Birthday Blues

You know the saying, " What goes up, must come down ?"

With Elaina's big birthday weekend and the fourth of July holiday coming to an end, we had been riding high, having one great, busy day after another - but great days in all. Today, we came down from our high in a big way. We had stayed the night at my parents' house and Elaina must have just had enough of being away from home and off of her routine. She was a little, crank-butt today. After lunch with my mom and dad and lots of serious packing the truck, we headed for home. Elaina, who is usually great in the car, whimpered and cried on and off for almost an hour before falling asleep. As we approached the middle of nowhere on our drive, our gas light warning came on and within 2 minutes (seriously - 2 ! ) our truck was stammering and we had run out of gas ! (For our sake, we have to believe that there is a problem with the gas gauge. ) So, did I mention that it had been pouring down rain most of our trip and was still humid and sprinkling ? At this point, Elaina wakes up unhappy, Eric runs across the highway over 4 lanes of traffic to the nearest house and Keegan is in the back of the truck panting like he's having a heat stroke. Happy 4th of July !! You could have probably seen the fireworks shooting out from my head at this point !

This story really could take forever, but I'll save you the misery ... lucky you - we lived it. So - fast forward : a State Trooper pulls up behind me, I tell him our story, swearing that we really aren't stupid people, he waits for Eric and a nice old man to arrive with a couple gallons of gas , I feed Elaina some baby food as she sits on my lap in the front seat to keep her quiet as we're both sweating and 30 minutes later, we finally get on our way (to the nearest gas station for a fill up !!!) Whew... this could quite possibly be the longest trip in my life ! We finally arrive home and as I am standing at the counter in the kitchen unpacking, I stepped back and saw a little, black face looking back at me. It was a bat. A bat that had wedged itself between our countertop and the top insert of our dishwasher. Ugh ! I voted to spear him with a handy hot dog roasting fork, but my nature-loving -dork- husband saved his little, bat life and took him outside. ( I know that sounds crass - but we have plenty of bats outside attached to our shingles that they don't need to be in my house ! )

And just for a little more humor in my day, I can feel cold symptoms developing by each passing hour ! Great !

So, there you have it - the good, the bat, and the ugly of our birthday weekend !
Home Sweet Home !