The In-Between

My Mom and Natalie had been recruited to pick us up at the cruise terminal, so we fought our way through the crowds and managed to find them-- it was a zoo!-- and my Mom even managed to spot all my in-laws and yell a Hello! out her window to Tom and Donna (she was worried Jason wouldn't remember her, so he was spared being hollered at! 😂).  We got one more day to hang out with my family!  Tracy was awesome and drove my Dad over to Natalie's, and Rachael and Ian were flying in to Seattle that day (but staying on Bainbridge), so my Mom and I drove to the airport to help them wrangle kids while they installed carseats in their rental car.  This meant that I got this slightly blurry fabulous picture of me holding a very sleepy and confused London.  

She was so out of it that when Rachael handed her off she just wrapped her arms around my neck and snuggled in while I murmured in her ear, I'm your favorite aunt!

My good friend (and former roommate/FLSR-ite!) Kathy also managed to come and visit, which is no small feat since she lives in Idaho now!  It turned out that she'd been planning on coming to Seattle the next day, so when I told her that was the only day I could see her, she bumped up her plans for me.  One of many reasons why she's a good friend!

We're still so cute!

We're training Camille and Hailey that they're also going to be roommates and best friends some day!

So between all that, plus my parents taking all the grown ups out for dinner (Thanks, Dad!), it was a very busy day, but super fun!  I went to bed way too late that night, stressing about things I might have accidentally left on the ship (they were just buried deep in my suitcase) and then we had to get up early and get at it to catch our flight.  Natalie and my Mom once again drove us-- it was so great of them to be willing to chauffeur us all over!-- and we got through security in plenty of time and everything went really smoothly.  

Flying is so stressful, so it was nice to have a direct flight and for nothing to happen.  We all just stared at our devices and the time passed fairly quickly.  It's so great having kids who are old enough to be easy on a plane!  I picked up the van from the economy lot while Craig and the kids collected all our luggage.  We stopped in Manassas for dinner at Cafe Rio and got me a milkshake at the Moo-Thru and rolled into our place at 10:30pm.  And then I went crazy trying to get as many loads of laundry done as I possibly could before we went to bed.

I think all told this was 8 loads of laundry.  Yowza.

Church was the next morning-- what a way to jumpstart us back on to east coast time-- and wow, I felt terrible.  AND I was teaching Young Womens for the first time since being called.  Perfect.  But even as exhausted as I was, I could appreciate how nice it was to be home again.  

We had a few days to try and get our feet under us.  Then Friday was my birthday:

Yay for 44.  Really, no one cares about that number.  But my red velvet s'more brownies were to die for!

Craig gave me a lovely pair of earrings that I'd picked out for myself in Alaska.

And I Q-ed FiA for my birthday, as is our tradition!  I did my favorite cardio-strength-yoga workout, and did not apologize for playing mostly Taylor Swift for it!  Ha!

And then the next Sunday Craig left church early to catch a train to Baltimore for a 4-day work conference and it was just me and the kids.  Which I hate.  Although, truthfully, I was too busy to be as sad as I usually am when Craig's gone. 

That's a lot of baseball games for Craig.  Orioles lost, but he got to see the Dodgers get a grand slam, so that was pretty cool (if you're not an Orioles fan)...

Once he was home we were racing to see Oppenheimer on Friday... 

Bentley dressed up for it, but then decided he really didn't want to sit through a 3-hour movie like that, and promptly put his comfy clothes back on.  But I love that he thought about it!  

and Barbie on Saturday!  (Those of us who had pink clothes wore them, but we forgot to take a picture!)  They were both really great in very different ways, and I was glad I saw them both!  It's so fun to actually be excited for a movie in the theater!  I did wish I'd thought to check the rating on Oppenheimer before taking my 16-year-old to see it, but too late now...  😬 And then Sunday was Craig's birthday!

42 isn't a whole lot more exciting than 44.  Craig decided on mint brownies, which were delicious.

So that was our two week whirlwind of fun and crazy before I left for...  Young Women's Camp!!!