Went on a Trip, and Hurt Myself...
Ha ha ha. Dumb joke.
Anyway.
I don't feel like drawing a picture today. I just ate 3/4 of a Ben and Jerry's "everything but the..." pint of ice cream, and I'm feeling petulant.
And heavy.
We rolled back into town on Monday. The plan was to stay at a dive in Lesser Las Vegas (read Mesquite), but I couldn't stand the thought of being so close to home and not actually BEING there.
I love my house that much.
Well...it's not my house.
And I guess I don't love it.
But I really, really, missed the four bedrooms that we have that contain our kids.
It's a real eye-opener as a parent when you are forced to spend almost two weeks sleeping in the same room as your children. Never before would you have ever guessed how bad of a parent you really, truly are. I don't recommend it.
Anyway, I guess I better give a run down of our trip.
We headed down to Mesquite and stopped at the Virgin River hotel, where we quickly checked for bedbugs (seriously), unloaded and jumped into the pool where 3 of our 4 children thought trying to drown was a great idea. Eden just watched the chaos benignly as she floated across the water in her inflatable plastic ring.
The next day, Eva came up to me wide-eyed and said, "Mommy, do you remember yesterday when I was in the pool and I DROWNED?"
Yes, Eva...yes...I also remembered all the stares from the old people sunning themselves and shaking their heads at our boatload of children and our obvious stupidity in taking them into the pool when we obviously didn't have enough arms to hold them all above water.
We then packed all our junk up, nodded kindly to all the bikers that were staying in the room next to ours, and zoomed down to Arcadia, Uncle Dale's house and his immaculate astroturf.
Dale has a big house. A REALLY big house.
And yet, it seemed like a really, really small house.
But that was probably because it was filled to capacity with Dale, Candace, Dan, Katina, Aubrey, Lynnea, Isaiah, Sariah, Garret, Jennifer, Kevin, Kathy, Sophia, Simone, Jeremy, Joshua, Eva, Lily, Eden, me, and Tinker, the dog who lives in a box.
It was great fun.
So much fun, that I'm not going to say anymore about it, except to say, that when we left on the following Tuesday, Dale held my arm and looked into my eyes and said, "You can't leave!" He then followed that up by enthusiastically tossing my stuff onto the driveway while I scrambled to pack it up.
Well, I guess I should mention that we went down there because Jeremy's grandparents had their 70th wedding anniversary. That's a lot of years. Great party, lots of food, old music, and no air conditioning. Definitely a memory!
And we also went to the Arboretum and the Aquarium while we were there, and we did, in fact, lose Josh, but according to him, we left him while he was watching some fish, and so, therefore, it wasn't his fault that he was lost, and should therefore not be punished for not staying with the group. My memory tells a different story, where we were all moving away from some exhibit, and I distinctly saw his little blond head bouncing up and down as he ran through a group of field-tripping 3rd graders in the opposite direction of where our group was going. It was made clear to me that Joshua is going to grow up to be a lawyer.
But I digress...
And we all got to touch jelly fish and sharks.
It was epic.
After leaving Dale's house, we drove down to Ventura, which seemed like the longest drive in the galaxy, mostly because Lily was trying to perfect her Death Shriek all the way down, and I spent the entire time yelling back at her that if she didn't stop I was going to have to pull over and do something drastic, to which she replied "NO!" in a super gravely, high-pitched screech.
It was great fun.
We finally arrived at Becky's house (after I, again, pulled over and made Jeremy drive because my body decided that I needed to either sleep or die, and if I didn't sleep, it was going to tell me to sleep at the wheel, and then I would die, and my body would get it's way in either case), and I pried myself out of the passenger seat, and knocked on the front door.
Now, I've been to Becky's house many times.
Many times.
And we are loud and obnoxious enough that we generally leave an impression.
So, when Lucy (Becky's MIL) answered the door and looked at me like I was a serial killer, I was a little put off, and, considering my mood, I was willing to oblige her silent accusation, but I decided not to because after about 3 seconds she realized who I was, and let me in.
