17 Days, 11 States, 1 Giant Road Trip

Well! Two Four months later and I have finally finished adding pics to the (now backdated) road trip posts from our lovely trip this summer. It was WONDERFUL.

Links here!

Days 1-2: North Carolina: my Grandpa's house, Tweetsie Railroad

Days 3-4: St. Louis: Cardinals game, religious art, a riverboat ride, and did you know the arch is made of metal??? My mind was blown.

Days 4-5: Rural Illinois, including a prairie park (yes that's a thing), and then Iowa, all the corn, Field of Dreams, oh and also we slept in a caboose. And broke into a zoo.

Days 5-6: Wisconsin Dells, yes it's a real place, yes for real, I know it sounds fake but it's real. Very waterpark. Many kitch. Much delightful.

Days 6-11: MinneEFFINGsota, Take Four: the one where I post pics of tractors and grain bins on my blog. And also Northfield, Another Nathan, popcorn and beer, St. Olaf, waterfalls, adults on swings, and Charlotte Booler's fourth birthday! Oh and saying goodbye to Marky. Sad face.

Days 12-17: Southbound! Including me drinking a beer on Hillary's Cincinnati porch swing, and the kids riding boats at Lake Wateree, with surprise appearances by my dad and also Emily! AND THEN WE MADE IT HOME.

Spring Sucktastic (or, Effing Mono)

{Note 5/21: Still playing bloggity catch-up. In re-reading this, I am super glad most of this is over. And May has been... well, exhausting, but in a different way, and much MUCH better than this.}

So! Hi! Hello! It has been a crappy month.

There were some light and easy days (mostly: I got to go on a cruise! with! no! kids!) but basically this spring has exhausted me and kicked my ass and I am all out of feelings about it (that's not true, I am never out of feelings, and sometimes I hate that about myself because again: exhausted) but now that it is (mostly) over, it seems more bloggable, although it is all just going in this one post because although any one of these things would have been hard on its own and deserve its own ranty post, I am out of rants and words about my feelings, if not the feelings themselves (omg was that all one sentence? You know what, I don't even care).

***

Okay so I got mono. Can we just take a moment to note the fact that 33-year-olds do not get mono? That is some bullsh!t for teenagers, right there. Not exhausted moms of three kids.

The diagnosis came two days before Mark started his new job. Meaning he could not miss work. Meaning I had to manage life, and all the kids, and blah blah blah the logistics are boring, but suffice it to say "rest" was not really an option there for a while. And can I just say, my life is super hard with mono. I admit it.

*** 

In the throes of the mono, Charlotte fell down the stairs and sliced her forehead open. She was going up to bed by herself (guilt) for Nathan to tuck her in (guilt) because I was alternating between flat on the couch in fever misery, and crying on the bathroom floor in vommy misery. So she fell. And it was an injury-causing fall. She needed three stitches, she was in pain, I had to manage all three kids at the ER for many hours, by myself, after bedtime, with a mono fever. Also I could not find my glasses anywhere. Not being able to find things makes me crazy. Not wearing my glasses makes me feel super disoriented and out of it, obviously, and a fever makes it worse, obviously. (Nathan suggested I use my old ones. Besides being the six-year-old-hero who tucks his baby sister in bed because mommy is sick, he is apparently also the only voice of reason in my house when I am overwhelmed and throwing up and sick and my child is bleeding from the head OH MAH GAH THAT NIGHT SUCKED SO MUCH.)

A nearby church does a "blanket ministry" for kids whose parents rush
off to the hospital without lovies and such. To that church I say THANK YOU.

So anyway it is over now and the stitches are gone and she is left with a perfect little Frankenstein scar line of stitches and I secretly call her Frankenbooler in my head every time I see it.

***

Okay this is the one that I wasn't sure I would ever tell the internet about, but it turns out I want to: Charlotte let go of my hand and ran into a street in front of a car, and she is fine (fine!) but it was still every bit as traumatic as you would assume. I ran after her and grabbed her, and the person was driving really appropriately slow and was paying attention (insert here times infinity: THANK GOODNESS), and there were slamming breaks and squealing tires but she missed us both.

You always assume you would throw yourself in front of a moving vehicle for your child, but when the day comes that you actually do it, it turns out it is super traumatizing, and you spend many many hours afterwards in tears.

