Go West, Day 14: Happy Birthday & other matters

I know, another late post. These last two have not been nearly as fun to write as the first ones!

By the time we left the campground--making sure to say goodbye to our new friends first--it was a little bit late, but we didn't have far to go, just 4-5 hours until we were home.

Everyone was in pretty good spirits at this point. The kids played and watched movies, Mr. Fantastic and I started dreaming about what our new, totally redone basement might look like (when we're done, not that day! ha!), and I think everyone was looking forward to sleeping in their own beds that night.

Oh, and one other thing. It was my birthday. Not exactly the best of circumstances for celebration, but hey--a few months ago I got a surprise trip to Florida (I still haven't gotten to blog about that... one day...), so I can't complain. My parents called to tell me happy birthday and said that we would have cake at my mother-in-law's that night. Sounds like a plan to me!

So all-in-all it was going well. And then we got home. And we saw it all for ourselves. It was... overwhelming. I wish I had pictures of the basement, but it just didn't occur to me to take any. A lot of stuff had been moved upstairs (And did I mention the bags of stuff that my parents took home to wash and dry for us? I can't remember... but they did.), but there were still piles and piles and piles of stuff in the basement. All of the carpet was out, and the drywall had been cut out in a few spots--though always low to the ground. Whew. OK. Here we are.

I won't go into the rest of the details of the evening, except to say this... By the time we went up to my mother-in-law's house (she lives two doors down from us, so we walked), Mr. Fantastic was completely overwhelmed. Seeing the basement, starting to unpack, dealing with three kids who were glad to be home and a little slap happy... and then the added bonus of going up to my mother-in-law's to find a nice, clean dog--very excited to have her owners back--who felt the need to go roll in a rotten egg that she found outside somewhere. So he got to give the dog a bath. Not exactly on his to-do list.

My birthday celebration... was a bust. Blah.

(But I still got Florida.)

So that was the end of our great western adventure. Just to bring you up to speed...

• My mother-in-law's foot is, in fact, broken. And a few days later, my mom broke her leg. We are a non-stop barrel of laughs around here, folks.
• It took a few days, but we got everything emptied out of our basement. It is now all in our garage.
• A couple days after we got home, my parents kept the kids overnight (before my mom broke her leg). Mr. Fantastic and I were able to get a lot of basement work done, but more importantly, we went out for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory for a REAL birthday celebration. Yeah, baby!
• We are now in the middle of picking out wall colors, flooring, and the like for our "new" basement. We are trying to decide whether to go all out and get new furniture as well. Decisions, decisions.
• And yes, we do want to head west again next year. So we'll get to do this whole series again 12 months from now... hopefully without the flooding...

Thanks for reliving it all with me. ;-) See you soon.