Visiting Nebraska for Grandpa's Funeral

Traveling to Nebraska

Chris took two days to drive to Nebraska with the girls and Joseph while I flew with my big 13-year-old helper and two littlest boys.

Packing each person's hats and gloves

Saying goodbye at oh-dark-thirty as the first crew left

The Road Crew had a great time playing car games, singing together (a lot of Beethoven's Wig songs!), and listening to "The Great Horn Spoon" on audio book.

Love note from 6-year-old to Mama

Mary always writes encouraging notes to the cleaning staff

They stopped for Mass at St. Francis de Sales Oratory in St. Louis, MO.

Meanwhile, I experienced one of the most stressful travel events in my memory!

1. The rush hour traffic caused the 24-minute drive to take almost an hour.

2. I tried to find Daily Parking, missed my exit, almost had a car accident, and used bad language in front of John, maybe for the first time--twice!

3. I looped around airport (more delay), got in the correct lane, and parked. Then our four-year-old got out of the car and vomited over all our assembled pieces of luggage and himself. More delay. I wiped off all luggage as best I could. I opened my suitcase to find Zofran to give Thomas--so glad I was prepared for many possible illnesses!

4. I discovered in confusion that I had to board a shuttle bus--more delay. I thought the entire point of my parking there per my husband's instructions was to walk a mere few feet from parking to departures. Turns out Chris told me park in hourly, not daily.

5. While getting on to an elevator, Thomas randomly tripped, hit his head on the wall corner, got a cut and a goose egg. He was hysterical but I had to sternly tell him to be brave and that we had to run. He gulped, asked for a hug, I gave one, and he dried his tears.

6. I tried to check in at self-guided screen. We were past the cut-off time, so I switched lines to customer service.  We were beyond cut off to check bags but man tried to anyway. I explained, choking back tears, that I was about to miss the flight to my grandfather's memorial.

7. At security, we were selected for not one, not two, but THREE random checks: my person, our stroller, and Thomas' backpack. The lady pulls everything out of the backpack, for example, every single pack of gummy snacks to swab them for explosives. She had to open my family size bag of M-and-Ms to dig through the candies to make sure there was not something deadly intermixed. I started crying, not for the first or last time. More delay.

8. We started running. We are not at the close terminal but the far one and 24 gates away. I held my four-year-old's hand and ran while he cried the whole way and I promised him candy and movies.

9. We boarded the plane last with 60 seconds before they shut the doors.

Tuesday in Nebraska

On Tuesday morning, we attended Mass at St. Francis of Assisi in Lincoln, a Mass which had been arranged ahead of time to be said for the repose of the soul of my Grandpa.

There was just enough snow on the ground to be fun for the children and stressful for Mama ("you will soak the only shoes you have with you!"), but it remained sunny and clear, but bitterly cold, while we were in town.

We spent the rest of the day visiting with family and enjoying dinner together.

Wednesday in Nebraska

The memorial went smoothly and beautifully, thanks to the competent organization of my aunt and the wonderful staff at the cemetery. You can read my grandfather's obituary here: he was a truly accomplished man and patriarch of our family.

The event opened with our daughters playing Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring--a piece they had decided they wanted to learn and taught to themselves for fun, with no involvement from me, over Christmas break.




Various family members spoke at the event: I also delivered a speech and our 13-year-old son read a literary excerpt.

Our 11-year-old wrote a poem in honor of Grandpa.

Chris generously took charge of the littlest boys for the event and they ended up sitting at the back and falling asleep for the duration!

After the memorial, we woke Thomas (4) and walked him to the dining room to eat, but after some long amount of time, we realized with fear that he was nowhere to be seen. We fanned out for a search . . . and then discovered that he had simply found a new couch and gone back to sleep!

Our extended family without its patriarch

All of Grandpa's girls

The family stayed for the inurment, where one family member chanted In Paradisum and then we all sang Amazing Grace--and we did not become Popsicles in the 30-degree wind, although it felt like it.

We enjoyed another family dinner together before having to give all our goodbye hugs.

Traveling Home from Nebraska

The Road Crew departed our rental home at 7:00 a.m.--when it was three degrees outside--and the Flight Crew wasn't far behind, leaving at 7:30. We had a more relaxing start, though, eating breakfast at Good Evans, which I highly recommend to anyone passing through Lincoln, Nebraska.

A homemade Pop-tart shared by the four of us

We were so distressed by being late when traveling to Lincoln that we ended up arriving at the airport two and a half hours early.

I look at these children and think, "How blessed I am!"

Unfortunately for me, when we checked in our suitcases, the staff promptly confiscated my stroller and said that, despite my having gate-checked it while traveling on five flights in the last six months, it was too big and I had to properly check it on this flight. That meant I had a big airport to traverse and a couple of hours to kill with a two-year-old who threw many tantrums on the carpet and then had to be slung over my shoulder and carried screaming.

The bulk of the flight was not bad at all, but it was trying for the twenty minutes ascending and twenty minutes descending when regulations required children two and older to be seated in their own seats and buckled--no sitting in Mama's cozy arms! David fought so hard bodily--no amount of toys, snacks, distraction, or entertainment worked--that I had to lean over and pin him down for the whole twenty minutes each time while he screamed.

I was just thinking to myself--maybe in too satisfied of a way--that having six kids makes me really not care what other people think about my screaming two-year-old. It is like water off a duck's back.

However, it turns out, I care a whole lot--and pridefully--what people think about my four-and-a-half-year-old's behavior, as God quickly showed me. After we landed and were queuing up like cattle in a chute to deplane, Thomas asked me where the rest of his Skittles were. Learning that his mother dared to eat the last handful of them, he, frankly, lost his mind. He wouldn't walk, collapsed on the floor, and screamed bloody murder. I am not strong enough to carry my backpack, my purse, Thomas at more than 40 pounds, and Thomas' backback (and John already had his backpack and David). I tried dragging Thomas down the aisle, my begging, pleading, and threatening while crowds stared and clucked and handed me back Thomas' shoes when he flung them off. I sat on the floor with him (numerous times through the airport), both pinning him down to my body and hugging him comfortingly. Yes, it turns out that not everything is water off a duck's back for me!

Because my stroller had been confiscated, I had to traverse the huge Charlotte airport with Thomas weeping and claiming, "I can't walk" the entire time. Then we could not find our luggage and had to walk up and down, up and down, the large baggage claim area--where there was not one single staff person to be found besides two drug-sniffing dogs and their handlers. We finally retrieved our luggage, took the bus back to the van (the bus I wouldn't have had to take if I had remembered my husband's instructions), and drove home through rush hour traffic again (an hour instead of 24 minutes), with my getting lost five separate times.

The trip was well worth it, but the travel was a bear this time!

Meanwhile, the Road Crew had stopped on Thursday at the convent of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, for Terce, Mass, and Confession, as well as shopping in the gift shop. They also stopped back at the McDonalds in Missouri where they had lost Mary's purse . . . and retrieved it from the kind staff!

I had all my chickadees under one roof safe and sound by Friday evening, praise God.