Involving the Owner's Manual, the Bathroom Scales, and a few very unSabbatical Moments...

Greetings from the margin!

The Wright gang is doing well as we near the halfway mark of my Man's sabbatical. We find ourselves in a locale with no internet which has been, as one of our favorite TV characters likes to say, a blessing and a curse.  A blessing because...less ringing and dinging and... just, less. A curse because when you want to look up something nifty an a food blog, like how to make those spectacular muffins that your teenagers loved, well...you're sunk.

The first week of sabbatical was spent preparing for the next three weeks and can I just say that it may well take us all three weeks to recover from the last few days of that first week! The night before we bid our home adieu we spent more than a few stress-filled hours loading our van.

Just as the last few items were carried down the stairs to the garage we noticed that our van was sitting a bit low to the ground. This was concerning but we thought that it would probably be ok until we remembered that we still had to add six bodies into that van in the morning, four of which weighed well over one hundred pounds! Children were summoned and seated in the van and it became clear that some tough decisions had to be made.

The next few hours involved the owner's manual for our van (to look up the maximum load allowable), our bathroom scales, four concerned-for-their-stuff children who had to be continually shooed from the garage, and two nervy adults who worked as hard maintaining patience with one another as they did determining exactly which items were absolutely necessary to our existence during the next three weeks.

We'd never been gone for three weeks before.

My Man has a t-shirt that has a quote from Erasmus:

"When I have a little money I buy books; and if I have any left I buy food and clothes."

That quote pretty much summed up our problem. I had prepared and frozen enough meals to feed us for 21 dinners and lots of lunches and many breakfasts.

We were sporting one large cooler and two medium coolers full of gallon zip bags which had been filled, labeled, and frozen flat in preparation for our time away. In addition to the three coolers, we'd filled two large Thirty One utility bags full of non-frozen food stuffs including canned goods, bread, rice, etc.  We were prepared to eat out only minimally...too well prepared as it turned out.

To make matters worse, as the weeks counted down to this day, this very day that we would leave many of us Wright's had been preparing in our minds stacks and stacks of books that would travel with us. I had two bags full plus my computer and some other things and my Man was attempting to carry on three bags full. Cole and Meg both had backpacks loaded with chosen books and the little girls were bringing along only the books that we forced them to.

{My stacks...before the purge.}

After much load shifting and the weighing of our children, our books, our dry goods bags, and our coolers, we came to the sad conclusion that we were going to have to significantly lighten our load.

The children were asked to pare down their "carry on" backpacks.  We'd only brought along a few outfits of clothing each so unloading suitcases was not a possible option and when I suggested that we only take one outfit each in order to spare some of our books, I was swiftly and soundly and unamimously out voted.  My Man and I each unloaded some books and then we unloaded the 50 pounds worth (or so said the bathroom scales) of dry goods figuring to purchase them at our destination.

I am happy to announce that we safely reached our destination safely and happily and our vehicle seems no worse for the wear. What did remain after the pairing down of our load was the deep feeling of gratitude we feel for our church family for caring enough to allow us this time away. We feel cherished and cared for and we carry with us the responsibly of returning home rested and renewed and ready to serve.

{Kate en route.}