Trip Recovery

I keep meaning to sit down and tell you about the trip we took last week.  Of course I didn’t mention it because you aren’t supposed to say so on your blog when you are leaving town, right?  I would have hated for any potential burglars to show up here and step in chicken poop while trying to break into our house and steal our stuff. 

Anyway, we traveled for a total of about 1500 miles.  We had a great time visiting with our Georgia family, but can’t seem to recover from the total exhaustion that a trip like that results in.

Beatrix, for the record, is our worst traveler ever.

There was a point when Jonny asked me to remind him to borrow some sewing needles from his mom so that he could poke himself with them while driving home.

Maybe I will find the time and energy to talk about all the positive aspects of the trip, but I am guessing, not.  We do love our family.  Visiting them just makes us too tired.

It seems that I am having a sort of reversal of trimesters here.  My first I had plenty of energy, but here I am in my second, completely drained.

But then I did just give up coffee and I did travel many miles with a dog and five children.

On the material side of things, my mom gave us a couch, chair, ottoman, and the rocking chair she rocked me in when I was a baby (I have been wanting it for years.  you can see it in the background of this picture) and even a nice wool rug to sit it on.

Of course that meant driving home pulling a trailer so we had to take that 600 miles extra slow.

But now my living room is rid of old Ikea slipcovered items that were falling to pieces literally.  I love Ikea for these years of raising children when we can’t afford to and don’t want to spend a lot of money on furniture, but those things needed to go.  My living room looks beautiful now!  Of course, much of the rest of my house is a wreck.  As one room gets cleaned, somehow another turns into a pit of destruction. 

Trip recovery is a long process.  Where did all this stuff come from?

I am thinking about taking a break from teaching math during Advent.  That seems to be our most time consuming subject and I am happy with the progress we have made so far this school year.  Were I a better planner, we would be taking the month off from school entirely to focus on the season, but I can’t do that this year because I am having a baby in May and I want to be finished for the year before it is born.  But wouldn’t that be great?  Just taking the whole month to prepare for Christmas?

At any rate, I am glad to be home and excited to host another Yarn Along tomorrow!  And I am trying not to be too sad about the fact that I only had time to look at the first twenty or so of the Yarn Along posts last time.  I love seeing what everyone is doing, but we were getting ready to leave town week before last, and then of course we were traveling all last week and I just haven’t had much computer time.  I look forward to seeing everyone’s posts tomorrow!  See you then!