Homecoming

In less than 12 hours, Stephen will be home from being deployed.

This morning our preacher Tony emailed me and said, "Your man is almost home - are you excited?"

Am I excited?

I'm so excited that I cleared my entire schedule after Monday just so I could prepare for him coming home. Now, I didn't do anything special (in fact, the only thing special I did was buy him Swiss Cake rolls from the dollar store and bake cookies tonight) but I just wanted a week to chill out and relax before he got home.

This totally screwed me.

Turns out I need to be busy. I need to have things going on every day. Otherwise, I have NO CLUE what day it is or what I am supposed to be doing! That has to be the explanation for:

Wednesday - forgetting a gym appointment. Actually I'm pretty sure I thought that appointment was last week. Anyway, it never made it onto my calendar.

Thursday - Let me just tell you about my grocery store experience on Thursday. Anyone with kids (especially small kids) knows it is pretty tough to get to the store when they're all in a good mood. Especially younger ones because you want them to be full, diaper changed, not sleepy, etc. and for even just two to be on that schedule at the same time is very difficult. So I raced over to Harris Teeter to do a round of triple coupon shopping. I guess I misjudged one of those things because Hunter was starting to get fussy after about 12 coupons (there's a limit of 20). I figured it wasn't worth him getting totally worked up and booked it over to the self-checkout since I hardly had any items (and remember this experience on Wednesday???). Well of course as soon as we stepped up to the lane, Bri started saying she had to go to the bathroom. Visions of puddles on the floor of Harris Teeter filled my head, so I apologized to the cashier, left my cart there, and took her to the bathroom. Now, please note, this is not just going to the bathroom. Oh, no. This is an entire state of events. Now that she can do everything by herself, she does it... very... slowly. Why close the bathroom door once and lock it if you can do it three times? Because how cool is it that I can lock the bathroom door by myself!)(%&*@#(*%&@#)(%. When you're on the toilet, why not just sing, swing your legs, and continuously glance between your legs (why?) but please, only do this when we're in a hurry. Not sitting at home with nothing going on. Anyway, so ten minutes later we get our cart, get to a lane... my money is in the car. Okay, swing the cart back over to the cashier and tell her I'll be right back. Well, of course, like the bathroom, just walking takes forever with Bri. She is constantly distracted and talking to everyone who walks by. We get to the car, get my money, okay, let's go back inside. Get the shopping cart again, go back to a lane, look into the cart.... um, where are my coupons?

My coupons are in the car, where I laid them down so I could get my money.

Cart goes BACK over to the cashier, I stick both kids in a shopping cart this time so I can fly out to the car, at this point I'm just laughing because this is the worst shopping trip ever!

I mean, really, who does stuff like that? Yes, I finally got all my stuff. And didn't forget anything as I was leaving either! Hah!

Friday - Okay, this one is just as good as the shopping trip yesterday. Hunter usually wakes up around 6:15 and eats, then goes back to bed around 6:40 or so, so I sleep until Bri wakes up which is pretty consistently 7:15. I never set an alarm because we never need to leave the house before about 8:30.

This morning, as I went upstairs to get Bri, the only thing on my mind was thinking that she had slept until a little after 8:00 and it felt so good! We didn't have anything to do until a gym appointment at 11:00. So I actually sat down with her to watch her morning episode of Mickey Mouse. We cuddled under a blanket because it was FREEZING this morning and it was so cozy! After the episode, I made her a waffle and started cooking pancakes for myself. Halfway through the first pancake, I glanced at the clock and thought, "Wow, it's 9:00 and Hunter's still asleep. He must have been really tired!" 9:00. Hmm... 9:00. Fridays at 9:00.

Brianna has preschool at 9:00.

They lock the doors at 9:15 (for safety reasons) so I called her director and told her what had happened. I got dressed, stopped breakfast, got both kids awake (Hunter) and dressed (Bri) in about 8 minutes. We drove as fast as possible without really speeding (knowing that that would only slow us down more!) and of course, hit a license check about 2 miles from the school. AARGGHH! Anyway, she just went straight to chapel which she had no problem with, but I mean, what in the world? My brain has just absolutely turned to mush.

I just realized.. oh, please God, don't let me forget to go get Stephen tomorrow.