Bring on summer!

Tomorrow begins the kids' week of school for the year! Woohoo! I love summer vacation. I love that we don't have to get up at 6am or go to bed early or spend time on homework. We can spend days at the pool and lounging around and stuffing our faces with chocolate...... oh yeah, I forgot..... Craig and I don't get summer vacation from work. Bummer

Nate's MRI on Friday went stellar. I started off a bit irritated when I told the nurse that he's a very difficult IV start. I don't know why I ever bother to tell them because it seems when you say that suddenly their chests puff out and they go into superman mode because they KNOW they can do it easily, darn fools who tried before. Beleive me, Nate's had people who were very good at what they do put his IV's in before and I'm not joking when I say he's a hard start.

So she's looking for veins and I tell her she's likely going to have an easier time with his left hand. Stupid on me again because she decideds he has a wonderful one on his right hand (yeah, that one has fooled many a needle jabber before) and goes to it.

Yeah, 15 minutes later (do have to give her credit, I think that's a new record) she finally has access and wipes the sweat off her brow and says "Wow kiddo, you were a harder start than I thought!" HELLO!!! Did I not tell you that? But right, I'm just the parent what do I know. Only been down this road a time or two.

Thankfully the rest of it went smooth as butter. About 15 minutes after getting a good 3/4 of the nasty tasting Chloral Hydrate into him he was sawing logs and we were headed down to MRI.

I was quite surprised at how upsetting it was to be following our sleeping child in his hospital crib down the halls. Soooo many memories and fears came to the surface as I got a sense of deja vu of the events of 3 years ago. I had to keep convincing myself this was only an MRI.

45 minutes later out comes our sweet baby, wide awake but looking around in a daze. He had slept the entire test and woke just as the nurse was lifting him off the MRI table. Can't ask for better than that.

Back up to our room and Nate was on cloud 9 finally being allowed to suck down cup after cup of "appie juice". Poor baby hadn't had anything to drink since 6am and it was now 1pm. After he kept down his appie juice and jello and graham crackers we got to leave. Again the feelings flooded me as we walked out of the hospital WITH our son.

Hopefully we'll know the results tomorrow and will have some answers to the mystery of our little "water boy".

Yesterday we went to the cities for my cousin's wedding. It was a beautiful outdoor ceremony that was made better in that it lasted a whopping 10 minutes. We left at about 7 pm and brought my sister home and I headed home with the kids.

As I was leaving my sisters house she asked which way I was taking home and I said "well probably 64 to 53". noooooooo, don't go that way 64 is horrible with deer. (Which ya know, I have to take her word for it... this is the girl who's Malibu has been completely replaced in the front end, TWICE, from car vs deer accidents).

You can go 64 to 63 and then take D at Clayton straight into town. I shrug my shoulders and say goodbye.

On the way I decide to take her advice, remembering all the curves and hills on 64. So I turn on 63 and at Clayton I take HWY D. I start to panic a bit when I see us leaving the county we live in and entering D-county but am releived when We pass a town I recognize and I think WHEW, almost home. After about 30 miles or so I come to a T in the road. WTF? So I try to think about where I am and figure the left is the best option. Well this is Hwy V and Hwy V takes you in nearly a complete circle before going North. Starting to panic (as my gas guage dips lower and lower) I call my sister on Hailey's phone (Because mine had no service, apparently AT&T's "more bars in more places" motto discludes Butt-fuck Idaho) and after a minute we figure out where I am. Ok, go another few miles and you'll hit HWY 25, take 25 straight to Barron.

Ok so I get to 25 and somehow after all the circles I made my internal compass got completely turned ass backward. So I start going South on 25 and think "wait, this doesn't seem right" I realize that for that second my phone has 1 bar of service so I use my GPS to find my current location and hand it to Austin and say "watch and tell me if the little blue dot is moving toward or away from Barron"

After a few minutes he says "away, turn around". FRICK! Glancing at the gas guage again. O-M-G. Ok, we might make it to barron. Just then Austin says "mom, the GPS says the road coming up is A and shows Dallas! Ok, Dallas is on A and Dallas isn't far from where we live. Thinking that from where I'm at I probably have enough gas to get home on A, but not to Barron I make the decision to take A.

Well, did I mentioned my brain compass was all f-ed up? Yeah. Well so I turn on A and we go through that town I recognized before again and think ok, this town IS before Dallas, so we're good now. Chuckling that we'd now been through that town twice. (mind you these are tiny bitty hick towns that don't beleive in keeping gas stations open past 8 or having pay at the pump service). I call Craig (on hailey's phone again because again, I have no service) and tell him that we just went through P and I didn't know if I was going to run out of gas.

So we truck along and after a while I start thinking "man, I didn't think P was THIS far from Dallas...... And I see a sign that says we are entering Polk county (where my sister lives!) OMG OMG OMG PANIC! My gas guage is on E and screaming at me with it's stupid little light that I am about to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with 6 kids. Of course I don't pay for roadside service on the kids' phones and my phone won't F-ing work!

So Hailey, sensing my panic, calls my sister. I come to an intersection and my sister and I try to figure out where I am, since these two roads actually intersect in more than one place (wtf?) I drive a little bit trying to find any street names or anything that can help, while panicking about my lack of fuel. Of course all the tiny streets aren't listed on my sisters map. At this point I can't tell which direction I'm even going to help her figure out where we are.

About this time my mom, who was staying at my sisters house decides she's freaking out and is going to leave and drive home and find us. No amount of arguing from my sister, Hailey, or I was talking her out of it. Great, we are going to have all of us lost now!

So my sister makes a guess and tells me which way to head on A. She thinks we should be about 5 miles from Clear Lake (another town we had already gone through once) and she knows there's a BP station there with pay at the pump 24 hours. At this point I simply have no choice but to follow her gut because if I don't and continue to drive along these back roads aimlessly i'm certain to run out of gas. I gotta take the chance.

A few miles down the road we come to a town, it takes me a minute to find it but suddenly there it is, the beautiful glowing green BP sign! SAVIOR.

The canopy lights are off and the place is dark but thank-god for pay at the pump as I honestly think we chugged a couple times as we were pulling in, but I can't be 100% sure, that could have been my pounding heart.

Pump my gas and laugh as the pump tells me "your receipt is inside". Great, I think. Now i'm going to get pulled over for gas n dash because I don't have a receipt for my damn gas. Oh well, I just want to go home!

So we pull back out onto 63 (about 6 miles back from where we had turned on D in the first place, hours ago) and stay on it til I knew where I was, with certainty. Made Hailey text my mom to tell her we are fine, done come looking just go home.

Rolled into home at 12:30 and call my sister to let her know we are alive. I ask her about D and she says "well yeah, you don't really want to take that your first time at night because there's a tiny sign at the bottom of the hill that tells you that D turns left..... you musta missed that and went straight" Woulda been good to know!! "well, I didn't think you were gonna take it" she says.

Slept like a rock and didn't get up til noon. And I'm bout ready to tell At&T to shove all their bars in all their places up their asses.