East Coast and back.

On Monday morning, Kati, her boyfriend, Kurt, my friend, Barb and I left Michigan to move Kati to Delaware for graduate school and a graduate fellowship at Winterthur. It was a quick, but wonderful adventure.

Kati will be living in a gorgeous older home with two of the other young ladies in her program. I would move into that home in a heartbeat:

So that's the place that she'll be living. And this is where she will be spending most of her time...

This is the Winterthur mansion, now museum...not the greatest photo or angle, but it was 102 degrees at that point.

This is the "cottage" that the DuPont family moved into after living in the mansion. Apparently easier to care for, as it is only 50 rooms as compared to the 170+ rooms in the mansion....

So, this was wonderful to visit, and I am already trying to figure out when Tom and I can get there when it's about 30 degrees cooler so that we can actually spend some time there.

Barb and I left early yesterday morning (4:30 am) in order to get Barb home in time for her first meeting with some young teens from our church to begin a Bible study on Proverbs. Barb has a true heart for these young ladies, and has planned a great summer Bible study for them on summer afternoons out on her boat. Doesn't that sound great? So, we were on our way and making great time, when in western Pennsylvania, this happened:

Which happened right after our friend Chris, called to pray with us about safety for our trip, the rest of our day, the Bible study, and my upcoming travels to Haiti.  While Chris and Barb were praying, I was carefully navigating the van through a heavy duty construction zone over the Allegheny River, where there was a new bridge being constructed, and no shoulder or pull off, whatsoever. Less than a mile after leaving this area, the tire blew out, and there was a shoulder for me to pull over. While disappointed, we were thankful we were safe. 

Barb looked out the window and saw this

                           A beautiful plant (or weed?) that we were able to view, at which point we realized that in all that heat, we were also parked in the shade as we waited for the tow truck to arrive.

I was thankful that my husband had the wisdom to get a AAA membership, which provided us a free tow truck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The driver informed us that with my make and model of van, we would never have been able to change the tire ourselves. While he was putting on the spare, Barb called Kevin, who I referred to as our "spare husband." With Tom in Haiti, and her husband in China on business, we needed a husband to call to find out how long we could drive on that spare tire. It was good to have a spare husband for "such a time as this!" Kevin told us to purchase a new tire as soon as possible. 

So, about 3 hours and wonderful lunch at Panera later (in a very "Panera-unlikely" town, Barb and I resumed our trip. She had to cancel her first Bible study, which made me sad, but it couldn't be helped. The rest of our trip was uneventful. It was, however, interesting for us to note that our tire blow out happened in the 1 mile stretch between 2 construction zones that had no shoulders for pull off. We were very thankful that we were safe, and if that tire needed to go, it went in just the spot it did.

I hope that in your life today, even if some seemingly bad things happen that change your plans, you are able to spot the good and be thankful for it all.