mama, i'm comin' home

It’s another scorcher out there. 102.7 - lovely.  I think snow is sounding better and better all the time.  Feel free to remind me of that in February.

We just got back from a mini-vaca to the east side of the state, visiting family and friends.  We don’t have kids. We have a dog and a cat. And the cat can fend for herself, plus she hates traveling, so she stayed home.  So just us and Nella. You’da swore we were hauling around triplet 3 year olds, the amount of crap I had packed. The food, the dish, the toys, the bed, the play pen (don’t laugh, she needs it, she’s a terrorist, remember??)…  and don’t forget the big huge kangaroo she loves. Anything to keep a 4 month old puppy happy.  I’ll chalk this all up to good practice for the time there ARE kids AND the dang dog in the car and we’re heading back to the ‘east side’ to visit.

Nella didn't care for being stuck in the back for 350 miles.

CHEESE! pool time with Lilly.

post-swim snacks are serious stuff: a lolly pop and cheetos, with her shoes on the wrong feet. I LOVE 3 year olds :)

So we spent the hot weekend catching up with everyone.  Swimming, eating, rodeo-ing (ok, we just watched that).  On Friday, Nella managed to biff it down the steps following the big dogs, “luckily” right before her vet appointment that we already had scheduled to get her micro-chipped (please do that for your dog, BTW, so they are returned home safely if they get lost)… so Nella got her first x-rays.  Let me tell you, listening to her cry while they held her leg straight to x-ray was kinda traumatic for me. New mama syndrome, I guess.  ANYWAY, she just sprained her knee and was sent home on couch rest and pain meds.  Do you want to guess how easy it was to keep her “resting”? If you’ve met her, you know, she rested for about 6 hours, cause it hurt, and then she was back to hobbling around as fast as she could.  The moral of the story is, she’s doing much better now. 

Rob and his scary beard grilling for us.

The yummy shrimp my mom made.

She loved going out and "hunting" at the farm. And she did pretty dang good, too.

Nella meeting the foster calvies, Mabel and Marvin/Norman.

Not sure who's walking who, Tyson or Nella??

SO TIRED from a big weekend. She slept the entire way home.

It was great to see everyone.  I even ventured up to the MCU, my old nurse stomping grounds, and really just wanted to put some scrubs on and jump back on in.  Really. Our family and friends are so wonderful.  They are the kind of people we are lucky to be able to miss when we’re gone, because they welcome us home with open arms. Home, by the way, is a very ambiguous term at this point – we’re not sure where home is – but we’re working on it.  When we were pulling into Mitchell Thursday night, it sure felt like coming home.  But, on the flip side of that coin, walking through the trailer house door on Sunday night to our sweet Gertie's meows welcoming us was a relief and a comfortable place to rest our travel-weary heads.  Maybe for a while, we’ll have two homes. Two hearts.  Although, I’ll forever be a flat plains girl. The Hills are pretty, but they don’t have anything on my prairie. 

Sun set at the farm. Sure miss these. Home sweet home.