Well, after a day of traveling and a little bit of drama, we are back in the saddle again! It was a GORGEOUS day here in Washington too. It was clear and sunny as far as the eye could see! I’m telling you what, there is just something about flying in and seeing the 4 big peaks of Mt. Rainier, Mt. Hood, Mt. Baker and Mt. St. Helens, the landscape covered in pine trees and the beautiful blue calm of Pugent Sound. I said to my mom, “I can’t believe I live here”.

Our day O’drama started at the airport. We figured security doesn’t open till 5, and the plane leaves at 6:40 am, so we should probably be there around 5:30 am….um, along with everyone else in St. Louis. The security line actually went out the airport door at one point! We were literally the last people to get on our plane and we made it 3-4 minutes before it left. It was a close call. Chase cried…but that is all he did on all the flights. Cooper slept on the first leg of the flight so that was nice.

Once we got to Denver, we attempted to refresh ourselves and get settled, but it was a short layover so we did have to hurry. Chase was none too happy to be getting on another plane, so he cried in between laughing at all our attempts to make him happy. We sat at the gate on the plane for a bit. The captain announced that they were waiting on some additional luggage to be put on the plane. (And that is when I said to myself they will lose our luggage.) My mom turned to me and said “those are our bags they are talking about.” I just said “yup” with the aforementioned thought in my head.

Chase cried and slept intermittently and we finally made it into town. Mom and I were DESPERATE  for a cup of coffee and we were a bit early, so we decided to go change the baby’s clothes, freshen ourselves up and get a cup of coffee before we got our luggage. I really think it is a good thing that we got coffee because we may have caused physical injury to others once we discovered that yes, they had indeed lost our luggage. Good times…

We made it home only to discover a little more drama. I had some repairs done to the house (big ones) while we were out of town. The ceiling was repaired in several places, my porcelain tub was reglazed, fun stuff like that. When we walked in the door I was not so happy; the house was a wreck! I had cleaned the house before I went out of town so that I could have the joy of walking into a clean home…well that went out the door. I called Equity, the company that handles all that sort of stuff for us. They immediately came out to survey the scene and apologized profusely and promised to make it up to me.

We thanked them for their kindness and then started to clean up. Then we discovered that the water hadn’t been turned back on when they finished fixing the tub. We called them back out and they got it turned on. The kids were sleeping and we were hungry, so we had a little snack. Then, while we were sitting and talking downstairs, I felt a drip of water on my hand. Suddenly I noticed that THE CEILING WAS LEAKING! We called again. The drain had not been properly set in when they reglazed the tub. They came back out and fixed it…and scratched the tub again.

At this point, I figured I should just go to the store to get some food since the fridge was rather barren and the house was all in a scuttle over the water situation. I went out to start the car and yup, it wouldn’t start. Hmmm…I tried again and nothing. My neighbor laughed at me …don’t worry, I was laughing too. My sense of humor was still greatly in tact. She asked me what I was going to do and I said I probably just needed to pump the accelerator a tad while I turned the key. That did it…but a big cloud of black smoke came out of the exhaust as it roared to a start. Hmmm…anyone know what that is about?

The car ran purrrrfectly after that little incident, the luggage came at 10 pm, and the drama in the house finally was fixed for real (they’ll be back Friday to check on the ceiling in the dining room though). I couldn’t help but laugh about all this though. I told Jeremy that this is the kind of stuff that would happen when he initially deployed and I was all alone. But my mom was here this time and that really helped.  We both just laughed and laughed!

Jeremy will be home soon so it’s hard for me to let this stuff get to me too much. I’m so grateful! Equity was really great and helpful about all the house stuff and the airline was kind enough to bring our luggage to us. So I say it ended pretty great! PLUS, it is going to be sunny all week here!

I’ll be back in a couple days with pics and video of St. Louis stuff. Chase became an extremely efficient crawler while we were in town and my best friend Amy had the most amazing experience EVER-they have a brand new baby boy, Samuel Andrew! Stay tuned!