Calm Amongst the Chaos

We are finally home after a crazy few weeks. Holy smokes we were living like rock stars! Well rock stars that travel to remote places and go to bed at a decent time. And don’t do drugs. Nor sing. Yeah we were just like rock stars.
After Lily and I shacked up at the hospital for two days, we decided last minute to head up north to Greer where my parents live in the summer. It is a 4 hour drive and another world away from the Phoenix area. It never got much over 80 degrees for the high and we all needed sweaters in the evening. We left our house at 2pm and it was 115 degrees, we got to Greer that evening and it was in the 60’s. Awesome!
We had a great weekend, great 4th and really enjoyed our time there. It was small town living with banana split eating contest, tiny boat races and fire works. Perfect time for the kids to play and enjoy the outdoors! I couldn’t complain one bit. And all the kids slept great there.
We got home and had to start packing for our trip to South Dakota. We were originally just going Thursday to Sunday and those were packed full days. We had a great time; the kids just loved their cousins and man were they fun to watch. It makes me sad how far apart we all are especially since the kids are all so close in age, but at least when we do see them we make up for lost time. We have to give props to the beautiful Cortney, Andrew’s cousin by blood, my cousin by love :), who watched our kids 2 nights in a row. Friday night we got to spend the evening with Andrew’s oldest brother Josh and his wife Carrie and we had such a nice time. We all get along so well and I am so thankful I married into such an awesome family. The next night we weren’t quite sure what to do Andrew had his reunion and we needed someone to watch the kids at the hotel so we called up Cortney and she was sweet enough to do it again. The high school reunion was at a bar and we didn’t really want to hear people say “you have a baby….in a bar”. We had a great night and capped the evening with a crazy thunder storm that I thought would have killed us, but I am a little dramatic and Andrew drives well.
Sunday Josh and Carrie threw a BBQ for us and invited family, so we didn’t have to go house to house. It was awesome. Good food, lots of family came that we haven’t seen in years, the kids played and hard. Then we got in our jammies and headed to the airport for our 9:15pm flight. When we got there they said our flight wasn’t leaving until 1:45am. I didn’t know what to say or do. 3 kids in the airport from 8pm – 1:30am? Where will they sleep? Will they sleep? When will we get home? Andrew gets on the phone and gets no where. We go up and wait for our plane. Andrew gets on the phone again; he is trying to book another flight. I tell him Lily doesn’t have enough meds to get us through to Tuesday night don’t book it if it is a night flight. He books it. He gets all fees waved and tells me he wants us to take that flight. I say no. We have waited this long let’s just stick it through. So we wait. Finally 1am boarding time. We hand them our boarding pass and they say you aren’t on this flight, you are on Tuesday nights flight. We explain our story. Back and forth, back and forth. They load the plane. We talk on the phone to someone, the guy at the gate check is trying to get us on this plane, but final word is as the full plane is waiting for us, no. By now it is almost 2am. I am crying. Andi is crying. Andrew is asking me if I am mad at him. Oliver is wide awake as well as Lily. I tell the guy we have no car, no car seats, no where to go. He was very sweet and felt really bad. They got us booked at a nearby hotel, they got us a shuttle and let us borrow car seats. We get into our room around 3:30am and I can’t get Ollie to go back to sleep. It is past 4am when finally I just lay him in bed with me while Andrew and Andi are in another bed and poor Lily is on the floor. Lily can’t sleep in a bed without rails. We all pass out and hard, until 7:30am when Lily decides it is wake up time and screams happy screams and yells and grrrrrss from the back of her throat. Sigh. Needless to say we were zombies most of that day. But I decided to change my attitude and we made the best out of it. I had packed enough meds for an extra day just in case so I just had to ration them a little to make them last the extra extra day. We went back to Josh and Carrie’s home the next night and boy were the kids happy it turned out that way! The girls got dressed up in dance gear and put on a dance show for us to some Taylor Swift and even the boys got in on it. We laughed and had a blast. Our last day we stayed home with our nephew and niece and Andi said that ended up being her favorite day. She liked that they built forts.
Our flight Tuesday was on time, they checked our bags for free and the flight was uneventful. Well except for the kid hating jerk that I had to sit by with Andi and Ollie. But I figured God put him next to us for his sake, not for ours. You a funny guy God.
So we are back, trying to get caught up on lost sleep. And I am trying to cope with the reality that we only have one week left of summer vacation. As happy as I will be to be able to run errands and whatever else I do while the girls are gone, maybe look for a job? I have really enjoyed this summer. And the thought of Andi at school all day still seems so foreign to me. Even when I worked she was only at day care about 5 hours max and only 3 days a week. Last year pre k was every day but only 3 hours a day. This is going to be weird.
I really need to find a job, but man how? I need something uber flexible with all Lily’s appointments and our crazy year round school schedule. Can’t I just get paid to blog and facebook? Anyone know how to be a freelance writer?
Anyway, things for the fundraiser are going awesome and I am getting so excited! I am overwhelmed with the generosity of people and can’t believe I was able to not only get amazing raffle prizes, but I got dinner catered for free! Can you believe it? My mom said I was scrappy. Can that get me a job? Being scrappy? I really am not scrappy, it is all Lily. It is such a blessing to have such a loved daughter. She is such an amazing little girl who touches every life she comes into. What a proud mom I am.
August 22, 2010 LilyAnna Blu’s Splash for a Cure! I will post the flyer in a few days.