Forecasting

Forecasting.  It is the state of prediction that gives us a reasonable probability that something is going to happen a certain way in the future.  Some might think of it as educated guessing which would be accurate.  I see it as visioning which for me rings truer. I'd guessed a busy travel year for our family this year and so far all of it has come to pass as forecast.  To make the plans real I even went so far as to create a grid on, gasp, PaPeR so that I could see just how wacky things were potentially going to get.  As I stared into the future I quickly noticed that twice this summer I had less than 48 hours to wash, repack and head out again on another trip.  Both of those trips required me to pack Dad's things two weeks in advance to stay ahead of the game. As I fully took stock of the plans, I had to make note of who was travelling when to be sure we weren't double booking ourselves. Each trip required airline bookings, hotel or Airbnb bookings with lots of follow up emails, rental car bookings (or Uber and Lyft app updates), accessibility puzzles to solve and 5 hour energy drinks.   And despite all of the busyness I must say I secretly liked all of the planning and provisioning that each short and long trip took to pull off.  Of course when I developed a horrendous sinus infection during one of the 48 hour home layovers I must say that I really hadn't seen THAT coming.  But come it did.  But I 'll tell you what, that sucker got knocked out with homemade ( and I stress HOMEMADE) chicken and vegetable soup.  Don't play!  Chicken soup is.the.truth! 
Believe you me, I am not arrogant enough to think that I could have done it all on my own.  It was completely by God's grace and mercy that each trip went off without a hitch.  Besides that, I have two travel partners that are down with the whole go, go, go thing.  For the most part.  I think I was just so stinking happy to travel my way back to a state of joy that I said 'yes' to almost every graduation, reunion and girls trip that came my way.  Many of you may know that 2018 brought us travel opportunities of a very different kind.  We experienced six family deaths in 6 months which no one on earth could have forecasted.  Plan two of the funerals from 1100 miles away whilst in the midst of all of that grief and you can see why I jumped at chances to be in the midst of any and all joyous occasions once 2019 hit.   And if God says so, I've got a couple more fun occasions I'd like to celebrate out of town before the year closes out!
Waiting on a flight to FUN!

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