transportation malfunction

taking 10 little littles kids to sky ranch didnt seem to be a terribly hard challenge especially since there were 5 leaders going. so cam, parker, and kristin piled into the minibus with 10 kids and kel and i drove separate in my car. 3 and half hours later when we finally reached sky ranch they were ready to give the kids to us for the rest of the trip and threatened to put the 3 worst kids in my car with us on the way home. maybe it was the fact that the kids yelled, sang, and screamed all the way there? and you would think that after that length of time that they might be tired? oh no, we werent that lucky. they ran around still yelling and dancing and screaming till about 2 in the morning when they finally decided to sleep bc we told them there would be no swimming unless they slept that second. its amazing what a little threatening can do. the next day was great. patins hs kids took over and acted like counselors to the kids so they basically got at least one person to give them personal attention all day long. que, "the cutest little boy in mission" always had a swarm of like 5 people around him fighting to hang out with him bc well...hes that cute. so that was great..they got to do a lot of great stuff - sailing, putt putt, waterslides etc while us leaders got to do the stuff if we wanted or could go off and do whatever we wanted which included going down this amazingly great waterslide they had and tackling a big blow up 'iceberg' in the middle of the lake.

then the ride home...the kids all crashed as we had hoped...maybe making them do laps around a big deck right before we left helped that a bit..and im being dead serious..we timed them and all to make them think it was this fun game. but anyways, getting outta sky ranch was probably the hardest part of the whole trip and we ended up about 30 miles east of sky ranch instead of south before we finally found a main hwy to take us south to tyler. a big thanks to ryan parker for not only driving to start with but for being incredibly patient and kind as we got extremely lost and made u-turn after u-turn. another fun adventure on the way home was when we tried to get on 45. we turned onto the feeder not knowing that we would never ever actually get onto 45 like one would expect. im not exaggerating when i say that we were on the access road for 10 minutes, at least. after like five minutes we started to realize that maybe this was some big trick that we werent in on and so we started looking for places that we could cut thru the grass and sneak onto 45 bc we had lost all hope of actually ever merging on. then it was more of a game...finding someplace that wasnt a ditch and was flat and drivable. i finally spotted one but was too far past it to stop so i used the handy walkie talkie and told ryan to take it. for a split second i felt that i was in one of those movie scenes where theres like 2 people dying and a way out for only one and i was one saying 'just take it, man...do it...its ok..ill make it' bc honestly i wasnt sure if i was ever going to actually drive on 45. i thought i might have to just go all the way home with the view of 45 but not actually be able to drive on it. EVENTUALLY, we reached the next town and was able to cut thru it, get onto another access road and actually get on 45!!!! the next town! who doesnt have a place to merge onto the hwy between two whole towns??? it was incredible. i cant even explain the feeling when we actually got on. kel and i didnt want to get our hopes up at first...we thought it could be another fake feeders so we were like, 'wait for it...wait for it...yesssssss!!!' it was intense. so yeah, we finally got home..with our adventures of getting lost we made it in a record 4 hours...it was awesome. so all in all the trip was a success..we got to see patin and doug and kami so that was real fun, and i think the kids had a blast. would i do it again? if i had some sleeping pills for kids and a navigational system for my car...yes.