Homesick!

I’m a homebody at heart. Vacations and I don’t do well. Thankfully when the vacations are over I usually remember all the great things that happened and all the wonderful friends and family that took time out of their busy lives to be invaded by me and my rascals. But I’m not quite thankful yet because I still have a couple days left of my ‘What are the kids going to do next?’ vacation. That and I’m suffering because we are visiting a climate that’s just a little to warm for my comfort level. I want my 75 degree’s back.

Hope took a break from driving us crazy and passed the baton on to her older sister and brother.

I’ve been walking my kids around small Grandma's small town for the past few days with grandma in tow so as to not get lost and trying to keep them active in the mornings when the air is still breath-ably less warm.



I decided to try the local pay-to-dog-paddle Swimming hole (at the hottest time of the day of course) and after three of my four vacationing munchkins had mini-meltdowns within 20 minutes of arriving. Surprisingly Hope was the only one enjoying herself. Something about getting pool water splashed in her face drove Princess to hysteric’s so we left early and bought an over-priced inflatable pool (small town prices for they have to make money somehow) for grandma and Papa to have at their cottage for the grandkids to use when visiting.


It worked great for about an hour. We showed the kids how to step in a bucket of water before getting into the pool so as not to clutter the water with too many blades of grass. Things seemed well in hand and so I went back into the house only to find out that Princess decided that rolling in grandma’s garden dirt while being totally wet kind of was fun. Oh, but she remembered mom fuming over Hopes dirt episode so she tried to clean up before she came in the house. What is it with my kids and dirt? Well the pool water wasn’t so much fun with all the dirt in it.

So after less than two hours we started using buckets to hand water the bits and pieces of lawn and garden that often get neglected by the good old sprinklers. That and I used the hose to blast the rest of the dirt off Princess.

See what happens when you roll in dirt. Mom gets revenge via the garden hose.

The kicker was when I was visiting my BFF - The Quilt Lady and I gave the car keys to Evo-man so he could bring in some food for lunch. An hour later when we were getting ready to leave we couldn’t find those keys anywhere. After frantically searching for a good while we concluded that Evo-man had either locked the keys in the trunk or I had thrown them out with a smelly diaper in the trash by the road. Not good when it’s garbage day and the can had been emptied while me and the Quilt Lady yakked it up.

So I called the locksmith to come open the car. He was there is less than 20 minutes and had it opened in a jiffy. Was nice enough to even give me a student discount because I told him I was a student of life. $40 bucks well spent? Nope - the keys were not in the car. We even made a nice old pile on the sidewalk while going through every nook and cranny of our travel trashed car.

Mr. Locksmith who I’ll call George because he looked like a George wasn’t having fun in the heat of the day right along with me. But he was kind enough to stick around while I dismantled my belongings. I then began the process of getting new keys made since I’d come to the conclusion that I must have tossed the keys in the garbage. Having new keys with security chips wasn’t going to be cheap. George tried making a couple without the chips hoping we would get lucky and one actually started the car but the engine would die after a few seconds because that security code I guess has omniscient power over the fuel pump.

By this time I’m sweating buckets in the heat by the road. We called my Sis-In-Law to tell her our visit was being further delayed and she promised to pray for us. Evo-man then remembered that he had visited the Quilt Ladies Master Bathroom because the main powder room was occupied by one of the many girlies in the house.

Tada! The keys were still there. Thankfully George took pity on me and didn’t charge me for the extra 20 minutes he had spent researching how to get me working keys. Good thing for prayers. I let Evo-man keep the non-working key as a souvenir.

Regardless I can’t wait to get home and start remembering all the good things about the trip.