I wandered down the well-known hallway to the girls' room, and was greeted by a large, comfy looking bed. I was about to lay down, but then remembered that I had left Jeremy in the car with four cranky pod-lings and went back outside.
We unloaded, and dumped everything into the room, and started to set up. That was when I realized that the two pack-n-plays, three suitcases, four miscellaneous bags, two sleeping bags, and the eighty blankets we had brought completely blocked the closet and two dressers in the room. I suddenly felt really bad for Aislyn and Alissa and hoped that they could survive the week without any fresh underwear or pants.
Becky arrived shortly after, and I don't remember much of the whole week we spent there.
It seemed to revolve around a lot of churros, Mountain Dew *points finger at Becky*, strawberries, and my new-found love of Fuji water.
It was nice.
We got to do everything I had on my mental checklist: Beach (twice), farmer's market, double date at the movies, lots and lots of "Farscape" and food.
Yummy, yummy food...
I will fondly remember sitting at the kitchen counter next to Becky as Victor cooked up some chicken. It smelled incredible, and he kept handing me little pieces to try. At one point, he fished a wad of puckered, sickly yellow chicken skin out of the pan.
Victor held it up and looked at it. Oil dribbled down it, and into the pan. It looked depressed, all sagging and sickly.
"Humph..." he grunted, and I concurred.
Ew.
But then, suddenly, the world turned red, and a shiver ran down my spine as he raised the globular chicken epidermis to his mouth and ATE IT.
I heard screaming as I watched it happen, and I shut my eyes to block out the image.
The screaming kept going on. Horrified screaming.
It was coming from me.
"NO! NOOOOOO!" I was screaming. "THAT'S SO GROSS! NOOOOOO!!!"
I think I hurt Victor's feelings.
Becky just laughed.
Yeah.
It was great fun.
On a different note, Eden had her first birthday while down in sunny California. I had it all planned out. We would have cookies (Becky's idea) and sing happy birthday, and it was going to be super awesome, and Eden would jump for joy because she was one.
Yeah...that didn't happen.
What did happen was Jeremy, Victor and I ate all the unfrosted cookies while Becky made sad faces at us, and we didn't sing happy birthday because we were all too tired. So, we decided to do it the next day.
I subsequently bought some really pink mini cupcakes and some little candles with stars on them, balloons, and fairy wands, and bracelets for her party, and then got her a zebra pillow pet so we could sing happy birthday to Eden, and it was going to be super awesome, and Eden would jump for joy because she was one.
Yeah....that didn't happen either.
What DID happen was Becky and I sat on the couch making gifts for Eden (a dress of Becky's design and my making, an embellished onesie, and zebra-stripped legwarmers) and then got too tired to do anything.
Her birthday was on Wednesday.
And we finally celebrated on Sunday.
And because I was so tired, her party lasted about two minutes, where we all sang, and shoved a cupcake in Eden's mouth, and then took some badly-lit photos.
But, Becky pointed out that Eden wouldn't know the difference...
...but the fact remains that someday, when she reads her book of life, she will find out that her mother was too pooped out to throw her a nice first-birthday party, and fed her stale pink cupcakes four days after her birthday.
Oh well...
She was happy anyway.
She's always happy.
On Monday, we headed out, narrowly escaping Victor's attempts to unload the entire contents of the refrigerator into our small cooler.
The drive back was pretty uneventful. We just drove and drove, and stopped to take Josh out of the car and lecture him in the middle of nowhere, and then kept driving, wondering how we ever got to be such bad parents, and then keep thinking that while Lily screamed for an hour and half straight, and drove and drove, and finally got home, after what seemed like an eternity, and we unloaded everything, put the kids in bed, and then Jeremy and I stared at each other.
We hadn't been alone in over a week and half.
It was weird and awkward.
Like, first day awkward.
But I knew it would pass.
And life would go back to normal.
And it's slowly getting there.
I'm just waiting for the Ben and Jerry's to put me into a sugar-induced coma to speed things along.