Also, and this seems laughably irrelevant juxtaposed against the bigger picture (she is fine!) but it adds to my horrible Feelings about the whole thing so I am saying it anyway: my pants are all too big (mumble mumble mono something) and they totally fell down to my knees when I ran and lunged into the street. So I was sobbing and scared for my baby girl's life, with my unders showing. It was emotional and embarrassing and yeah, THAT DAY SUCKED A LOT TOO.

I feel very sure this is an event that will haunt my dreams for years. Ooof, is that too heavy? Back to something else.

***

So as if all those (kinda big) things weren't enough, there was also:
- a long-awaited pair of rx sunglasses that the optic assistant broke and had to re-order before I ever got out of the office,
- a broken dryer,
- a g/i bug that hit everyone but Charlotte and me, who fled the scene in immuno-compromised mono panic,
- pool ladders with missing parts,
- a broken heater/ac in the guest house,
- a never-ending saga with diagnosing and fixing a weird smell in the car (we fixed one problem before we realized it was tires, which was a huge pain and involved several trips for purchase/alignment/messed up appointments/etc),
- an extra trip to the ER, right when I thought my mono was better (nope),
- in which the whole (!) hospital was full (FULL) and they treated people in the waiting room,
- a dormer window upstairs leaking rain into our foyer through a light fixture in the ceiling
- our (semi-celebrity) neighbor's kids drinking in our yard on weekends, loudly and while littering

WAIT WAIT I'M NOT DONE.

***

We went on our cruise which was just lovely, but when we got back, the parenting was super hard, like miserable hard, like existential crisis hard, for several weeks (*side eye Nathan*).

AND it turns out while we were on the ship, a cement truck doing work next door had their line explode, and cement blasted all over our car and house (and even one house past ours). And then in cleaning it up, they pressure washed off our house paint. Mark is still working on getting all of this fixed with the contractor.

And, finally and sadly, my engagement and wedding rings never made it off the cruise ship. I am super sad about this. I know it is "just" a Thing, and doesn't change my love or my marriage, but to me it is a Thing that matters. I guess it is also a Thing that you can only lose once and get lucky enough to find it again. *sob*

May will be better.

Catching Up: Some Broke-Ass and Some Lovely

Whoa I am so behind I almost don't know where to start, so hey how about I just going to jump right in with the single biggest thing that has been going on the past few weeks:

-- Mark had surgery on his broke-ass shoulder. The surgery day was a flurry of logistics and helpful friends and plans and backup plans, and involved Anneliese and me sitting for hours in a waiting room, and the days that followed were a flurry of meds and med schedules and Mark dozing in and out of real life from the recliner in our living room, since he couldn't do much else, including lie down flat. But life is coming back to normal! The surgery went well, and besides needing some pregnant-lady drugs to quell his post-anesthesia nausea, he has had no real problems.

The kids were super sweet to him in recovery though. Anneliese offered up Hattie during her own naptime (!) to help Daddy sleep.

And Nathan stuck a note in his lunch box for his first night back to work.

 The hard part now is he will be in a sling for a MONTH and it is his RIGHT shoulder. But he says he can do all the kids alone (he can't pick up Charlotte easily, but maybe he won't have to? and he says he can do her seat belt buckle once she climbs in?) and I am choosing to believe him because I really really want to go to Charleston this weekend as originally planned. So, three cheers for Mark, flying solo, with one arm and three kids! (Three cheers and a prayer. No really.)

-- The van got broke-ass too. One day after Mark's surgery, like, the very next day, the van started driving all wonky and turrible and the end result was a tow truck hauling it a way to put in a whole new transmission while Mark and I watched, while crying tears full of dollar signs. (I'm still going to Charleston.)

-- We went to a fall festival. A church down the road from our church had a little fair, and in the interest of getting the kids (read: Mark and his broke-ass shoulder) out of the house, we loaded them up and went. It was sweet!

Full of just what you'd expect: a fire truck and ambulance for the kids to visit, face painting, a barbecue food truck, raffles and a bake sale, bounces houses that your toddler gets stuck on the top of til your sling-armed husband climbs up for rescuing which is probably an approved post-op activity, right? (PICTURE ME MAKING WIDE EYES.) Look at the pictures of my children's face paintings so you don't think about how bad that could have been.

