We couldn’t resist. In spite of our late start and another stop on the way, we also stopped to eat with some friends on our way home, this time meeting them in their home. Do you remember the first time we met them?

We didn’t get home until after 1 AM but it was worth the sweet fellowship! Not to mention the fact that Emily sent me home with a bag of Starbucks Caramel Macchiato Truffles…

While we were still on the road, after leaving our friends’ house, one of the younger children asked what time we would get home.

“Very late,” I answered. “In the middle of the night?” she asked. “Yes, something like that.”

“Midnight, then!” she concluded.

“No, it will be later than midnight,” I added. “Maybe much later.” She was confused. “But isn’t midnight the middle of the night?”

This was where hubby chuckled. He softly observed that midnight is the middle of the night when you’re little. But that doesn’t work in our house. We tend to be night owls, and in our house even the little ones stay up late. I just answered her a little louder: “No, midnight isn’t the middle of the night in our house.”

The house was a little stale and stinky when we crawled through the door, but home was a welcome sight. We let the dogs in, brought in most of our luggage and odds & ends, and collapsed into our beds just before 2 AM.

My hardworking hubby slipped out of bed at some six-ish or seven-ish hour to go to work, leaving the rest of us to sleep late. I love that guy.

When we finally got up, we got busy returning to normalcy:

• we unpacked all the suitcases and hauled them down to the she
• we started laundry; bathed the stinky little Yorkie dog
• we started a crock pot of beans
• we did more laundry
• we sorted through all the odds and ends that came home with us
• we made bread (This will be a post in itself. There’s even a video.)
• we did more laundry
• we paid a couple of bills that just couldn’t wait until normalcy was achieved
• we sorted and culled boxes and boxes of hand-me-downs that we picked up from an aunt on the way home
• we ironed, folded and put away a mountain of clean laundry

Then it was reward time: we called my mom to see if we could come visit her and the kids, my 4 youngest sibs aged 10-13.

Oops. They were 80 miles north visiting the new grandbaby and wouldn’t be back until the next day. We were disappointed but too tired to fuss over it. I let the kids vegetate in front of a movie while I took a much-needed nap. Does anyone else think it’s funny how often my posts mention sleep?

We’re in Fort Worth, about halfway home. Everyone is tired and cranky and we’re ever-so-ready to be home. I’m glad we did this, but I always forget just how much work it involves and how little sleep!  I should add that most of my work was done from a chair, but just watching everyone else work so hard made me tired.

I could think of a lot to whine about right about, but instead I’ll just pray for a safe trip home. Due to amazing timing and coinciding plans, my mom and 4 youngest sibs (who live in OKC where we just visited them) will be in San Antonio this week, so we’ll get to see them again already!

I have learned that:

• Moms should wear steel toed boots. I can’t count how many times the girls have stepped on my sandaled toes.
• I shouldn’t have worn sandals. A cold front hit right after we arrived.
• Another reason I shouldn’t have worn sandals: my left foot is swollen again.  I’d much rather have it hidden inside a nice boot.
• The lunch hour is very quiet.
• The 15 minutes after lunch hour is NOT quiet.
• I suspect that I’m scary when I have 6 hours of sleep and a head cold. The readers who stopped by to say hi didn’t stay for long.
• A clean diaper may be good for wiping up spilled coffee on tables full of books and CDs, but I dare you to try it with a straight face.
• A small boy in a large hat will get a lot of second looks.
• With 8 children, you can still get funny looks even at homeschooling conferences. This doesn’t surprise me at the grocery store, but it does surprise me at a gathering of homeschoolers. I guess we really have a lot of kids now.

It’s my first time in Oklahoma, and we’re getting the full Oklahoma experience: on our first day here, the sky was dark and rain was falling as we left the convention center. We were heading up to my parents’ house for dinner when they called to encourage us to hurry because there was a tornado warning for the area we were coming from.

Apparently the storm was following us, because just as we pulled into Mom and Dad’s driveway the omnipresent tornado sirens started wailing. We sat down in front of the news report to see what was happening, and my parents told me that it’s like Monday Night Football in Oklahoma. They just watch the weather to see where the tornadoes are.

Later that night, we were awakened in our hotel room by the sound of hail pounding the building. Mom had mentioned that as another Oklahoma hazard. Texas has venomous insects and reptiles, Oklahoma has weather.

Tonight at my parents’ house, the news featured endless photos of funnel clouds and people’s hands holding hailstones of impressive proportions, like the game highlights after a good football match-up.

We turned to the computer for more exciting photos: my newborn niece back in Texas, born just a few hours earlier.

Sigh…my sister is skinny again and holding a sweet new baby girl, and I’ll be getting bigger and bigger for another 8.5 weeks.  So will my feet.  And my hips are hurting a lot lately.  Oh well.  I’m pretty sure that the discomforts of pregnancy are God’s tool for getting us ready to face the discomforts of labor.  At this rate, I will be sooooo ready by late June.