Anyway.
I don't feel like drawing a picture today. I just ate 3/4 of a Ben and Jerry's "everything but the..." pint of ice cream, and I'm feeling petulant.
And heavy.
We rolled back into town on Monday. The plan was to stay at a dive in Lesser Las Vegas (read Mesquite), but I couldn't stand the thought of being so close to home and not actually BEING there.
I love my house that much.
Well...it's not my house.
And I guess I don't love it.
But I really, really, missed the four bedrooms that we have that contain our kids.
It's a real eye-opener as a parent when you are forced to spend almost two weeks sleeping in the same room as your children. Never before would you have ever guessed how bad of a parent you really, truly are. I don't recommend it.
Anyway, I guess I better give a run down of our trip.
We headed down to Mesquite and stopped at the Virgin River hotel, where we quickly checked for bedbugs (seriously), unloaded and jumped into the pool where 3 of our 4 children thought trying to drown was a great idea. Eden just watched the chaos benignly as she floated across the water in her inflatable plastic ring.
The next day, Eva came up to me wide-eyed and said, "Mommy, do you remember yesterday when I was in the pool and I DROWNED?"
Yes, Eva...yes...I also remembered all the stares from the old people sunning themselves and shaking their heads at our boatload of children and our obvious stupidity in taking them into the pool when we obviously didn't have enough arms to hold them all above water.
We then packed all our junk up, nodded kindly to all the bikers that were staying in the room next to ours, and zoomed down to Arcadia, Uncle Dale's house and his immaculate astroturf.
Dale has a big house. A REALLY big house.
And yet, it seemed like a really, really small house.
But that was probably because it was filled to capacity with Dale, Candace, Dan, Katina, Aubrey, Lynnea, Isaiah, Sariah, Garret, Jennifer, Kevin, Kathy, Sophia, Simone, Jeremy, Joshua, Eva, Lily, Eden, me, and Tinker, the dog who lives in a box.
It was great fun.
So much fun, that I'm not going to say anymore about it, except to say, that when we left on the following Tuesday, Dale held my arm and looked into my eyes and said, "You can't leave!" He then followed that up by enthusiastically tossing my stuff onto the driveway while I scrambled to pack it up.
Well, I guess I should mention that we went down there because Jeremy's grandparents had their 70th wedding anniversary. That's a lot of years. Great party, lots of food, old music, and no air conditioning. Definitely a memory!
And we also went to the Arboretum and the Aquarium while we were there, and we did, in fact, lose Josh, but according to him, we left him while he was watching some fish, and so, therefore, it wasn't his fault that he was lost, and should therefore not be punished for not staying with the group. My memory tells a different story, where we were all moving away from some exhibit, and I distinctly saw his little blond head bouncing up and down as he ran through a group of field-tripping 3rd graders in the opposite direction of where our group was going. It was made clear to me that Joshua is going to grow up to be a lawyer.
But I digress...
And we all got to touch jelly fish and sharks.
It was epic.
After leaving Dale's house, we drove down to Ventura, which seemed like the longest drive in the galaxy, mostly because Lily was trying to perfect her Death Shriek all the way down, and I spent the entire time yelling back at her that if she didn't stop I was going to have to pull over and do something drastic, to which she replied "NO!" in a super gravely, high-pitched screech.
It was great fun.
We finally arrived at Becky's house (after I, again, pulled over and made Jeremy drive because my body decided that I needed to either sleep or die, and if I didn't sleep, it was going to tell me to sleep at the wheel, and then I would die, and my body would get it's way in either case), and I pried myself out of the passenger seat, and knocked on the front door.
Now, I've been to Becky's house many times.
Many times.
And we are loud and obnoxious enough that we generally leave an impression.
So, when Lucy (Becky's MIL) answered the door and looked at me like I was a serial killer, I was a little put off, and, considering my mood, I was willing to oblige her silent accusation, but I decided not to because after about 3 seconds she realized who I was, and let me in.
