Columbia/Charleston, South Carolina Trip

And we’re off….again…. I am believing that we are the most traveling-est family that ever was…

Our latest trip found us in Columbia South Carolina. We have visited SC before, but not this particular area. Trevor was asked to preach at Bro. Gerald H.’s church, this time, so off we went.

We left our house Friday night when Trevor got home from work. This made us getting in late (at around 2 am) but we were glad to finally reach our destination. We spent Saturday morning visiting Congaree National Park. This park is also known as “The Swampy Park”. http://www.nps.gov/cong/index.htm

We then headed to Bro Gerald’s house for lunch and spent the rest of the day hanging out with him and his family. They are such a wonderful, sweet family. They made us feel right at home. Trevor had met Bro. Gerald before, and had even visited his church (even tho he had never preached there before), but this was my first time meeting them. On the way back to the hotel, we somehow ran over a piece of metal that must have fallen off of someone’s car. We didn’t think anything of this at first. It appeared that everything was fine. But about a block from our hotel, we noticed our front tire was flat. Sigh. So I took the kids and walked the block back to the hotel, while Trevor fixed the flat tire. Mishap Number One…

Sunday was wonderful. Trevor preached on “Culture Degrades Truth”, Sunday Morning and then “Millinium without Repentance” on Sunday night. The Lord visited us during the services and even tho this group of Believers is small, the ourpouring was huge.

In between services we visited the capital building in Columbia. (More school related education to throw into our trips…such is the life of a homeschool mom…haha ) We got to see the statue of George Washington, which stands in front of the capital building. The cane that George is holding is missing the bottom half. It was shot off during the Civil War, by flying brick from a cannon. Interesting indeed!

We then headed back to the hotel in hopes of resting up a bit before the evening service. Unfortunately that was not to happen. Zion didn’t eat all of his lunch and wanted to bring the left overs back to the hotel. Not wanting to waste food, I agreed. One of the left overs was jello. I should have known better. But apparently I wasn’t thinking of the fact that jello liquefies very quickly when not chilled. We made it all the way back to the hotel, pulled into our parking spot, and the “to go” box containing the leftover fruit and jello, fell over and the liquefied jello went everywhere. (Mishap Number Two)… Including all over the extra clothes we had in the car for emergency. Now, this would not have been a problem, except for one small detail….if we were planning on staying an extra day and tour Charleston, (which I didn’t know about ahead of time. Trevor decided to surprise us with this after we got there) the extra clothes that the kids had, were now a mess. They could wear the one extra set to church that evening, but then they’d have nothing to wear for the next 2 days. What did we do?? We had to make a stop at Walmart in hopes to find something decent for the kids to wear to church that night, so that the last clean pair of clothing the kids had, could be worn for the site seeing day as well as the trip home. I now know why I had made the choice a long time ago to NEVER go to Walmart again. It was insane in there. Trying to find something even somewhatly decent for Glorianna was almost impossible. We managed to find some khaki’s for Azariah (and thankfully I had remember to pack an extra dress shirt, so he did have that). But in order to find anything for Glorianna I had to go to the ladies department. In finally found what was supposed to be a mini skirt with a wide elastic waist band (a size 3-5) in the ladies department, and paired it up with a shirt for the kids department (that thankfully matched, even tho we had our doubts at first). The skirt fit Glorianna nice around the waist and fell to her ankles. Hey…that works. And she’ll be able to wear it for a few years.

After that crazy trip…we were almost late for Church. But we made it with 15 minutes to spare. Not good, when Trevor would be preaching. But all went well. The devil aparently knew how wonderful of a service we were going to have, and he tried his best to ruin it. But the Lord prevailed. We had a wonderful service indeed!

There was a couple of brothers at the church who knew cars well. They were kind enough to fix the hole in our tire for us with no charge, after service Sunday night. God Bless them.

Monday we left our hotel and headed up to Charleston. We were only about 2 hours away, so the drive wasn’t bad at all. The main reason we headed up there, was to see Fort Sumter. The Civil War base out on an island. We had to take a boat/ferry ride out to the island. That was cool. I don’t do well with heights or big boats because I get motion sickness very easy. So I stayed in my seat the entire ride, and the kids (and Trevor) had a blast looking over the side of the boat and watching the dolphins splash in the distance. Yes we saw dolphins! Fun!!

We toured the fort for about 45 minutes and then had to return to the boat. When we made it back to our destination we were all quite hungry. Trevor found this awesome seafood place, which had been recommended to us by a friend. It was very very good. We toured the local shops in that same area, visited another small Civil War based park, and enjoyed just hanging out by the ocean. It was a wonderful day.

We arrived back to our hotel around 9 pm, had some late night food, and crawled into bed. We slept in a bit the next morning, then packed up and headed out. We went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel, then began our drive back home. At one of the rest areas, about half way home, Glorianna ended up throwing up. Mishap Number Three. We don’t know why. But thankfully she made it to the grass and didn’t throw up in the car. After resting for a bit, she was fine. She then took a good long nap, as we drove on. We had a late lunch at Ruby Tuesday (about 2 hours from home). Glorianna seemed to be fine and ate really well. When we arrived back home, (at about 7:30) the kids all jumped in the pool, while Trevor and I unpacked. Glorianna didn’t stay in long tho. She came out a few minutes later saying she didn’t feel like swimming. She didn’t look very good either. She threw up in the driveway. Blah… I gave her a bath after that and she laid down on the couch and fell asleep. She slept the rest of the night and seems to be perfectly fine today. I don’t know if she just had some bad food or if this was just the devil trying to ruin our wonderful weekend…but he failed! It was indeed a wonderful weekend….

And now that all of the laundry is done…I am ready to pack up and head out again…I must be crazy!!

(There will be more pictures later. Trevor took a bunch on the ipad, but I haven’t gotten them moved over to my laptop yet. So for now enjoy these)