I started my
journaling for this day in the morning. Although much had changed by the end of
the day, I decided to leave what I had originally written, because… well, the
contrast between my expectations and reality is laughable. Now. The stars
indicate the end of my original journaling, where I have picked up now to finish
telling you about our day. (I still wrote it as if I were writing on that day,
just for the sake of consistency.)
I’ve taken over 2800 pictures so far. That is a ridiculous
number, especially considering that we’re not even halfway done yet. I really
thought I would average about 100 photos per day, but obviously I
underestimated myself. Oy vey.
Today got off to a bit of a rough start. After showering and
getting dressed, Mr. Fantastic picked up his phone and found a text from his
mom: “Do you still have crutches at your house?” That doesn’t sound good.
Apparently the dry spell that Colorado has been suffering through has not
carried through to Ohio. There it has been raining for almost 2 weeks straight.
This morning my mother-in-law was walking our dog, and she slipped and fell.
She thinks it is just sprained, but she wants some extra help getting around.
We are feeling terribly guilty that she is at home, taking responsibility for
our house, our pets, and our business… and now with a pretty bad sprain, from
the sounds of it. And we’re here on vacation. I’m thankful to have my parents
close by and know that they can step in and help.
**********
My wonderful husband indulged me so much in Colorado.
Everything we did in Colorado Springs, we did because *I* wanted to do it. And
now today, he and the kids are accompanying me to another place they would never otherwise visit: MOPS
headquarters!
I joined my first MOPS group when Lamb was just six months
old. I had no idea what it was or whether it would be what I was looking for,
but it has been a MAJOR part of my life ever since. Even now, when I am not
technically in a MOPS group (the moms’ group at my church is independent, not a
MOPS group), it is a ministry about which I am passionate and in which I want
to remain involved. I was so thankful for the time I could spend talking so
some of the women there and making good contacts. Exciting things were
discussed, not all things I am ready to share here. But be praying, my friends.
I have some hopes and dreams for the foundations that were laid this morning.
Sooooooooooooooo… after our time with the lovely ladies of
MOPS, we were ready for lunch AND we were armed with a lunch recommendation
from some of the women we had just left: Casa Bonita.
Have you ever heard of this place? I had not, but I guess it’s
a little bit famous. (I’m not sure how many of you are “South Park” watchers—I haven’t
seen an episode since college, and even then I never actually watched it, just saw bits and pieces of it when other people were watching it—but apparently
there’s a whole episode about it.) It’s a Mexican restaurant, although you don’t
really go there for the food. You go for the experience. I really… I am hesitant to try to describe this place
to you, because I feel like I won’t do it justice. Really. It is indescribable.
But I’ll give it a shot.
Cliff-diving. Every 15 minutes, there’s a cliff diving show!
Inside the restaurant! Sometimes it’s just a “straight” diving show, sometimes
they mix in some comedy (like a guy in a gorilla suit). Either way, the kids
love it!
But they do so much more with the kids, too. There was a piñata…
…and Black Bart’s Cave (a “haunted house” type of
experience)…
…a game room (a la Chuck E. Cheese, complete with
tickets and prizes)...
(Roo LOVED this throwing game. If you know him, you know that this is RIGHT up his alley.)
...and lots of other opportunities for fun.
But even that isn’t all. In addition to the main seating
area around the waterfall, there’s a mine room…
(Yeah, I didn't get any pictures of the actual seating in that room... but here's the mine car...)
…and many others that I didn’t capture “on film.” One had a
stage for magic shows. Which reminds me, we also saw a small puppet show while
we were there. This place was bursting
with things for kids to do. We had to DRAG our crew out of there!
After exploring the many rooms of seating and fun, we were
astounded at how big the place really was. On our way out, we asked a waitress
how many people the restaurant can seat. Turns out, it’s over A THOUSAND! She
said that on busy days, they serve over 17,000 people! Is that astounding or
what?!? I later read an interesting blog post about Casa Bonita, where the
author talks about waiting an HOUR to be seated as if that’s a common occurrence.
I’m glad we were there at 1 PM on a Wednesday!