-- We got new hymnals. In some worlds, this would be the most uninteresting thing a person could mention, but lucky for you, I don't live in that world, because I am nerdily excited about this thing. It has been in the works for years, the first new hymnal in decades, and they are a beautiful shade of purple and full of beautiful songs set in a beautiful font, and they smell good too. Yeah I said it.

Also a nice lady from church, who also went to Furman, who was/is a harp teacher there (yeah she travels a lot) paid for a ton of copies of the new hymnal, and look what I found in the front of mine in the choir room the first night we got to use them:

Y'all. That is so lovely. It made me smile for days. So lovely!

Hey remember that time I blogged about hymnals? I stand by that decision.

-- I am not having a super day today. I am in a frenzy getting things ordered/ready for Anneliese's rainbow birthday party next weekend, getting laundered and packed for my trip to Charleston this weekend, and trying to stay on top of everything at the house too (Mark usually does SO MUCH, y'all. So much. Him being in a sling just reminds me of that and makes me feel thankful for him). Anyway I feel chaotic and I should make a bunch of lists to make myself feel more in control but even that feels like too much so I am blogging about church fairs and bouncy houses and hymnals instead, because obviously.

Also all my bras hurt. Like the boning in the side is digging into me at the bottom. Did I wash them wrong? Are my straps just not doing their job? Why did they all change at once? Did the metal (plastic?) piece slip out of some end of the faric? Is this better or worse than blogging about the super smell of my new hymnal?

Also I can't believe I am saying this (warning! heresy ahead!) but I am almost convinced that life is easier when my kids don't nap. I mean, the evenings kinda suck when they are overtired and at their limits. But fighting the girls to stay quiet in their rooms when they just don't want to, and aren't super tired, is making us all miserable. I can stomach it for about an hour and then watching them color together down here in the bonus room while I type or read or whatever is... well, easier. I can't give up on naps altogether, though, because A- Charlotte legitimately still needs it, and B- I still want to be able to reserve the right to send them all to their rooms for alone time when *I* legitimately need it. So I'm in nap limbo. Super decisive about it too, can you tell?

Okay I will just be over here making all those party and packing lists now. Happy October!

Things that are New

Somehow I got very behind and it seems the easiest way to catch up is just to say hey! here are some things that are new!

--- First and most importantly, I have a new computer! Well, a new computer-ish thing. It is a Chromebook and apparently they have existed for some time and I have even seen their commercials but somehow without noticing them or without noticing that it could be something for me. But it is! It's basically a computer that is mostly for internetting. (Um, hello. Me!) Think of it as a cheaper-than-a-tablet, with a real keyboard and usb ports to plug in various accoutrements.

I could sing its praises all the livelong day but I will use it for another month before I give any Official Opinions. In the meantime, just know I am thrilled to have a second computer. (Mark and I were the only people in America still sharing a computer at home. I am sure of it.) And now that Nathan is learning to email, the demand on computer sharing around here is just too high.

Also it has a lowercase keyboard, which is a really small thing that makes me really happy for some reason. Pretty!

--- Nathan lost his glasses for close to three weeks and then Anneliese found them in the back of the van where I had looked a hundred times, because that's how our life is?

--- Mark has a broke ass shoulder. This is kind of old news but I haven't gotten all bloggity about it because we didn't know what was happening and, you know, medical stuff. Not always for sharing. The short version is he threw a softball too hard (yes, another church softball injury) and landed in the ER and then after x-rays and MRI's and seeing an orthopedic shoulder specialist several times, he either has an avulsion fracture (where a piece of the bone is completely chipped off) (sounds bad, but apparently less painful and problematic than other kinds of breaks) or a chunk of calcium buildup has chipped off, and if it's the latter, then what the eff did he do to his shoulder to build up that much calcium, etc etc etc. (I don't understand it all. If you couldn't guess.)  So he has physical therapy twice a week for the next six weeks, to attempt to strengthen surrounding muscles to pull the bad joint back into place and avoid surgery (or something). Fingers crossed. Oh! And his knees have been messed up for years too, so since we're already at our deductible they're working on how to slide his kneecaps back into place better as well. Yay! (?)

--- I took Nathan and three of his friends (triplets!) to Monkey Joe's. Besides one smashed face and a bloody tooth that I prayed was that loose before our outing, it was a lovely easy afternoon with his sweet friends. (Not as violent as it sounds.)

