Adventures in a Minivan

Are you familiar with Adventures in Odyssey? My kids love it, and so do I. It's a radio program for kids, and it is just fantastic. Well-done, interesting, thought-provoking, conversation-starting, and biblically-based. A+ from this family.

Recently (as in, 3-4 months ago) we learned that Focus on the Family (the organization that produced Adventures in Odyssey) is holding a contest for someone to "Get in the Show"--to have a part in one of the shows and be the "spokesperson" for Adventures in Odyssey for 2013. If you have ever met Lamb, you don't need me to tell you that this is right up her alley. She is BESIDE herself with excitement. According to the announcement on the radio--and to the information on their homepage--auditions are being held at select bookstores throughout the month of July. I did a little research and assured her that we would take her to try out.

Well, here we are on July 26, and we haven't made it to audtion yet. She was starting to get a little desperate... so I promised her we would do it TODAY. This is the day! Woo-hoo! Let's go audition!

I tried to get on the web site before we left to print out the address of the bookstore closest to us (45 minutes away), but our internet was acting up... so our first stop was to Daddy's office (about 5 minutes away). There I found some scripts for her to use and printed them out, then I went to the bookstore list to jot down the address. And then I noticed something else... something I hadn't seen before... a little line that said, "Dates"... and it was followed by the words "July 7 & 14."

Uh-oh.

I checked the other ones in the state of Ohio, none of which were anywhere near us, and almost all of them said "July 7 & 14". I was starting to get desperate. Finally I found one (about an hour and a half away from us) that said, "Call store for more information." I did. The lady there said that they hadn't even scheduled their auditions yet, but took my number and said she would call me back when they did. Whew, at least there is hope.

I also found two others that were less than two hours from us, both in Pennsylvania, that looked promising. I jotted down the numbers and got back in the van to explain the situation. I told Lamb that we WOULD be able to audition, but it might not be today. The other stores didn't open for a few more minutes, so I would call as soon as I could. In the meantime, we decided that Plan B for today would be a trip to a semi-local (45 minutes away) spray ground... so we drove back home to grab bathing suits and towels.

Back on the road again, I started making calls. First I called the store closest to us, on the off chance that we could still audition there. No luck. I called one of the stores in Pennsylvania, where I was told that their auditions were done, but she thought after August 1, auditions would be opened up to be videotaped anywhere. Hmmmmmm. Interesting. I made one last call to another store in PA, where I was told, "Absolutely! Just come on by--we have it set up, and you can come in and record any time." YAY! Pennsylvania, here we come!

But first, one more stop. He mentioned that we would probably want to take some pictures. So...... I drove BACK HOME to get my camera.

While I was home, I decided to give our internet one more try. It was working (yay!), so I checked out the official rules, just to see if I could find out anything about not needing to go to PA to record the audition.

It turns out... we don't even need to wait for August 1.

The official rules state, "Entries may be recorded either at a participating Christian bookstore or at a location of entrant's choosing. Record your entry with your phone, camera, or another audio/visual device." SCORE! We can do this without a two-hour drive! Woo-hoo!!!!

Of course... at this point, we had been in the van for approximately 75 minutes... and had never left our hometown. Oy vey.

But hey, Lamb gets to do her audition, and we decided to forget the trip to PA AND the trip to the sprayground, and we went to Target instead. One small Squinkie set for Lamb, one small Lego set for Monkey, and one peaceful afternoon for Mommy.

I'll let you know if she makes it to the semi-final round.

Stay tuned!