Moments with Morgan: A week in the Sunshine State

Last Friday night mom and I got to keep our 2 month-old friend Emma. It was so much fun… Emma is the daughter of our good friends Mike and Lindsay. Mike is the music director at our church and is also the youth minister and a dear friend of our family. Well when he and Lindsay came home from dinner he informed me that he needed another adult chaperone for the youth choir trip to Florida. He asked if I could come and of course I jumped at the opportunity. The only bad thing was that we were leaving the next day and I needed to be packed and ready at 3 PM on Saturday.

I spent Saturday packing and getting ready for a week in Florida with LOTS of long road trips. We finally got out of Macon around 8PM on Saturday and drove 6 hours to Tampa. We spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday night there. Sunday we woke up and drove to a Methodist church in the city where the kids sang for their Sunday morning worship. Monday we spent the ENTIRE day at Busch Gardens. I love theme parks, but I am not the rollercoaster type. I volunteered to take all the kids who didn’t really like roller coasters. Surprisingly there were more of them than I expected… we had a great time together. We went on all of the water rides a few times, walked around and watched all of our brave friends on the roller coasters. It was a great day, but it was SO HOT and it is no fun to walk around all day in soaking wet clothes, but we made the best of it. Tuesday morning we woke up early and drove to Sarasota. Luckily it was a one-hour trip. Somehow it worked out that we could stay at the Ritz Carlton in Sarasota for the night. The hotel wasn’t on the beach, but they had a private beach where we spent the whole afternoon and the following day. I haven’t seen water so gorgeous in my life and the kids had a blast, although most like me got sunburned. Wednesday we spent the whole day at the beach and then sang for a youth group in Sarasota. The kids had a great time because the group was obviously the same age as they were. Wednesday after the performance we loaded up and headed for Homestead (a suburb of Miami). Well let’s just say it was a LONG drive, 5/6 hours to be exact. After getting lost a few times we finally made it to the hotel at 2 AM and went straight to sleep. Thursday morning we woke up bright and early, ate breakfast and packed up and headed for Key West. According to the mileage Key West is only about 150 miles from Homestead so we thought we would make in 2 and a half hours. Well about 4 hours later we pulled into the hotel. You can’t always go 70 mph on a two-lane road with lots of bridges and that’s exactly what the drive to Key West was like. Although I have never seen water so clear and blue than the water I saw on the drive through the keys. We sang at a small Methodist church in Key West Thursday night and it was the sweetest little church. After singing we headed to downtown Key West where we ate dinner in the famous Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. I appreciated it for a number of reasons, but the main reason being that it was something besides Wendy’s, which was a frequent stop throughout the trip. We also had an awesome entertainer throughout dinner who played lots of Journey songs and pop songs that all the kids new. Of course we were all belting out the songs and the guy liked us so much that he invited us on stage for a song.

I parted from the group on Friday morning since I had to be in Asheville, NC for a friend’s debutant ball. Luckily I got a direct flight from Key West to Atlanta. I got to miss the 15-hour drive back to Macon with the kids on Saturday. What a fun week it was though! I didn’t know many of the kids at all, but I knew a few of their siblings. They have such awesome hearts of the Lord. It was so cool to sit out in the audience and watch them perform for all different types of people. That was probably my favorite part of the trip-looking up and watching them all sing to and praise the Lord. I am so thankful for these kids and they truly encouraged me this week. I can’t wait to hangout with them some more this summer. I pray that they would continue to seek the Lord in all that they do and that he would protect them and give them guidance. Oh what a great, fun week we all had in Florida.