--- My mom came to visit and took Nathan to a special exhibit at our science museum (his beloved "Dinosaur Museum") and somehow they came home with not only a stuffed dinosaur that roars but a bumper sticker! Which Nathan is hell-bent on using as a bumper sticker! On the van! I dreaded the day they would start begging to sticker up our cars but I never dreamed it would involve an acrocanthosaurus.

(Good news Marmie, your new acro bumper sticker is in the mail! Nathan is very excited to see it ON YOUR CAR next month! You're welcome!)

--- People have been knocking on my door too much recently. Yes, this is worth mentioning because I soooooo haaaaaaaate it. HATE IT. Someone knocked before 8am last week. I ignored it and they came back half an hour later. I ignored it again and then when I tried to leave home an hour after that, there was a backhoe in my driveway.

Oh and three men standing in a giant hole in my front yard. Mark and I knew nothing of any of this ahead of time. (Something to do with the house demolition across the street? Gas line work? WHO KNOWS.)  Anyway I guess the knocking guy at least had a reason that affected me. (They moved the backhoe. It was no problem really. I hated the knocking more than the construction.)

But later that day, a lady from the ACLU knocked and asked me to sign some petitions for her. (I only answered because ignoring door knocks earlier had bitten me in the ass with a backhoe.) I almost couldn't form words. Whatever you're for, lady, I'm now against, because you came to my house uninvited to get it. At night. And the dog barked and woke two sleeping children. Seriously does this kind of solicitation work on anyone???

Don't come to my house uninvited and ASK ME FOR SOMETHING. How is this still not only legal but acceptable in our society? I have vented about this before, yes? It is so rude I can't even fathom how normal people seem to find it. If you come over, it should only be because 1- you're delivering something, 2- you're invited, 3- you're a neighbor with a normal neighborly question or neighborly thing that neighbors do, or 4- you're close enough to our family to come in without invitation, which means you just let yourself in, no knocking required. Pro tip: if you see someone cut the wires to their doorbell, it probably doesn't mean they want you to KNOCK INSTEAD, take the hint.

Okay I will go retreat to my new life as a hermit in the woods now.

And not even mention the girl who came by three times within an hour last week (during a blackout!) even when she saw us and heard us inside and knew we were home but not answering, and then when I finally opened the door only to ask her (super nicely, I really was, I promise) to take us off her list since we weren't interested, she launched into her spiel anyway and I could have yanked her backpack off through her nostrils OH LOOK AT THAT I MENTIONED IT.

(Yes, I recognize this might be more my issue than society's. I still hate it.) (Now, deep breaths and moving on.)

--- We took Anneliese to the dentist for her first real cleaning (she has had a million checkups and x-rays for her janky tooth, which is coming back down just fine btw) and she was nervous but did great and it was such a non-ordeal that I had to remind myself for all the times she tries my patience and tests the limits, in some ways my brave little middlest extrovert is the easiest kid of all.

Although I make no explanation for what she or Hattie are wearing. (Fancy dress, rain boots, PJs? Okay.)

And now you're caught up on the new things.

Minivan Dad

If I'm a minivan mom, then guess who's a minivan dad.

Your daily Mark

I don't know, I think it's kinda hott.

2011: Year in Review

Well, 2011 is up. Die Zeit ist um.  And I don't even know what to say about it, because I don't know how I feel about it. Am I glad for the notion of a fresh start, after a particularly trying season?  Or am I sad to let go of what will always be a landmark year for our family?  I don't know.  This year has been... a lot.

The year of Charlotte. Our sweet youngest child, the tiny little girl who makes our family feel complete. She's the most important thing that happened this year, by far.

The year of  the house that love built. Our new home was more than just a simple purchase and bystander renovation. It was a hot mess of a sales contract, a months-long rebuilding project, seven straight weekends of diy painting, sixty-seven sample paints on the house walls, and three tanker trucks full of water to fill the pool. It was a bonding time and a family time and a friend time and a laughing time and a crying time. Labor of love indeed.

