Thursday, July 8, 2010

8 Weeks Later - We're Home

The best thing about being away from home is coming back and crawling in your own bed. The worst part? Well, after being gone 8 weeks, stopping by home twice for a total of 3 nights to unpack, do laundry, and re-pack . . . THE MESS!



Oh my gosh. You have no idea. I like to leave the house orderly and clean, so when I return from a trip I can plop my behind on the couch for a couple hours (or days), recover from my travels, and not feel guilty about it.

Unexpected travel plans which extend your intended time away by, oh, about 40 days, are not conducive to returning to a clean home. Then throw in a 1 year old who has an exceptional ability to destroy a perfectly neat room in 5 minutes flat. (Those 3 nights at home? Yeah, just barely enough time for me to do laundry, re-pack, mow the jungle of a yard, and still manage to get the kid fed and bathed. Gabriela, on the other hand, had plenty of time to drag out everything from everywhere.) I do not exaggerate when I say it looked (um, looks) like a tornado came through our house.



Needless to say, arriving home at 10:00 Monday morning after driving all night from Georgia was not the most relieving experience of my life, as one might expect after being gone for nearly 2 months. Crazy Prego was feeling a little overwhelmed and out of sorts. As we were unloading the vehicle, Eric made the mistake of asking where I wanted him to put the tub of my favorite childhood toys that we brought from my parents' house for Gabriela. The response was something along the lines of a huffy "I really don't care." (Which, admittedly, was filtered from where I really wanted to tell him to put it.) As he came around the corner and sweetly asked me what was wrong and hugged me, my eyes welled up with tears and I made some profound statement like, "It's too messy. There's too much to do. I can't answer any questions."

Eric promptly suggested we finish unloading and then go straight to bed to take a nap. (I love that guy!) Gabriela's not the only one who gets a little cranky when she hasn't had enough sleep.

I've managed to get the kitchen and living room straightened up, but I still have the 3 bedrooms to go. And then there's the basement (which has been our "dumping grounds" for the last 6 months). And who knew so much dust could fall inside a sealed building with no one in it? Everything is getting a serious deep cleaning this weekend.



Meanwhile, it does feel good to curl up in our own bed at night. We had a fantastic time "on the road", but, even despite the mess, it is nice to be home. And it looks like we're going to stick around here for awhile. Or at least for the next 15 days. Then we have a six-week stretch of weekends where we have commitments 2-7 hours away. And then we have three weekends before Bebe Dois is due. And one of those weekends we're doing a local 5K Family Walk/Run, or in my case, a 5K Waddle. (Oh my. Can I go crawl back in bed, pull the covers over my head, and stay there...indefinitely?)

1 comment:

Katiebell said...

Hope you've gotten settled back in at home! These pictures of Gabriela at the beach are TOO CUTE! I can only imagine all the memories y'all have already made this summer! Hope you're feeling well! : )