It gets cool when the sun goes down in Grove, Oklahoma! Don't get me wrong, it's nothing like a Minnesota night. But it's pretty chilly when we're talking thin RV walls. Upon arrival, Travis opted to sleep inside Nana and Papa Jim's house. Linda (Nana) offered to blow up her queen bed and have our typical sleeping arrangements inside their house. They've got two spare rooms with queen beds and we usually add another queen blow up bed in the dining room and just move the bed out of the way during the day. Instead of making an inconvenient mess I told kids they could sleep in the RV. The boys jumped all over that! Trav was against this idea not wanting to unnecessarily waste all the propane for the RV's furnace. I told him we wouldn't turn it on. So now we have children who want to sleep in the RV and a promise of no heat.
I went out to assess the situation and found a small space heater packed in a cabinet. Perfect! We'll use electricity instead of propane and have the boys sleep in the back bedroom so we just have to heat one small area. But I wasn't comfortable with the boys out there by themselves so I opted to sleep out there with them. Parker (my barnacle) wanted to sleep wherever I was sleeping, so now 4 of us are planning to sleep on the queen-size bed in the RV. Calla - the only logical kid of the bunch - chose the other spare bedroom's queen-size bed. She had it all to herself.
As you stand at the foot of the bed looking at us, Parker is cozy-ed up on the left wearing Calla's giant purple 2-layered winter coat and feety pajamas. I'm in the middle with a sweatshirt, SmartWool socks, and a scarf. And Lincoln is on the right with his feety pajamas. We are all covered with two thick, heavy blankets my sister crocheted for us and a comforter. Where is Taite, you wonder? He's at the end of the bed...like a dog. He rolled himself up in two more crocheted blankets and plopped himself as close to the space heater as possible. As you can imagine, I didn't have much space to straighten out. So I either slept with my legs crunched up to my chest - fetal-like position - or I straightened out and slept crooked.
The most unique part to the sleeping story is that the RV was parked on a slope in Jim and Linda's driveway. Last night I was woken up by Lincoln pushing my face and yelling, "Parker!! Move over!!" He was at the lower end of our sloped bed. It was our second night sleeping together in the RV. Anytime I woke up either night I found myself lifting Parker and moving her toward her side. Then I would scoot myself over and re-adjust my covers and pillow. Then I would drag Lincoln over so he didn't fall off the bed. I guess this time I had remained sleeping for too long and hadn't rearranged us soon enough.
Nana experienced something similar with Calla. They weren't on a slope, but Papa Jim was snoring too loud for Nana. She decided to slip into Calla's bed and cuddle up with her for the night (unbeknownst to Calla). Nana woke up to Calla pulling her hair and yelling, "Lincoln!! Stop it!!" I guess Nana's hair was tickling Calla? Calla says she was having a dream (or maybe a nightmare?). Nana asked us to check her head in the morning to see if she was a missing patch of hair.
Who would our family be without our drama queen and king, Calla and Lincoln? As I pray for my children, I pray that Calla and Lincoln receive the spiritual fruit of self control. I also always pray James 2:19-20 for all of us. "...be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires." I would prefer if God could magically change us, but apparently that's not how it works.
Travis is flying to Nashville tonight for some meetings. We'll have a bit more indoor sleeping space here so I think we'll try to squeeze all of us inside without a blow up bed tonight in hopes of kindness toward each other all night long and into the morning. Oh, the adventure of bedtime.
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