The year of good marriage.  Mark and I have made no secret of the fact that we work really hard at our marriage, and have no qualms admitting that we've been through several rounds of marriage counseling (which have been extremely beneficial) over the years. And while this year did have a few low relationship moments, they were very few. Everything felt really good with us throughout the renovation, the pregnancy, the sale of our old house, and most parenting moments, especially Charlotte's labor and delivery and her newborn stage. We have been on the same page and seem in a good groove of supporting each other in the right kinds of ways. It's not perfect and it never will be, and I know harder years will come again, but for now I have to say I'm kinda proud of us. It's been a high-ranking marriage year, for sure. I feel very in love, and count it as nothing short of a small miracle to have Marky in my life, as a wonderful father and husband. Oh and I'm totally, officially and finally, a good wife (ahem). Let's just say we're both pretty danged happy with each other. ;-)

The year of ppd. My official blog admission: after Charlotte was born I was diagnosed with post-partum depression. I don't want to go into a lot of detail, although maybe in later braver months, I will. All I'm brave enough to say right now is that it was unexpected and severe. I believe I will heal, but mental illness has probably changed me forever. And sadly it will be a huge marker, much bigger than this short blurb indicates, of how I remember this year.

The year of the friend cars. I never thought I would be the mom who buys into character-licensed stuff, but the friend cars, they got me. We watch them, we talk about them, we wear their shirts and stick their stickers and read about them. We love them, and shamelessly so. Haters gonna hate, but Finn McMissile is sexy and he knows it.

The year of Another Nathan. Remember when Mark and I functioned here in Raleigh without our wonderful friend Another Nathan? No? Yeah us either. He's been a good friend to us for several years now, but all three of us have bonded so much this year that it's officially a best friend situation. Besides the stuff the internet already knows, like helping with the renovation and painting, being an awesome set of third hands to help with the kids, encouraging Mark and doing their ASP trips together, this year has been marked by a hundred fun nights of grilling and swimming and movies and red wine and cookies. It seems he's truly leaning on us for support in his home away from home, while also being just about the most amazing listener on the planet. We're all emotionally connected more than even just a year ago. We're honored to be his Raleigh family.

The year of the minivan. And then there were five.  Three in car seats.  Which means I let go of a last vestige of mobile professional Erin, and made the full transition to minivan mom. I can't remember now why I resisted so long. I love that our family is big enough to fill up a van.  I love that our road trips  now involve movies.  I love that we have three rows of dancing passengers when we're out running errands on a sunny day. Um, my life as a minivan mom is rockin awesome.

It was the best of times and the worst of times and now it's over. How I feel about that doesn't matter as much as embracing what's to come next, and hanging on for dear life.  Okay 2012, bring it.

And Then I Found Five Dollars***

So.  Another Nathan and I went on a road trip to DC last weekend.  It was... something. 

It started with me forgetting the baby and having to go back to get her, and it ended with one of us (I'll never tell who) getting a speeding ticket. And in the middle:

- A Starbucks pit stop started great, then turned into a dead car battery.  A nice man named Brian who worked at a nearby Harley dealership gave me a ride in his red pickup truck. (Sketchy?) And a nice lady mechanic named Carla installed a new battery.  Lesson learned: everyone in Roanoke Rapids, NC is ridiculously nice.

- I might or might not have had to climb into the back of the van during an interstate traffic jam, to deal with a car seat poop explosion (oh yes) and nurse* the baby.

- Nathan** accidentally sent a hilariously inappropriate text message to Mark.  I laughed about it for three hours.  And by three hours I mean three days.  And by three days I mean I'm still laughing about it.

- We somehow used all of the six cupholders in the center console, at the same time. I hereby retract any previous statements about how there are definitely too many cupholders in the minivan.

- We sat in an incredibly frustrating amount of traffic in and around various DC suburbs.  Good lord the traffic. But a friend said that me cruising around there in my minivan pretty much made me Michelle Obama. So it was maybe worth it?

We feel the exact same way about DC traffic

- I had a phone conversation with a businessman named Curtis, which apparently left him convinced Nathan and I were both sketchy confused weirdos. Me!  I'm articulate! And not sketchy! What was his problem?! 

- We saw Merritt! And had dinner with her and spent the night with her in her new house. And didn't take any pictures.  So enjoy this cell phone pic of the two of us in my old house instead.

- Oh and we totally took the baby to a bar.

- I co-slept with Charlotte on an air mattress (this, despite the two empty cribs in Merritt's house).  But it was way awesomer than it sounds.  No tears! All night!

- I learned that Another Nathan, rule-follower though he may be, cannot follow GPS directions.  Not even a little. I had to hold the phone and read it and personally tell him where to go in order to have any chance at all of making the correct turns.

road trips give me good hair

- I fell (fell!) into the bottom floor of a row house building.  I have graceful entrances down to an art form.