When we finally got back to the campground, Roo and Mr.
Fantastic snuggled up for just a quick nap while the big kids and I got
everything ready to go to the beach. This was my second bummer of the day—I was
hoping to run over and visit a friend who just moved to Denver from our
hometown, but we had been promising and promising the kids time at the beach,
and I couldn’t hold them off any longer… and Mr. Fantastic didn’t seem too keen
on taking all three of them to the beach by himself. My friend and I
tentatively planned to have coffee after bedtime, and our family headed down
for some beach time.
I don’t have a whole lot of pictures from the beach today. Do you know why? Because I was too busy enjoying the beach. At the risk of
sounding corny, that afternoon felt almost magical. Roo was a little unsure of
the water at first, but before I knew it he was sitting in the water saying, “Kick!
Kick!” and thrusting his little feet all around. The big kids made friends with
a sweet little boy named Robert, who had a raft, and they all had a ball
climbing in and out of it and pulling each other around. And we played in the
sand and we played in the water and we just relaxed and loved being together.
When Roo and Monkey decided to take a break from the water,
I walked with them over to our beach chairs (and the large amount of gear we
had toted out) to supervise the building of a sand castle. And then my phone
rang. And I knew what I was going to hear.
Earlier in the day, I had gotten onto Facebook on my phone,
and saw a few people complaining about water in their basements. Although we
have never had a flooding issue in our house (two exceptions: once when we were
building the house 10 years ago,
which we resolved; once last year when our septic backed up, so not a rain
issue), I got an uneasy feeling about it. I got online again a few hours later,
while Roo and my hubby were napping, and saw that a tornado watch was in effect
for our hometown area. With my mother-in-law (who lives just two houses down
from us) injured, I knew I couldn’t ask her to check our basement, so I thought
about calling my dad—but then I couldn’t justify asking him to drive in
possible tornado conditions just to satisfy some silly gut feeling with no real
basis. I decided I would wait until Mr. Fantastic was up and ask him to call
our maintenance guy (my hubby owns rental properties) and see if he would just
swing by and check it out to give me some peace of mind. But when he did wake up, he was still a little
groggy and grumpy, so I decided to let it go until later… and then we were at
the beach and I didn’t want to bother him with it…
And then suddenly I was standing at the beach chairs,
talking to Robert’s dad, and my phone rang. And I knew. I picked it up and saw
my mother-in-law’s phone number. And I knew.
“I’m so glad you’re answering the phone,” she said. “I don’t
have good news.”
Our basement was flooded. Our FINISHED basement—as in, the
toy room, the living room (with the TV), our game room (with a pool table), and
a full bathroom—was flooded. The whole thing. She had called my parents and
told them that she was worried about it because of all the rain, and they came
out to check it. My dad had gone into our storage room in the back (the only
unfinished space) and found that the sump pump wasn’t working. He was able to
get it running, and it started pumping the water out, but the damage was done.
Fortunately, we have a fabulous family. My parents, my
brother, and two of my nephews started hauling stuff out. My mother-in-law
called a cleanup/restoration company we use through my hubby’s business, and
they came right out to get all of the carpets out and cut out any drywall that
got wet. My mom and dad, we later found out, even took him several (6 or more)
garbage bags full of toys and photos and other random stuff, to dry it out—and in
the case of the toys, wash and bleach them, just in case there was any sewer
water mixed in. They worked hard to get things under control for us. I know
they were hoping that we would be able to just continue on our trip.
Mr. Fantastic came up then, and I handed him the phone so
that he could hear it all first-hand. When he got off, we both went through the
same range of emotions… from “this is horrible” to “it’s just stuff” to “what
on earth are we going to do?” We debated about packing up and leaving right
then, driving through the night. We talked about continuing our trip, at least
for a few days. But we kept coming back to the reality that Mr. Fantastic was
likely to be SLAMMED at work after taking a month off. How could we possibly
deal with all of the things we would be facing at home if he had a month of
making up to do?
Finally, we just sat down, watched the kids play, and just…
sat.
