Vacation, Day Eleven: HOME!

We woke up painfully early (after yesterday anyway) this morning in order to have the car packed and ready to go when Nathan got up (mom said he had been sleeping until at least 8, and we needed to be on the road by 9 at the latest). We had to leave a lot of his stuff at her house, actually, since it had taken two other trips to get it down to Huntersville in the first place! (My grandpa's birthday and when Mark's mom came to visit a few weeks ago.) Man, babies have a lot of stuff. And we're light packers compared to some parents, I promise!

It was so wonderful to see Nathan again. He seems so much bigger, just in a little over a week. He was happy (in a wide-eyed and overwhelmed way, not a giddy way) to see us, and it felt so good to have him in my arms and smell him (yes, even the early-morning stinky-diaper smell) and hear his little voice saying Mommy? and kiss his little head. I got my canine fix when I was reunited with Bowden and Simon last night, but I didn't get the human fix until this morning. It was great to pile all our babies (and their stuff) in the car and hit the road for home.

We didn't make it in time for me to be working at noon, in case you were curious. But that's partly because we stopped at my company's Raleigh office on the way home to collect my files from the colleague who was covering for me last week, and to let Nathan stretch out a little. So that's kind of work, right? The good thing is I don't think anyone really cared.

We have another hectic week coming up, with work to catch up on, and Nathan moving to the "young toddler" class at his mother's morning out program tomorrow (how is that possible??), and 8 meetings, a gymboree music session, 2 rehearsals (one for mark and one for me), 2 disciple classes, and a morning (outside of normal office hours) conference call to attend, all before hitting the road again on Friday afternoon for a mom-daughter weekend (with my mom and two friends) to do a 1.7 mile swim between two piers in Wrightsville Beach. But I can't even think about how I am going to manage all that right now, because I am just very happy to be home.