- I had an emotional breakdown directly in front of the White House.  Know what happens when you're driving a minivan in a traffic jam and there's a baby crying and you're hungry, and you get totally overwhelmed with life and then you start crying too?  Your best friend force-feeds you crackers.  True story.

- I drove on the wrong side of the road in downtown DC.  I ran a red light in downtown DC.  Please no one let me drive in urban areas anymore, mmkay?  I'm not good at it. (And I'm still never telling which one of us got that ticket on the way home.)

- I made Nathan wear Charlotte in an infant carrier. He looks very sweet, no?

- Nathan called me a Boss Hog.  Oh yes he did. (He wasn't calling me bossy or fat though, why would you even assume that?? Bad blog reader!)  And then we ate in a restaurant of the same name. Somehow we went into the service entrance.  No one batted an eye.

- Oh and did I mention that because the van is still relatively new, we didn't know the code to restart the radio after the battery died?  So aside from Nathan singing pop songs to me (not that that wasn't awesome in its own way), our whole adventure was sans music. Seriously.

code error 5: not our favorite radio station

But you know what?  In the midst of all the sweat and tears (and I mean both of those quite literally), dang did we laugh a lot.  And I think we might be better friends than we were before we went.  So... road trip win.  For sure.

* Just kidding Marky, I probably didn't do that.

** Let the record show, that is exactly how it happened.  No matter who tells you otherwise.

*** No, seriously. I found five bucks on the ground during the dead battery fiasco.

A Year Ago, A Different Life

I'm feeling weirdly nostalgic today.  My babies, both canine and human, are in Huntersville for the week ten days.  That's longer than I've ever been away from Nathan or Anneliese!  It's nice to have some quiet and stillness here at home, but it might be a little too peaceful right now.

Mark and I keep looking at each other and we don't know what to do with ourselves.  I mean, we have no real plans.  (Obviously.  Baby due any minute.)  (Well, except that pesky hospital bag which still isn't packing itself.)

A year ago today, we were cruising through the Bahamas.  The idea of a third baby had been shelved; there was no Sprout and no plan for her.  There was no robbery or flood or feeling detached from our home.  There was no new house or renovation. 

So last night when we were driving home alone from our dinner date, in our minivan, to a still-feels-kinda-new house where no children or pups were waiting to greet us, with plans to maybe jump in our pool later.... yeah.  I couldn't shake this feeling of who are we??  where are we? and how did we get here??

I'm so excited for Sprout -- to meet her and hold her and bring her home to this house, which I think will help solidify it as home and special.  And don't get me wrong, I like our minivan (more than I want to admit) and I love a weekend with just Marky.  But wow it's hard not to feel like an awful lot has changed, awfully fast. 

It's weird, a little bit.

But I'm going to stop thinking about the weirdness, embrace the changes (they're exciting! and for the better! all of them!) and really enjoy whatever days of downtime I have before I go into labor.  Today I slept well past 10am, and my current to-do list includes internetting, fun shopping with Mark, sitting around reading the last of the Hunger Games books, a movie, and maybe a pedicure. 

Yeah.  Life's tough when your baby is late.

How I Became a Minivan Mom

How I became a minivan mom in just one week...

Day 1. Tearing through car seat options to find some (any) combination that will work to fit three in either of our backseats. 

Days 2-6. Insert here: {Many hours logged on mommy message boards, many hours researching the narrowest car seats on the market, many hours chasing down said narrow car seats, several hot and sweaty afternoons attempting to wrestle and install them into my car's backseat in a safe and buckleable way, several moments of self-ridicule when I realized we currently had *thirteen* car seats, boosters, and bases in our home and vehicles, some crying, many hours of internet research on used minivans and the market value for my current car, a few sweaty afternoons on car lots, more crying, several hours of number crunching and budget work, even more sweaty hours driving around Raleigh trying to sell one car and test drive a dozen others, a few in-vain reattempts to squeeze three seats in the back of my car, a couple of late-night conversations about what in the world is going on with my car's ever-quickly dying engine anyway, multiple trips to notaries and banks and safe deposit boxes, one last sweaty evening of car shopping and *lots more crying*}

Day 7.  Minivan mom.

photo by Nathan*

The end.  (Or... the beginning?  I still can't believe it has come to this.)

*who loves the van already, yet still doesn't know it has a dvd player.  And the first person to tell him will be the victim of official minivan mommy wrath.