Is Puke an Inconvenience or a Problem?

I can't believe that it's already been over a week since my last check in--but here we are, on our journey home. I'm actually typing this still about 5 1/2 hours away. We are almost 2 hrs behind our schedule because of an unfortunate inconvenience...puke.


Unbeknownst to me, my husband agreed to caravan home with his sister's family. They have two kids--my niece age 3 and my nephew age 1 1/2. Well, we got off to a great start! We were up and checked out of our condo by the time we wanted to be out. We met up with them at their condo and got on the road. They begged us to stop at McDonald's so they could get coffee, so we did. Then we get a text "HANNAH JUST PUKED ALL OVER THE CAR IN THE DRIVE THRU!!" and next thing we know, they have their coffee, but also a car full of puke. So now they set about cleaning out her carseat from the HUGE pile of vomit. Seriously. It was so nasty. Thankfully, I had some disinfectant cleaner, paper towels, and big garbage bags to donate to the clean up process! But it was almost 90 minutes before we FINALLY were on the road again. Then we had to stop ASAP at a car wash so they could finish cleaning the vomit out of the carseat. Needless to say, it was a set back to our schedule.

So, rather than the wishful thinking arrive home at 9pm, now we are going to be thankful to make it in before midnight. Week day road trips adds the curse of rush hour and heavier traffic through cities and boy do we have quite a few to get through! And let's not even TALK about when GPS goes psycho.

But, we are trying to stay positive. Well, I am at least. My husband keeps telling me how much he hates driving, how much he hates traffic, how late we are going to be, how he always ends up in the wrong lane...but I know it centers around the fact that he has to go back to work tomorrow morning, and is going to be very very tired. Especially since we were in CST instead of our normal EST, so his body will not be happy to get up tomorrow morning at his normal work wakeup time.

But through it all...through this WHOLE experience over the last few days, I have tried my hardest to remember a simple question put forth in a sermon I heard a year ago...

"Is this simply an inconvenience, or is it a real problem?"

By keeping myself in check with this question, it saves a lot of stress. I failed miserably several times over the week--like the night I got upset because my husband thought we were sharing a baked potato and I thought it was all mine--and then there was something else too, but I can't remember what it was. Except he wanted to do something different than I had laid out in my head. Same thing with the discovery our condo only had tepid water in the master shower. I was initially upset, but then decided to be grateful for clean water to bathe in period. And it worked (and they fixed it the next day). I can't tell you how many times I had to remind myself of that simple statement though.

Which brings me back to how our day started.

Yes, my niece puked everywhere this morning.

BUT
*It wasn't in our car.
*She wasn't sick (she's got a nasty gag reflex).
*We didn't have to stop any other times for it.
*No one in OUR car is puking.
*The weather has been beautiful.
*Everyone else is healthy, even when families were dropping like flies at the Feast down there this year with the stomach flu.
*We have our super amazing comfortable bed waiting for us.

Seriously, puke was just an inconvenience this morning, not a problem.

How's YOUR day going?

ps. since I started this post she coughed and puked again. courtesy of a warm drink and her bad gag reflux.But she actually warned them this time.

Inconvenience. Not a problem.