SEE-SAW

One day i was just sitting and decided i would check my email on Yahoo. When it came up one of the headlines was talking about this 11 year old girl walking the trails at the Crater of Diamonds State Park and finding a 4 carat diamond!! I was amazed immediately. I called Rachel and said you will never believe what i just read about!! Told her we have got to go to this place, I want to find a diamond! Of course i knew i WOULD find one! Rachel and i sat down and looked it up and this Diamond park was in Murfreesboro Arkansas. We said how far could that possibly be? Well we planned on leaving that Friday when i got off at 5:00pm and driving the whole way there. I called my mother in law (Lola) and ask her if Rachel and i could borrow the Suburban, and if i could take Drew? Of course she said yes, and i also called my mother and ask if i could take my little brother. Rachel and i planned the whole thing we found one of the only 4 Hotels in the area and booked 1 room ( let me repeat that) 1 ROOM for all 6 of us that is me, Rachel, Cait-Cait, Justin, Colby, and Drew!!! It was cheaper just to get a room with 2 double beds and we decided we would take my blow up mattress and some of the kids could sleep on it. Well we started off around 6:15pm stopped and got gas, and headed out. We got around Vicksburg and it started just pouring down rain!!! Well guess what doesnt work in Sammy the Suburban?? The windshield wipers DONT work!! Rachel started to panic. I pulled over because i didn't know what else to do. I told Rachel this had happened before when Mrs Lola and i were headed to Foley, AL for her B-Day last year and i had to hang out of the window going down Hwy 49 near Hattiesburg driving oh around 75mph and tug on them and started to work. So in attempt to fix our issue Rachel rolls her window down and starts pulling on the windshield wipers. Just close you eyes with me for a brief moment and picture this: Rachel leaning out the window, me creeping down the shoulder of interstate 20 headed toward Vicksburg, traffic is horrible, the sky dropping billions and millions of gallons of water on to Rachel's head, every child in the back seat not knowing if they should die laughing or cry for fear of what is to happen next!! OK got that! Now back to the story. Well i called Scott and ask him what he thought i should do. Of course he was a huge huge help he gave me all of nothing!! I decided we had to do something we had eight hours to drive we had only made it 30 minutes and the car was tearing up, we were all hungry, tired and ready to find some gosh darn diamonds, oh and we wouldn't make in time for the pool to still be open at the hotel to swim! Ughhhh. So i started to do what everyone else in that situation would...PRAY....Jesus, oh precious Jesus.....Please help Sammie the Suburbans wind shield wipers work......we sure could use your help Jesus and we know Sammie is a good little vehicle and he cant help it that his windshield wipers don't work, the air don't blow real cold, the door on the driver side wont close if you open it too far, the window on the driver side wont roll up sometimes if you roll it down, and the seat belt on the seat behind the driver seat has been stretched so much it just wont buckle good with out wrapping it around the headrest about 6 times to pull out the slack....so please Lord help us just to make it to Murfreesboro Arkansas so we can dig some diamonds.....Amen. Well believe it or not within minutes the windshield wipers did come on. So we keep on our journey for Diamonds.....Girls best friend ya know! We reached Louisiana and all the kids were begging literally for food they were about to start negotiating candy, sibling, games, Cd's, the diamonds they would find....anything! Rachel finally made me pull over to a Wendy's to feed to the starving children. As soon as they got out o the vehicle i thought "we will never make it to the Hotel in time to swim, but we will get there after they close, and they wont see how many people we had stuffed into this tiny smoking room with 2 double beds for 6 people to use! We got our food to go and set out and thank the Lord it started to rain as we drove off and He was still watching over us "The wipers worked"!!! We drove all night and at one point thought the kids would never get sleepy enough to fall out, but eventually they tuckered out and calmed down. Rachel and I just tried to keep each other amused to stay awake considering by the time we reached Arkansas it was around 2:00am. We saw a rest stop not far into Arkansas and decided to pull over stretch, use the restroom, and let the kids walk around some. The rest stop was absolutely beautiful it looked like a large log cabin and had this huge playground! After we finished in the restroom we decided to let the "Kids" play on the playground a while and that's when Rachel and I saw "IT". The most coolest toy in all the playground and it was OURS!!! The SEE-SAW!!!! As a child i could never ride the see-saw because i was bigger than all the other kids and for once i had the chance. Now a blind man could see that i am some what larger than Rachel but we decided to go for it anyways. We sat down on either end, both of our faces lit with joy that we were about to have the most amazing ride of our whole lives, we held on tight, looked around and all the kids were playing, we gave a little nod to show we were both ready. We both got to enjoy it for only a brief second even though we could have rode it forever for that moment because our lives felt they were in slow motion!!! Rachel went down, i went up, i went down, Rachel went up, then all in a spit second Rachel's end drops to the ground like a lead brick and my end goes up faster than a speeding bullet!! I flew over the handle bars and face first into pee gravel as Rachel fell off her end and back first into pee gravel. I think i hit every part of my body as i flew in slow motion over the top of that see-saw. In that brief moment my whole life flashed before my eyes and i thought i was a goner. Here i was in Arkansas and injured "What would i do?" I rolled over onto my back and started immediately feeling to see in i still had all my teeth, and then i checked my breast because my left one seemed to some how almost get amputated as i flew into the air. The whole time I was in shock i could hear Rachel she never stopped laughing. She laughed for 10 minutes. When i came to my senses i looked up and all 4 kids were standing over the top of us with there eyes as big as golf balls. I think they were all in shock at what they saw! One minute we are having fun and the next they see ham hocks flying over the handle bars of a see-saw that two grown women should surely have known better to get on in the first place! Rachel and I finally came to our senses and got up. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry! Rachel couldn't stop laughing! We eventually limped to the truck and started back on the road. We thought we were lost at one point, and at one point we thought we were going to be abducted by a UFO! We finally made it to the hotel and got checked in. We decided at 4:00 that morning when we got settled that we'd go swimming! So we did. The next morning we got up and headed down for breakfast. Rachel and I had already told the boys to go in like 5 mins before us so that the people at the front desk wouldn't know we were all together! We all ate and headed out for the Crater of Diamond State park to find the gems that would make our lives complete. We got to a sign and took pictures. It was a long ride and thru some dead little towns, but we finally got there!!! All eyes were big as we oohed and awwwhed at the beautiful park. We got all of our buckets, shovels, and gloves and headed in. We got our tickets and headed out the back to the park and when we got there we were in shock alright......... hundreds of acres of muddy, muddy flat land. People were everywhere. It was around 96 degrees that day and oh so muddy! We found a spot and kneeled to dig. With in minutes i knew this wasn't for me!! Here i am a large girl hot, dirty and getting muddy in 96 degree weather!!! Not this big girl. We lasted all of at the most 30 minutes and the kids maybe 37 minutes. We gathered our stuff and got directions to the nearest Water Park. We swam all day and headed back to the Hotel. Ate at the Western Sizzler, went to bed and got packed the next morning for the travel home. Needless to say there is never a dull moment when your with me and Rachel. Oh and we wont be repeating the see-saw incident for those of you at home thinking you cant get the clear mental picture so if you missed it sorry! Once in a lifetime experience. Love yall Chole