Vacation is over!

It had to come to an end…and it did this a.m. at 6:00 when we left the girls at the airport. Wow…the security personnel and all the airline employees were on edge. I sure wouldn’t want to be traveling this afternoon.

When we arrived home from the airport everyone but Jamin and I went back to bed. At some point Zander woke up. I went into the kitchen, not knowing anyone was up and saw THIS. It gave me a start! Wouldn’t you be surprised to find a dragon in your kitchen? Evidently, this was a very hungry dragon. Zander and Jamin had a good laugh while I ran for the camera.

We have decided not to begin school today. We have a lot of new things beginning this week. We also have a few jobs we’d like to finish and preparation to begin a new school “year” in good form. We’ll spend the rest of this week finishing a few home projects, planning for the next few months (De’Etta), restocking our library book selection and polishing research papers (Josiah and Jamin).

I won’t say that this leave taking was much easier than the last one…but we keep telling ourselves it’s a “good ache”. At odd times my heart seems to cry out on its own “I want my babies home” and then I quickly remind myself that this is a beneficial leave taking. {sigh}
We spent the afternoon taking Christmas lights down outside. This is a wonderful job in 80* weather. We are shocked at this weather. The girls always organize our decorating so it felt very odd to be taking things down without them. We were excited when we set up because it meant they’d be home soon. Now it meant they were gone. Arielle and I were a bit weepy….the boys were very sweet. We got everything done in 2 ½ hours – outside and inside. Stacia slept through it all and seemed very puzzled to wake up and find all the Christmas finery had disappeared.

Mike was off work today so we HAD to do something fun. For us that meant dinner at Schlotsky’s and then a trip to the Concho River. We fed the ducks and musk rat.

We had a huge laugh when Zander found this piece of bamboo with fishing line attached. He had a blast “fishing”. At one point he called me over to see the baby fish. When we’d all gathered he began flailing the water and saying “See that HUGE fish? It’s doing this”. It’s very apparent that he’s been spending time with fisherman! {this picture just won't upload so I'll try to put it in a different entry}.

The kids had a choice of renting a Hollywood video or trying to find a cache. They voted for a cache. We found two more making our total 8. We are trying to find 20 by the end of this month. Nolan found his first cache. It was hidden well; this is helping us all to be more observant. We found a new fancy neighborhood, a new park and a new cemetery today. We’re bringing the day to a close by watching a few episodes of Hogan’s Heroes….a Christmas gift of Jamin’s.


On our way home Zander said, “Let’s go find Krista and Bre”. He thinks we left them at the airport and lost them. Oh boy. He’s always feared being left behind somewhere and now is sure that we left Bre and Krista behind. I’m not sure how we’ll play this one through. Prayers are appreciated.