Things to do while your husband travels

Mike just recently returned from a trip to Asia with his BYU EMBA program. He was gone for 16 long days.... he had a lot of fun and some pretty neat experiences... we (or I) had some pretty interesting experiences ourselves! Here are our top crisises to read about:

Things to do while your husband travels:

1. Buy a pet... what the heck, go ahead and buy two!
2. Host a sleepover!
3. Back into your garage door!
4. Get your daughters ears pierced (and yours too!)
5. Make yourself a really long list of things to do that can't possibly be accomplished in the given time frame!
   

To re-count.... we woke our kids up at 6:00am on a Friday morning to take Dad to the airport. For some reason I thought that would be a good night to let Deryn have a sleepover.... I did not account for how tired she would be ... aka how ornery she would be. At 7:00pm she was sent to her room for bad behavior. She promptly fell asleep. So, now Jansyn is entertaining Deryn's friend. Around 8:30 she becomes upset because Deryn is not playing with her and it is time to go to bed and Deryn is already asleep. She crys, we call her mom and explain the situation. We decide to see if she will fall asleep knowing they will have fun together the next day.
I lay on the living room floor between Jansyn and Sadie waiting for them to fall asleep. At 9:30 they appear to be asleep and it is safe to move to my room!
Finally time to myself ( I made myself a ridiculously huge list of things to do before Mike got home) but first, I decide I will relax in a bubble bath.
Just as I enter the tub and sit down, there is pounding at my bedroom door... Deryn is awake. I grab a towel, rush to the door, trying to quiet her before she wakes the others up. A sleepy Deryn now wants to know when the movie is going to start. By now it is 10:00pm and I tell her she missed the movie. She wants to be tucked into bed.... I tell her to wait on my bed while I finish my bath.
A few minutes she is out. Now, I can't do any projects in my bedroom or the living room. I guess it is time for bed. I climb into bed. At 12:30 am Sadie is at the door, she has woken up and is crying and wants to know where Deryn is. I tell her to come and sleep in the bed with Deryn.... mmmm, not much room left and those two sure move a lot.
I can't go sleep on the couch because I have somewhere to be in the morning and need the alarm to wake me up....
I grab a pillow and blanket, I am now sleeping on my bedroom floor at the foot of the bed. It's kind of cold on the floor.
6:00am. Jansyn arrives.... she curls up next to me on the floor... at least she is warm! Guess I didn't need that alarm after all!

And so the journey begins.....

The next day we purchase tortoises...these are something I have wanted for a long time. I have always been in love with the idea of a big tortoise wandering around my yard. Although, admittedly this decision was made after an emotional drop off at the airport. My mind always races when he leaves.... what would happen if he died on the trip and didn't come back.....
Anyway, we now enter Sally and Lightening into the mix:


Now, I suddenly have many things to do that were not on my list before. Spend memorial day with my brother in law making an indoor cage for the tortoises. I spend the following Saturday making an outdoor pen.

Meanwhile, my husband is in Asia enjoying things like this:




Sometime during the time he was in China, I managed to back into the garage door:
Let's look at the facts: Exhausted mom, tired kids who are missing their dad, oh and we we're running behind. I take an argumentative Jansyn out to the car and under much protest strap her into her seat. Before I even get into my seat she is trying to get out of the car seat... arguing she does not want to sit in the car seat. I am focused only on the argument and do not realize the garage door is not in as much of a hurry as I am. I realize this only when I hear a loud unfamiliar noise.
I stop the car, get out, and realize we are not going anywhere. The bottom two panels are completely bowed out in the shape of my SUV... I immediately burst into tears which continue to flow freely for the next 2 hours.
Jansyn is concerned.... apparently she didn't know that Moms cry ( maybe I should do this more often) Meanwhile, I call the repair man who will come sometime before 5:00pm... then I call into work since my garage door will neither go up or down and I can't stop crying.

My imagination has gotten the worst of me... looking at the door, I can't even imagine how it would get fixed. I think to myself, "I will probably have to replace that door.... If I replace that door, I might have to replace the other door if they don't have a match... of course even if they do have a match, we really don't like these doors... maybe I should get the nice doors we have always wanted.... oh crap, those are probably thousands of dollars.... what am I going to do? I would have rather spent this money in Asia.....

This was my thought process, very distorted by my lack of sleep.... at 3:00pm, the repair guy showed up. 30 minutes later my door was repaired - almost no tell tale sign of the damage and only $94 dollars! What a relief!
When is Mike coming home?

Next not so fun adventure.... My sisters graciously invite us for a sleepover at their new house. Deryn has been begging and begging to get her ears pierced. I think that would be a fun sleepover surprise and my sisters agree to go along with it. We all go the mall. The first ear is pierced and Deryn freaks out. This child does not have a very good pain tolerance. This goes on at the store for 1 1/2 hours while we try to convince her she either has to get the 2nd ear pierced or take the first earring out. She will not let anyone touch either ear. What a nightmare!!!
Eventually we left with both ears pierced. Oh, and I got my ears re-pierced too, trying to show her how it really didn't hurt that bad/ THIS WAS NOT A FUN SLEEPOVER ACTIVITY!

Anyway, these are the crazy experiences we had while Mike was gone. Boy are we glad he's home!