This week was our highly anticipated fall break. I really needed to take the week off mentally, and I had plans for some fun things we could do with our free time.

You know how they say, “Man plans. God laughs.”?

We did get our Monday activity done. We visited the Missouri History Museum for a homseschool day focused on Route 66.

Other than that, we didn’t get to do any of the things I had planned. We didn’t see the diesel locomotive that was passing through St. Louis, we didn’t get to go spend some time at Creve Coeur Lake, we didn’t visit the Missouri Botanical Garden–nothing. We were basically stuck at home while we figured out what we were going to do about our van.

And so, our fall break, which was supposed to give me a much-needed break, was marked by four days of anxiety and anger, and an inability to go do almost all of the things I had been planning on doing, and culminated with the purchase of a new van late last night.

I’m not sure that our fall breaks are particularly memorable to the children in general, because they tend to be pretty low-key, but I hope they will always remember Daddy finally getting home at nine last night with the new car, and all of us piling in it for a drive around the block before bedtime. It might not have been the fall break I was hoping for, but it’s certainly one I won’t forget!