But we knew that we couldn’t go on with the trip. We would
be preoccupied, and we needed for Mr. Fantastic to be able to help at home, not
to be overwhelmed with work AND the basement all at once. In just a few days,
we were slated to meet up with some of our BFFs in Yellowstone, and we would
all make the trip home together. So many plans, suddenly out the window.
Lamb took it the hardest. She and her sweet friend Hannah,
part of the family we were supposed to meet in Yellowstone, are two peas in a
pod. More than any destination or site or activity on this trip, she was
excited to spend almost two full weeks with Hannah, whom she typically gets to
see just every couple of months. But we finally got her—and Monkey, who was
less emotional but still tremendously disappointed—settled down and distracted,
and we all just sat rather quietly on the beach, watching Roo push a truck all
over God’s creation.
It was 8:00 before we finally packed up and left the beach.
Our plans for a beach-side dinner—and my plans for a late-night coffee—were gone.
We decided to grab a pizza and sit outside the RV, enjoying our last night in
Colorado.
The boys got in the truck first. Lamb and I stopped to wash
her feet off, and were lagging behind a bit. As we walked up to the truck,
Monkey stood inside with his hand out the window, calling out, “Tickets,
please! I need your tickets, ladies!” We giggled and slapped his hand and
pretended to give him our tickets.
But if you know 6-year-old boys, you know that a joke that
is funny the first time, just gets funnier the more you tell it. So he
continued as Lamb got in the truck. He continued as I loaded the last few
things in the back. He continued as I walked up to my door. “Tickets, please! I
need your ticket, madam!” I gave him “five” and said, “There’s my ticket!” And
I got in the truck. I didn’t hear, as I sat down, him saying, “No, wait, Mommy.
How about this? ‘I need your credit card,
please, Madam!” So I got in the truck. And I closed the door.
But it didn’t close. It bounced. It bounced because Monkey
had reached his hand out through the window of the back seat, around the side,
and INTO the opening of the front door as I climbed in. I didn’t know his hand
was there. He didn’t know I was closing the door. Until it bounced.
I was out of that truck and pulling him out of the seat
faster than you could believe. I held him and whispered to him and kissed his
hand and stroked his hair. The “mommy guilt” of cutting our trip short combined
with the actual guilt of hurting my
child (yes, I know, unintentionally), and I was a wreck. We sat and cried
together.
The RV park was about a quarter-mile from the beach, so I
sat Monkey on my lap as we drove back to our site. I watched his fingers turn
purple, and the tips gray, and my stomach turned. When we got out of the truck,
I showed them to Mr. Fantastic and he said, “Let’s get some ice on your
fingers, buddy.”
And Monkey said, “No, it’s not my fingers that got hurt,
Daddy. It’s here.” And he held his wrist. His WRIST got shut in the door, and
his FINGERS were purple and gray. Oh God,
I whispered. Oh God, oh God, please don’t
let it be broken.
I could FEEL the blood draining from my face. My hubby saw
it too, and he said, “Let’s just get some ice on it, Honey.” He and the big
kids stayed outside, tending to Monkey, while I fed Roo and put him to bed… and
then sat crying… and crying… and crying.
My dear, wonderful hubby had apparently had the presence of
mind to order a pizza at some point in all of the confusion. He came in to tell
me he was going to pick it up, and of course to give me a big hug. What would I
do without that man? I went out to sit with the big kids while we waited, and
my sweet Monkey had his right hand sitting on the table, wrapped in ice and an
Ace bandage. His tears were gone, but he was quiet. Lamb—who kept running into
the RV to get stuffed animals and toys to cheer up her brother—and I
entertained Monkey while we waited for our dinner. Eventually it got too dark
and buggy, and we moved Roo to the back bedroom so that we could hang out
inside the RV. (We later learned that Mr. Fantastic had gotten lost looking for
the Pizza Hut.)
So… not quite the ending that we had planned for our trip.
We had reservations to cancel, friends to call, and now would we have to start
our journey home with a trip to the ER?
I feel a little guilty to leave you here on a Friday, but that's just how it all breaks down. If you don't want to wait until Monday to learn the rest, you'll just have to find me over the weekend. ;-)
