to Conway.

Thursday, we took the youth to the Back to School retreat at Oak Bowery Baptist church.

There were 31 of us that went.

We had a great time and will definitely go back next year, but this time we will all stay in the same hotel. We had the youth and chaperone's in the hotel right next to our hotel and the Ballingers. John and Bro. Jeremy preached and made us proud. We also heard the Perry's Friday night in concert. The kids played some rough dodge ball. I just don't get that game. Who is in their right mind is willing to stand on one side of a room and let someone throw things at you? Not I said the fly. I have no interest in having things thrown at me. All in all it was a good weekend.

Our church bus is not working well and we still haven't found a new one to purchase so we rented a van and borrowed another van from one of the churches here in town.

We were headed back home Saturday afternoon in the worst humidity and had gotten about an hour down the road when the van with all the guys on it had a blow out.

Something I just realized, everytime we have tire problems it's always the guy van.

Anyway, when the tire blew out it hit some kind of something another under the van causing it to leak anti-freeze, which made it run hot and we had to stop a few times to put water in it.

By the last break down, I was laughing so hard at the situation.

I'm sure the boys on the van weren't though.

Mr. Charles will probably not want to go back on any of our trips. lol

On the last stop he looked like he was completely done with this whole ordeal. lol

I guess if we didn't keep having these break downs we wouldn't have anything to look back and laugh about.

We made it safely, back to Dyersburg and vowed to hurt anyone who was against getting a new bus. :) just kidding, sort of;)

I'm already eager to go on our next trip, minus the break downs.

Attention Holy Hills Youth and Youth workers:

PRAY!!! That we get a new bus before our next excursion!!!!