Thank goodness for a prayerful Grandma

I survived my trip to Casper. I came back tired and sick of horses but in one piece. Although there were a few brief hours deciding on whether or not I should smile in my mug shot. Let me explain…

I get on a very tiny plane in Casper, Wyoming to fly to Denver to get on a big plane to fly home. As I am boarding my pocket plane I'm stopped by a worker who offers to stow my carry on since the plane is pea sized. She assures me it will be waiting at the end of the stairs when I arrive in Denver. “Sure!” I say. My mistake! This bag contains everything important: my laptop, Daniel’s camera, my GPS and two very important, irreplaceable tapes. But my little voice was silent and I handed her the bag.

About 45 minutes later we land in Denver. I stop by the designated “Stowed Items” cart and my bag is missing. Ok, maybe they’re not done unloading. A very tall man is there with me thinking the same thing. He sees our bags and asks the "baggage dude" why they are not on the cart. This smug little baggage dude looks at it and then back to us and says, “Those bags have no tags, you can’t have them”.

“What? What do you mean we can't have them? Can I get something out of it?” I ask.
Smirking he says “Nope."
“So what will happen to them?”
“Well, tell me your next flight #"
“I can’t, it’s on the boarding pass in the bag you won’t let me have!”
“Wow, that sucks” he says with a smile. He asks me where I’m flying to. I tell him Houston and he proceeds to write HOU on his hand. ON HIS HAND! And assures us his baggage guy is good and it will get there no problem.
“You don’t even know which bag is mine!! It has no name!”
“Well, which one is yours?”
“The smaller one!”
“Ok, yours is the smaller one” still smirking. Fuming, we head to customer service. She calmly prints me up a new boarding pass and tries to tell us that these “baggage dudes” really know what their doing.
“Didn’t he write anything down?” she sweetly asks.
“Yeah! On his HAND!”
“Oh, that would make me nervous too. Well ma’am we insure bags up to $2,000 so in the event the bag doesn’t get to Houston, that’s something you can look in to.”
“So basically you’re telling me that by the grace of God my bag will make it to Houston.”
“Yes Ma’am.”

NICE!! That’s wonderfully reassuring! So I spend my hour lay-over stressed out trying to decide if I need to flee the country to avoid the wrath of a producer with missing tapes, or if I should smile in the mug shot they take after I shake the snot out of a smug little baggage dude. I spent the entire flight trying to decide what to do about the bag I was SURE I’d never see again.

The flight home was long but I knew Grandma was at home praying, and for some reason God seems to answer grandmas’ prayers faster. I run to baggage claim and wait for the stupid thing to start spinning. I wait for what seems like FOREVER and there it was!! Coming around the corner with my name on it and everything, with all of its contents intact! Thank goodness for a prayerful grandma; because if it were up to my faith alone, I would have never seen that bag again.

I’m happy to be home and I’m thankful the smirky little baggage guy knew what he was doing. And I'm highly irrational so for his sake, he should be happy too. :)

odds & ends

Last week was Staff Camp at Sandy Creek Bible Camp. We had such a good time! Is it strange that I return to camp for a week every summer to clean the kitchen? Every year I think it's that last but I find myself there again the next summer. I do have to admit that it's not always easy to adjust to. I am 10+ years older than most of the staffers and that's just odd! Last summer I watched my staff cabin go down. The cabin I spent so many summers in, the nasty old cabin we called home was demolished, just like that! And that was hard. Now they've added sidewalks. SIDEWALKS!! AT CAMP! They look SO weird and out of place. They are nice; walking to the Chapel and not ending up with 4 inches of sand in your shoes is a very nice thing. But sidewalks at camp, it just seems so bizarre.

Tami and I had a fantastic sister bonding day on Saturday. I just love her! It was unsuccessful but fun none the less. We went shopping for her bridesmaids dress. I never imagined my girls would have such a hard time finding a black dress. Seriously! And the stupid lady at the stupid dress shop freaked me out with her "anything ordered now will have to be rush ordered". But I have 2 1/2 months!! Why must we rush? There is no need for a rush. Let's just all take a deep breath and not panic here....

I'm off to Casper, Wyoming on Wednesday morning for the College National Finals Rodeo. It's like our Rodeo minus the livestock show and the carnival and the concert. FUN TIMES! :)