Our trip home was a little less than fun (ok, a lot). I came down with a stomach bug of some sort on the morning we were planning to leave. Without giving details, I couldn't hold anything down - either way - and pretty much felt like death. Dan was really wanting to get home so that we could have a few days home before he had to go back to work (and I was on board with that plan). He said he was ready to drive as much as possible, so we went ahead and packed up to head out after lunch. Ugh - what a terrible drive home. We had to pull over so I could puke less than 10 minutes out of town. Awesome. Dan drove from Wray to Amarillo (about 7 hours) where we stopped for dinner - well, dinner for Evelyn and Dan - some quality time in the bathroom for me. I usually felt better for a little while after I would throw up, so I decided to take a turn driving. I made it to about 30 minutes south of Lubbock (a total of about 2 hours). Poor Dan. He then drove the rest of the drive home - 15 hours of our 17 hour trip. He's pretty much a rock star. I wish I could say I slept through it, but I couldn't get comfortable - so I slept in bits and pieces. Evelyn, again, did pretty well. She was a little more fussy on the way home, but all in all did great.
Dan snapped this as the sun was coming up - we were about 30 minutes from home here.
The good news of that trip is that we got home about 30 minutes after Evelyn woke up - so again the majority of her trip was spent sleeping. I was still pretty much out of commission, feeling like a truck ran over me. I hadn't vomited since Amarillo, but was still dealing with the other end. For the first time ever, I let all of our suitcases and bags sit in the entry way for almost the whole day. I usually can't sit and rest until everything is put away. Thankfully, I took our Christmas stuff down the day we left for Colorado - so while those boxes still had to be put up in the garage, at least it was all put away. All I wanted to do was sleep and not be sick. Dan did awesome taking care of Evelyn after he had driven all night long. I have the best husband in the world. He got her castle tent put together and all she wanted to do for the first 10 minutes or so was lay in it. We figured it was time for an early nap (she didn't sleep real well through the night, and hadn't slept real well in Colorado - too much excitement knowing her cousins were just down the hall!).
Night night...
The next morning, we woke up and our house was 58 degrees (since having Evelyn we usually try to keep it around 68 at night). Dan had been so happy to come home to nothing wrong (in years past, we've had our deep freeze go out, garage doors not open, lizards in the house...).
Evelyn insisted on wearing her new slippers that she got from Grammie and Grandad for Christmas.
Fortunately, it wasn't our furnace (which we couldn't believe it would be...we just replaced that a little over a year ago). We had a breaker that had melted in some way. The HVAC guy showed Dan what he needed to do to fix it, so Dan headed to Home Depot to get a new breaker to fix it. We had a good laugh (or, at least I did...) because just a few days before, Dan had gone up to my sister and brother-in-law's new house that is being built in Wray to help the boys with some electrical work (my brother-in-law has electrical experience). When he went up there, his job was holding a flashlight. I told Mike maybe we could have fixed this ourselves if Dan got to hold more than a flashlight! :-)
Dan fixing our melted breaker.
For New Years Eve, we went to dinner at Johnny Carino's then had planned to go to the mall so I could spend a gift card that I got for the Motherhood store. When we got there around 5:45, we found out that the mall was closing at 6pm. So I spent my gift card, then we went up to the play place to let Evelyn play for a while after the stores closed.
We were pretty much the only ones there, so she loved running around with free reign of the place.
We then let her just run up and down the mall hallways for a while. She thought that was pretty awesome since usually she is confined to a stroller so we can keep track of her! We were home, and Evelyn and I were in bed around 9pm. Happy New Year, Dan. Maybe I'll make it to midnight next year. Or not...because we'll have a 5-month old and our kids don't seem to sleep through the night until 10 months.
Good job, Dan!!
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