July 9, 2008

Vacation

You know that feeling on the way home from a week away? When you've been in the huge van with SIX kids for 14 hours? Climbing over seats to reach kids with drinks, snacks, books, dvds...for FOURTEEN hours. The anguish as an older child laughs loudly at a movie immediately after the baby has fallen asleep. The wonderment at your nephew's rare bowels that act up only on car trips, requiring that you toss his undies into the trashcan at the rest area and squeeze him into a diaper. The sheer joy at seeing the five older children running around trees at the rest area; enjoying themselves. They collapse at the picnic table as you are examining an unknown dark sticky substance on the baby's clothes. And your clothes. And you touch it and realize that his diaper exploded. Moments later you look down at three of the breathless children and spot dog poo on their shoes and ankles. Oh, the joy of excrement. And traveling in the midst of it.
Maybe you haven't had that feeling. Pulling into the driveway after a week away and a very long trip home. Still so much work left to do before we can truly relax, but we are home.

Home sweet home. Where the cats decide to use the bathroom mat for a litter box. And one of them thought it would be fun to try the armchair in the living room.

Home sweet home where the basement flooded while we were gone. And the cats couldn't use their boxes because they are in the basement. And the water saturated the precious schoolbooks we used this year for the little kids. Expensive, lovely books.

Dear friends come to our rescue that night with dinner and a shop vac. Tracy stayed until 10:30 helping.

Our mothers are in a car the next day. We must sound desperate. They come to hold the baby and scrub the floors with bleach. They do a wonderful job. Baby is content and floors are now clean. But we can't save the books.
Though we try with crazy schemes. They were all laid out on the deck when a storm blew in complete with tornado sirens. We grabbed the books shortly before we headed to the (now clean) basement. We've frozen them, baked them, and stuffed them with paper towels. It's unsure as to how any of that will work. So far, about 2 trash bags of books have been tossed. The fate of 30 is still undecided.

7 comments:

Susan said...

Sorry about the books. :-(

~Susan

K.P. said...

OMG! Apryl...so sorry. We once returned from a "vaction" complete with 2 ER visits only to find that our freezer full of meat had died...sometime early in the week. The WHOLE house smelled like rancid meat. DH had been one of the ER visits with uncontrolable vommitting, so I got the joy of shoving vicks up my nose and diving in to rid the house of that mess.

It is good to be home...once you get to stop and realize it. :)

Hang in there. Sorry about your books. That stinks.
KP

Melissa Juvinall said...

Oh Apryl, I'm so sorry! Sounds like quite a trip!

the Steiger's said...

Hmmm,
isn't this the same vacation last year when your mini van broke down? I am sorry about the books. It is one of the reasons I keep books upstairs. I hope you will recover soon.
love, Lenka

Stephanie Wilson she/her @babysteph said...

I wanted to reply to your email about my son's epilepsy. You can email me anytime at jsprecourt@yahoo.com !

Steph

Farmboy and Buttercup said...

Wow! Now I know why we postponed a cross-country vacation this summer. We went on a cross-country trip last summer with just the 3 kids and I was leary of going with the 5. Thanks for the confirmation (and in such a humorous way!).

E said...

Boo hoo! That totally stinks! I'm so sorry. That's very sad about the books...I love books!

Your trip reminded me of our trip to the Gulf Coast in June - two 12 hour days of driving. Not fun. The trip was fun. The long days of driving...not so much.

I'm so thankful the reinforcements were able to make it to you guys so quickly! Hopefully your basement will stay dry in the future!

Erica