we're so glad when we all get home

Glad as we can be!

We're home! Even though it is a bit traumatic (and I'm not being dramatic) to leave our beloved parents, grandparents, siblings and cousins, we're all super-dee-duper-dee-glad to be home.

I was relieved to see our house still standing. I worry about loving an inanimate object so very much. We do have a sprinkler system, so I wondered if we'd enter the house to water damage. I wondered if our grass and plants and flowers would be dead. I wondered if the place would be full of ants or spiders or ear-wigs. But it's just as great as we left it. Brent mowed the lawn as soon as we got home on Saturday evening. He's spent the past two nights diligently moving a sprinkler around in an effort to bring a few brown spots back to life.

This morning we walked to our local post office in wonderfully comfortable 70 degree weather. We stopped at the park on the way home to play for a while. Then Mercedes rode her grey "horse" cupcake home, and Cooper rode his red one, Skip's Up. Yes - they do have healthy imaginations. When we got home Mercedes yelled, "Mommy! Cupcake got in the house!" Lincoln is already in the muck and mire of the terrible twos (and he's barely 18 months old). He bucked and bronked each time I carried him across the street (because he absolutely refused to hold my hand).

Since our adventure, I have been filling out new student registration forms for Mercedes, making an Endodontist appointment, and trying to find a baby-sitter in a town where we know almost no one.

I am a super-lucky duck whose first root-canal failed and now have a TON of pressure in my sinuses because of the lovely abscess trapped above my tooth. Tomorrow, I get to pay a sitter to watch my kids while I pay the Endodontist $600.00 to RE-DO my root canal, possibly breaking my beautiful porcelain crown in the process (which will cost another thousand bucks). I don't even want to imagine what this would cost me if I didn't have dental coverage.

I need to go and breathe for a while. Sometimes I forget to breathe when I get upset.

I'm excited to share the fun details of our great family vacation, but it might take me a few days to get the pics uploaded. Life has gotten so very busy!