Keep on Climbing.....

I'm back....in a manner of speaking.

This weekend we ran away.
All 5 of us.

RH and I realized that we pretty much hadn't REALLY seen our kids for 5 weeks.
Sure, we'd been around....

But in reality we were gone on vacation for the week PT*...
Then we came back and had that little EF-5 incident...
Then we spent a week digging through and packing up our lives while the kids were shuffled from person to person....
Then we spent a week trying to find parts of our lives while the kids were shuffled from place to place....
Then we spent a week throwing away moldy parts of our lives and trying to move into a new home with mold-free stuff while the kids were shuffled from here to there...

(And I realize that only makes 3 official weeks....but to be honest..I think I literally lost a week in there somewhere!)

Ethan has been up with nightmares and random complaints almost every night.

Carolyn has told the bbsitters that she no longer has to listen to them (although there is a very distinct possibility that her....a-hem...defiance has nothing to do with our temporarily crazy lifestyle and more to do with her....a-hem...independent personality)...

Bennett has been on a hard-core-won't -leave-the-house-organize-everything-in-his-vicinity streak.

It was time for some JUST US-ness.

So we went to Kansas City, left our "pick-up-sticks" lifestyle behind, and just hung-out.

We went to T-Rex Cafe, stuffed ourselves, and let them all Build-a-Dino.
We went to Oceans of Fun and tried to conquer every water slide there.
We went to PF Changs and inhaled 2 orders of lettuce wraps AT THE KIDS' REQUEST!!!!
We went to Barnes and Nobel and let the kids pick whatever they wanted.
We pushed let the kids jump into the fountain outside the InterContinental Hotel.
We let the kids order off of the adult menu.
We spent way too much of our time watched street performers and let the kids put coins in each of their "boxes".
We ordered ridiculous amounts of room service (which was FREE since they forgot to clean our room!) (which I'd normally be grumpy about but the room STILL looked better than my new house!) and let the kids eat in bed and watch Shrek.
We got frozen custard after already eating dessert.

And the kids smiled.
And we smiled.
And the kids laughed.
And so did we.
And we all slept.
Hard.

So we're back.  It's 7:45 in the morning, and the kids are STILL sleeping.  I have at least 27 more posts I need to add to this blog....but I think I'll wait till later.

Now...I'm going to breathe a little bit.
I'm going to slow down, and have a fifth second cup of coffee.
I'm going to make a list instead of rushing around and forgetting what I need to do.

Yes....there is still a lot of mountain left to climb in this weird journey to "new normal".....
But now I think that I can find some firm footing on my way up.

And I just might take some coffee to go.



(*PT= post-tornado)