Jumping Right Back In

We really didn't have too much time to recover from the big trip.  Tuesday morning Bob had to leave for a TDY to Dayton at 6:00 AM, so he was up and out of the house bright and early!  Tuesday was also Rivendell, so it was right back into the routine.  A new wrinkle in our schedule was that Nathan started rugby practice that day, from 3:00-5:00, so we had to leave at 2:45 to get him there, and it messed up my memory work time!  I could tell I was still tired and just not thinking through things correctly.

As soon as rugby practice was over, we had to rush home, where Lynnea was literally waiting in our driveway to take Nathan, Luke, and Caleb to CAP.  They are having to leave so early because Nathan and Lynnea's daughter are participating in a cadet competition in March, so they are having extra practices. Crazy!

Then we all had to go to CAP to pick everyone up, because Nathan was finally having the pin-on ceremony for his promotion to 2nd lieutenant, the first officer rank, which actually happened back in January.  There was terrible traffic, so we barely made it.  As soon as we all walked in, the commander announced, "We have a promotion tonight!", and I had to walk over to the center of the room!  I just quickly passed Drew off to Jonathan, and it was all so sudden, he just stared and didn't react (whew).  Since Bob was out of town, Luke did the honors on the other side.  This is a really big honor for Nathan, and the result of a lot of hard work!  He also got some good news while we were still in Travis--he got accepted to the USAFA Summer Seminar!

We didn't get home until after 10:00.  Wednesday I woke up at 10:00 to a silent house.  I couldn't believe that Drew or the girls at least weren't up!  And then I realized that Nathan and Luke have their online history class at 9:45 . . . I ran down the hall to get them up, and they were sleeping soundly as well.  Somehow their alarm hadn't gone off, so they had to scramble downstairs and sign in late!  We were all just so tired.

The rest of the week was just kind of a loss, I think.  No one could find the right school books, I could never find time to unpack the suitcases, so they just continued to sit in the upstairs hallway, laundry was everywhere, everything was just chaotic.  I would say it took us until the following Wednesday to have a normal day of school and to feel like things were somewhat back to normal again.  I'm still really tired, but hey, that's basically life for me now.

So was the trip worth all the recovery time?  Absolutely!!  I don't want the kids to think that, because we have a lot of kids, we can't ever do fun, different things.  And I really wanted to do something big as a family before Nathan and Luke go off to college.  Here we had 2 full weeks of time together, making a lot of priceless family memories.  It was so fun!  It also reminded me of just how much I enjoy being around all the kids.  We do a lot as a family here in VA, like eat most meals together, etc., but we are often going in different directions now, and it was so nice to all be mostly together for an extended period of time.   And besides, there aren't that many kids who can say they have ridden on a C-17 or a C-5!  I'm so glad our homeschooling, and Bob's job, allowed us the flexibility to do this, and I am SO thankful for the C's, who hosted us.  It was so good to visit with them!! So the trip was definitely worth it from all aspects!