Catch up...

I am sitting in a hospital waiting room...why, you ask?  Because this handsome devil is having shoulder surgery as I type.

Sigh, he makes hospital gowns look sexy.  Anyway, back in June he tore a tendon in his shoulder while wrestling with his brother.  (No, he has not out-grown that yet.)  He thought keeping the arm in a sling and taking it easy would let the tear heal on its own.  In August he found out he was wrong...his particular kind of injury could only be fixed by surgery.  Bummer.  So today is the day!  I get to hang out at the hospital, he gets shoulder surgery and our kids get to spend the last day of the first week of school without their parents.  It has been that kind of week.

I missed the hustle and excitement of the very first day of school.  I missed Adell going off to transitional kindergarten (basically her first day of real school ever).  I missed Clare's heading off to 3rd grade, Wyatt starting the first day of the year where he gets to rule the school (5th grade) and Lorien starting her second year of middle school (7th grade).  I missed it all...because this other handsome devil had the pukes.

I was sad about missing all of those special moments but thankfully Will stepped in and did the morning runaround on Monday (and Tuesday and Wednesday...) so I could clean up puke.  It wasn't all bad.  Will took all of the "first day" photos and I got some quality snuggle time with the King of the Five Second Snuggle.  

And now that I am down to just one child at home (for a few measly hours) maybe I can get caught up on the long neglected blog.  I'll fill you in on our summer adventures.

Spoiler alert: we had an awesome summer.

Last adventure

School starts on Monday.  I am OK with it.  Sure I'll miss our summer lazyness but these kids need some structure in their life.  Really, I need a break.  They are a bunch of terrorist and I am a hostage.  I just want to eat one meal a day in peace.  I'll still have Colter all day so it's not like I am going to get a real break.  

Anyway, we decided to go to Rock n' Jump for our last hurrah.  The kids love this place, we've been twice and no one has broken a leg.  

Totally awesome.

Lorien decided to spend the last day of summer vacation with her friends so she missed all of our family fun.  Lame!

Montana

Oh Montana, how we love thee.  Let us count the ways...

Really, we do love going up to Montana and this was the third summer in a row we were able to make the trip up.  This trip, however, was rough.  Despite my early delight for the trip (our whole family flew this year) it was an expensive trip.  We tried to pack light, resulting in me buying a bunch of stuff that we should have packed once we were in Montana.  It would have been cheaper to check more bags.  We also bought a tent and a few other things that we left at the lake for the next time we go.  So there's that...

The weather was perfect, the water sports were super fun and the views were stunning.  Most importantly, we had a great time seeing Will's side of the family.  However, this trip ended up being one of the hardest trips away from home I can remember.  Colter and Adell came down with a really heavy cough.  Both of them would cough until they threw up.  So...the nights were very, very, very long.  As soon and Will and I drifted off after cleaning up the barf of one child, the next child would start coughing.  We would leap out of bed grabbing towels (if there were any left over from the last round) or blankets to catch the puke.  Pajamas were changed, sleeping bags swapped out and expletives whispered.  We'd flop back onto the air-mattress only to jump up minutes later for the next bout of coughing.  It was kind of miserable.  We made several trips to the laundry mat.  Will and I were so exhausted by the end of the week we were seeing double.

Then there was the little "leaving Clare at the top of a mountain" incident.  I don't think I can blog about that one just yet.

Needless to say, home was a very sweet place when we got back from our trip.  Good thing we have a whole year recover before our next trip to the Big Sky state.