In the past 5 days I've.....

I've got to sit down and blog before I forget all the crazy things that have happenend in the past 5 days. There is wide range, and believe me ALL of the following actually did happen!

Last weekend, we were planning to head to the beach for a weekend trip, I had arranged to rent a house near Rockaway Beach- BUT IT WAS A NEW PLACE I HAVEN'T BEEN TO BEFORE. ( remember this detail). Ryan was out of town for the week, but would come over on Friday. So, Thursday was really crazy, I had an appointment to take the car into the shop for a repair that was supposed to be 4 hours.... ended up, they had to keep the car, and put me in rental. I explained that I was heading to the beach, and wouldn't return the car until the weekend. So, after getting the kids from school, we headed home to get ready for their soccer game before leaving for the beach....I had planned to be ready for the beach when the repair was only taking 4 hours..but instead we had to pack before and after the soccer game. The kids packed themselves- and I have to say, they are actually REALLY good at this! They actually were so excited that they even took their luggage out to the car ( rental car) managed to open the back door and threw their stuff inside!
I digress, I have to talk about the soccer game.... Grace did great, but it was hot and she didn't look like she had a ton of energy out on the field. She did say that her team "was lazy and didn't want to play in the sun". I'm not sure if she is in that group or not?
NOW, on to Grant; Really, I think the game resembled more of a rugby game. He was pretty aggressive.. even the "mom ref" said it was cracking her up because it looks like he was waiting for the kids to swarm together in a clump and then dive into the crowd and tackle. He just keep tackling kids- I had to take him out of the game. It was pretty funny. While throwing in the ball to his own teammate, he chucked the ball directly at her, and it bounced off her head- luckily she didn't cry. I can tell his coach is torn because he actually kicks the ball and gets into the game, but there is a price.. he tackles the other team, and his own teammates.

OK,so now its about 8:30pm and we're leaving for the beach- its only about an hour and 15 minutes or so... the kids get settled with a blanket and "luvies" ( remember this point too), they talk me into taking them to Burgerville because "I didn't feed them dinner- whatever..." we had a heavy snack before and after soccer... but I did go ( luckily). So we drove out to the beach... I had the directions, but in all fairness, I DID NOT HAVE THE HOUSE ADDRESS... I just had directions that said L on Nedonna, R on Sunset... I couldn't find the initial turn, I had to call Ryan, I was about 15 miles past the turn, I turned around, headed back, and finally called Ryan to "Google Earth" the place so I could find it ( THIS WAS VERY HELPFUL!). Finally made the turn off, took the directions to "Sunset Dr"- From the directions I thought that the house must be on the corner of Nedonna and Sunset... and the lockbox was supposed to be by the backdoor. (Its now 11pm), I get out of the car, and search around the house. there is no lockbox near the back door--- Now, I feel I must explain my train of thought.. on the website, the house I rented DID have a firepit on the property and a kid's fort. This house on the corner, did have a firepit and kid's fort.. it also had a similar house shape... I then called the contact for the rental at about 11:30pm at night when I couldn't find the lockbox. I didnt' get an answer. Grant had long ago gone to sleep ( we were driving in a Dodge Jeep vehicle) in his carseat. Grace was awake, she keep giving me suggestions on getting into the house. I didnt' have a flashlight, so after midnight, I took my cell phone and tried to use the lit up screen as a flashlight and walked around the entire house looking for the "lockbox". I ended up going back to the car... and telling the kids we were going to "sleep in the car".. "yes, kids, this will be fun, something we've never done before"... Grace was very unsure. She did have to pee, so we did do that over the next few hours... several times, on the road. I decided that I didnt' want to smell Burgerville all night, so I found a high place to put the trash-I didn't want to attract racoons or something else...Grace wanted to be in the front seat, so in our very packed space, we managed to move the food in the front seat to the back seat, and Grace settled in the passenger seat, Grant was in the backseat in his carseat, I tried to push the pillows around him to make him comfortable, luckily they both had their blankets. Grace and I tried to sleep.. I was freezing, I didn't have anything but a sweatshirt and beach towels. I wrapped the towels around me, I was wearing sandals and tried to wrap up my legs. At about 3am, Grant woke up briefly and said "MOM! Why are we not inside the house?", I explained, and then he said "the key is inside the house, mom, you need to get it". He then wanted to be near me, so he came up to the front seat ( which was reclined partially) with his blanket, pillow, etc. The front seats were "bucket seats" with a big console in between. So then Grant was smushed into the front seat with me- I was then warmer, but much more uncomfortable.... at this point my legs were so cold, I reached around for something to help, ended up grabbing a pillow. I first tried to SHOVE it down by my feet- this didn't help much, then I tried to get my legs inside the pillowcase ( this ended up not being possible)... so I continued to freeze. At about 5:30am, Grace woke up again and had to go to the bathroom- this time she peed on her pj's. So, then she got back in the car, and we had to find her suitcase to change clothes. This woke Grant up, who was hungry... he started reaching for any food- we ended up finding crackers to eat- we had no water or liquid. I think we found some other things, nothing really substantial. I found sound Pop Tarts, and thought this would be a big hit ( I had thrown them in last minute). My kids have never had them, they just looked at them, and wouldn't even break them in half to see what was inside. They just tapped on the frosting- then gave them back after a bite and said " these aren't good, I think you need to do something to cook them". I called the contact for the rental house at 6am or so.. no answer still, my message was a bit more frantic. Now, you may be asking why I didn't just drive home... well, it was midnight, and I was tired, and didn't think I could drive home, plus I REALLY wanted to be at the beach- I "felt" like I was close. Then Grace asked if we were going out to breakfast.. "I don't know yet". She then asked if anyone had ever had to Poop on the road.. ( I didnt' answer) I just said, lets drive around now that its light and see what we can find. We drove down the block, and we came around the corner to a house that looked pretty familiar to the house on the website.... hmm, I went around back and THERE WAS A LOCKBOX!. I had driven by this house in the dark, but in the light it looked very much like the house on the website I had rented. We went inside, we were so happy to be warm! We had a great time at the beach with our friends. The house person called mid-morning.. she was so worried she said when she heard my message- I just said " I might just be the stupidest person on earth right now"- She just laughed and said I better write this down.

Then, we came home Sunday, returned the rental car, I then had to drive to John Day, Oregon for a 3 day work stint there that I'll be doing monthly. Luckily, I'm driving with someone else, but she's in her own car. The drive was OK- its really in the middle of nowhere- all these little towns. Luckily we had enough gas, because there wasn't even gas stations in each small town along the way... or the station closes by 6pm or? About 3 hours into the 6 hour trip, in the middle of nowhere again, I HIT A DEER OR TWO OR THREE... We had been seeing deer on the side of the road through the day, I had looked ahead and saw 3 deer on the side of the road, I started to slow down, hoping they would be out of the way before I reached the spot, they stood there "like deer in headlights" and then started moving as I got up to them, I hear this big bump bump bump- Karen was freaking out behind me, I looked at the car first... there was no damage ( GOOD!), then I looked for the deer- there were no deer anywhere near the car, so I guess I just hurt them and they ran off. We finally got into John Day later that night. We'll fly to Redmond in the Winter, but will still have a 2 hour drive.. we could really use a private plane right now...

I'm still here. In John Day. Its a pleasant place, the hotel we stay at has a large group of motorcycles coming through each time i'm here. Its a funny town, everyone knows everyone else, or is related in someway... but they have a lot of sped kids, so Karen and I are traveling SLPs 3 days a month. I'm hoping my drive home tomorrow will be deer free.