Let's start with Monkey. I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around this, but... he woke up the next morning 100% FINE. No pain, no swelling, no discoloration. NOTHING. I know that many of you think that I was probably overreacting to the situation in the first place, but I just have to say... you had to see it. It was truly awful. And maybe I am being dramatic, but I honestly, completely, and totally believe that God healed that little boy's wrist. Because there is no way it went from the way it was at 10 PM on Wednesday night to the way it was at 8 AM on Thursday morning. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes.
But as for our trip, it was officially over. I couldn't imagine going home after a month, having my hubby working all hours to get caught up from a month off of work, and trying to deal with the basement myself. And even though we had talked about heading home over the course of several days, Mr. Fantastic was just too distracted to really enjoy himself... so we just headed home.
We were a pretty somber family. We were all disappointed that we didn't make it to our "big" destination of Yellowstone, but I think we were all even more upset to miss out on the time with our friends. Mr. Fantastic was preoccupied with the basement, and my mind kept replaying the whole wrist incident and making my stomach turn. What a crew.
Fortunately, the grown-ups were able to rouse ourselves from our funk around late morning and try to cheer up the kiddos. We read together and played and watched movies (well, the kids did), and just generally tried to make it as fun as we could.
We had hoped to make it halfway home the first night, then split the other half up, allowing ourselves some time to relax and play at a campground the second day/night. After a while, that started to seem unrealistic, but we decided to just play it by ear and not make any reservations.
Around 8:00 that night, we started looking for a campground... and then Roo fell asleep... and then the big kids started watching a movie... and Mr. Fantastic said he was feeling pretty awake and wanted to keep driving. We eventually just had the kids lay down and go to sleep, and we kept going. Finally, around midnight or 1 AM (he told me later, because I was already asleep), he pulled into a truck stop and we just slept there for the night. We made great progress, much farther than we thought we would get. (I have no idea where we stopped, somewhere in Iowa, I think.)
And then we woke up the next morning and started up again. Actually, Mr. Fantastic woke up and started driving while everyone else was still asleep.
Slowly the rest of us joined him. That day was a little more cheerful. Even though none of us wanted to miss our trip, the idea of getting home was starting to become appealing.
But first, just a little more fun. We decided to book a campground that night, somewhere far enough that we wouldn't have a super-long drive the next day, but short enough that we could get there in time to enjoy our afternoon.
I'm so glad we did. This was probably the nicest campground we found, other than the state park in Colorado. The sites were beautiful and wooded, the pool was nice, the owners were friendly, and there were LOTS of people around. (All of the other campgrounds were busy, but nobody really seemed to hang around much.)
We spent the afternoon at the pool, then built a campfire (now that we were out of the "danger zone") to cook dinner.
After dinner, Daddy and the big kids went for a walk... and came back with friends! They met some sweet little girls with twins Lamb's age. They stayed and played with us until almost midnight! We played board games, made s'mores, and got out TONS of glow bracelets and accessories that I had planned to spread out through the rest of our trip. It was such a very nice way to end our trip.
Good night all. Tomorrow, we'll be home sweet home...
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