Thrift store outing

Remember last year on our 12th anniversary?

We pawned the kids off on some grad students, hopped on a trains, and explored a quaint Irish village.

How do you top that?

You don't.

In fact it can be a pretty hard fall from that high.

I did have plans though, big ones. yes indeedie. An elaborate cake, and a picnic by the lake, and something slinky and see through.

Instead this year for our Anniversary I spent all night and day cleaning up my son's puke, running errands,  and taking my other kids to swimming lessons. And my dear hubby was having his first, very stressful, day of summer programs and by late afternoon when he got home we both fell into bed for nothing more than a REAL nap.

"We have to do SOMETHING though " said we.

So we left the kids with grandma and grandpa for an hour (didn't want to be away from the sick kidos any longer than that) and made a quick dash to....a thrift store of course! Jason needed a pair of pants and I needed a water bottle. Aren't we just so romantic?

But it was fun and cute and kidless so we enjoyed ourselves and made fun of the outrageous clothes and I almost talked Jason into a red stripped shirt and he tried to drag my away far too soon telling me I needed "Thrift Store Intervention".

He found a pair of brand new with tags slacks for $3 and when the clerk rang them up she told me "Oh this tag means they are half off." so I yelled over to Jason, without thinking, "Hey hon, good news, your pants are gonna be half off!" And everyone stared.....and Jason got his hopes up for a second until he realized I was just talking about the price of his pants. :-P

I also found myself a brand new stainless steel bottle marked down from $12 to $3 and hope it works better than my old one that Alex could open so I had to drink backwash all the time. Let this one be Alex proof, please!

And I found Rebecca a night light for $1 and now I HAVE to remind myself that her room is DONE and I don't need ANYTHING else for it, except curtains, and to leave those cute pink items alone! Just walk away from the pink. You can do it.

And we picked up the kids and came home and had dinner (E-Mealz day two went great!) and than the other kids started throwing up and the phone was ringing and there was paperwork to be done and dishes to wash and showers to be given and more vomit to be cleaned.....and we laughed and said "It's no last year's adventure but it is kinda nice to be home and normal, our year of travel wore us out."

About Us

The ups and downs and screams and thrills, our life is one long, fast and furious, roller coaster.

At first we sat in the cart while it rolled slowly up the hill, "putt", "putt", "putt" as it slowly squeaked up the track. This was our time in Arkansas - where we were  raised, married, and had our three children. Nothing too exciting but we felt safe and secure as we leaned over the edge to see how high we were getting as we "putted" along.

One day we hit a bump when Jason decided to go back to school and for the next four years we barley hung on as our cart rocked back and forth and tried to buck us out. He was leaving the house at 7am for the hour and a half drive to school which he attended until 3pm, then left school straight for work until 10:30, and another hour and a half drive home arriving at midnight to study, catch a few hours of sleep and start it all again in the morning...5 days a week. I was working 16 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday as a CNA, from 6am until 10pm. He watched the kids on the weekends while I home-schooled them during the week. We never saw each other and we ate a whole lot of beans...but we made it! We reached the top of that hill! He graduated...

...and found out that he had been accepted into grad school in BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND!!! Our roller cart went racing down that hill with us laughing and crying out in terror "Slow this ride down". It was the ride of our life, a wonderful adventure full of more ups and downs. We gave away everything we owned on Freecycle and moved overseas. Our whole year there we spent together 24/7 having amazing discoveries one after another while Jason worked on his master's degree. We fell in love with Belfast and the friends we made there (most of them we found on the Belfast Freecycle!). It's a complicated but endearing city. Having completed his degree he was accepted into the PHD program there and we we excited at the thought of spending 4-5 more years in Belfast but he was unable to secure funding.

Our ride came to a screeching halt as we tried to figure out what to do next, finally we realized that we would have to move to...Minnesota. Oh the horror! All I knew about the place was that it was cold, cold, and more cold. But his parents were there and job options were better. So here we are...he did find a wonderful job as a mental health professional helping troubled children and we did make it through our first winter here but to us it's still just a temporary pit stop. We plan on relocating in about a year or two, to a location more suited to us, there's still a lot more roller coaster riding left in us - soon as we get this cart fixed up again.