We had a very good friend of ours die unexpectedly this week and the funeral was going to be in Michigan on Saturday. You know how you think should we or shouldn’t we go? Well for us there was only thing that would determine if we wouldn’t go and that was the weather. Now we were supposed to get a couple of inches of snow, but we were hoping to get in front of the storm and decided to grab our stuff and head out. And since Kyle was still home to help with the chores, we thought it was a perfect time to go. Like I said the funeral was in Michigan and about a 9 to 10 hour drive.
When I got home on Friday after work, I had literally 17 minutes to change clothes and head back out the door. Now I did have everything ready, but after a quick bathroom visit and a change of clothes – out the door I went and into the pickup I sat with even a couple of minutes to spare! We are also trying to figure out just what our next car is going to be, so we stopped off at the airport and rented a car before we took off. We figured it was the best way to really get a good feel if we like a smaller vehicle or not. Good idea right?
On the way to Michigan our plans were to drive to around 2 hours of where the funeral was going to be and then get up early the next morning and drive to the church. But Daryl was in the groove and said that he wanted to keep driving. I was really glad that he was driving and not me – I was tired! Kyle let us borrow his Garmin and after seeing all the roads in Chicago, we really glad that we ended up taking it along. 
The next couple of hours went by kind of fast and then around 2:15 in the morning we’re standing at the counter in a hotel trying to make reservations for the night. I was going to do them on line before we got there, but after midnight you can’t make that same days reservations. Now this makes sense, but after being on the road for over 9 hours it was just a little fuzzy at the time. But the worst thing is that we couldn’t find the person behind the counter. After standing around for what seemed like a really long time, Daryl found the hotel number on some cards on the counter and I called the hotel. This one guy answered and I asked if he would come to the check in counter because we were waiting to try to check in. Now that was a first! But he was nice and we got all checked in and pretty much passed out from exhaustion. The next morning we didn’t have any trouble finding the church and it was so nice to see my best friend right away. It was her husband who died just the Monday before and like I said very unexpectedly. But she’s like a rock .. well more like a boulder! She just said that she couldn’t believe that he died and then explained how he died. She wasn’t crying and I was trying my best not to. Because they are so involved with their local school, churches, town, and then he was a part owner of a local business and she worked at the college you can see why the funeral was huge. They even moved it to a different church because they knew that they couldn’t fit everyone in for the service. After the service we all went to a local VFW for the meal. Now I don’t know if all Michigan funerals have this much desserts – but Holy Cow! We had the normal sandwiches, jello stuff, hot potatoes and hot bean dished, but then we took another plate and went to the dessert tables. My friends had a good friend of theirs own a bakery and brought ‘stuff’. I feel kind of bad talking about the food from today, but man oh man it was a lot! But do you know the coolest part of this whole day? When everyone found a seat in the VFW and before anyone ate, the priest gave a toast for the friend who passed away. Everyone raised their glass in honor of him and said Cheers! Way cool! It was so good to see our friend this weekend, but it sure would have been better if it was under different circumstances. I know that she’s tough and she’ll be OK, but it just doesn’t seem too fair to me. But like the old saying goes, ‘Life’s not fair’. And today it was a perfect example on how true that saying really is.