I wandered down the well-known hallway to the girls' room, and was greeted by a large, comfy looking bed. I was about to lay down, but then remembered that I had left Jeremy in the car with four cranky pod-lings and went back outside.
We unloaded, and dumped everything into the room, and started to set up. That was when I realized that the two pack-n-plays, three suitcases, four miscellaneous bags, two sleeping bags, and the eighty blankets we had brought completely blocked the closet and two dressers in the room. I suddenly felt really bad for Aislyn and Alissa and hoped that they could survive the week without any fresh underwear or pants.
Becky arrived shortly after, and I don't remember much of the whole week we spent there.
It seemed to revolve around a lot of churros, Mountain Dew *points finger at Becky*, strawberries, and my new-found love of Fuji water.
It was nice.
We got to do everything I had on my mental checklist: Beach (twice), farmer's market, double date at the movies, lots and lots of "Farscape" and food.
Yummy, yummy food...
I will fondly remember sitting at the kitchen counter next to Becky as Victor cooked up some chicken. It smelled incredible, and he kept handing me little pieces to try. At one point, he fished a wad of puckered, sickly yellow chicken skin out of the pan.
Victor held it up and looked at it. Oil dribbled down it, and into the pan. It looked depressed, all sagging and sickly.
"Humph..." he grunted, and I concurred.
Ew.
But then, suddenly, the world turned red, and a shiver ran down my spine as he raised the globular chicken epidermis to his mouth and ATE IT.
I heard screaming as I watched it happen, and I shut my eyes to block out the image.
The screaming kept going on. Horrified screaming.
It was coming from me.
"NO! NOOOOOO!" I was screaming. "THAT'S SO GROSS! NOOOOOO!!!"
I think I hurt Victor's feelings.
Becky just laughed.
Yeah.
It was great fun.
On a different note, Eden had her first birthday while down in sunny California. I had it all planned out. We would have cookies (Becky's idea) and sing happy birthday, and it was going to be super awesome, and Eden would jump for joy because she was one.
Yeah...that didn't happen.
What did happen was Jeremy, Victor and I ate all the unfrosted cookies while Becky made sad faces at us, and we didn't sing happy birthday because we were all too tired. So, we decided to do it the next day.
I subsequently bought some really pink mini cupcakes and some little candles with stars on them, balloons, and fairy wands, and bracelets for her party, and then got her a zebra pillow pet so we could sing happy birthday to Eden, and it was going to be super awesome, and Eden would jump for joy because she was one.
Yeah....that didn't happen either.
What DID happen was Becky and I sat on the couch making gifts for Eden (a dress of Becky's design and my making, an embellished onesie, and zebra-stripped legwarmers) and then got too tired to do anything.
Her birthday was on Wednesday.
And we finally celebrated on Sunday.
And because I was so tired, her party lasted about two minutes, where we all sang, and shoved a cupcake in Eden's mouth, and then took some badly-lit photos.
But, Becky pointed out that Eden wouldn't know the difference...
...but the fact remains that someday, when she reads her book of life, she will find out that her mother was too pooped out to throw her a nice first-birthday party, and fed her stale pink cupcakes four days after her birthday.
Oh well...
She was happy anyway.
She's always happy.
On Monday, we headed out, narrowly escaping Victor's attempts to unload the entire contents of the refrigerator into our small cooler.
The drive back was pretty uneventful. We just drove and drove, and stopped to take Josh out of the car and lecture him in the middle of nowhere, and then kept driving, wondering how we ever got to be such bad parents, and then keep thinking that while Lily screamed for an hour and half straight, and drove and drove, and finally got home, after what seemed like an eternity, and we unloaded everything, put the kids in bed, and then Jeremy and I stared at each other.
We hadn't been alone in over a week and half.
It was weird and awkward.
Like, first day awkward.
But I knew it would pass.
And life would go back to normal.
And it's slowly getting there.
I'm just waiting for the Ben and Jerry's to put me into a sugar-induced coma to speed things along.
Comments
Aislyn loved being the "mother" to Eden... I just had fun.