Ulog #1: Hackett Family Vacation: First and probably last.

Hey hey! We are home from our trip and we all survived! (Barely)

This trip was filled with bumps, bruises, potty accidents and crying. And no sleep. Like none. At all.

The kids are so used to the routine at home that perhaps I've made them inflexible to change. I dunno. All I do know is, I won't be going anywhere again anytime soon. This trip triggered so many flashbacks and anxiety attacks for me that I really didn't know if I would make it the whole trip without having a nervous breakdown. Thank God for @chackett and his ability to keep calm under pressure.

What could have happened to make me feel this way?, you might ask. Well, since I've only got until the kids wake up from nap to write this, I'll just make a list. Ready?

1. Brand new car seat cover had the strap break off before we even got to the ticket counter at sea tac on the way there.

2. Flight out of sea tac has Chris sitting alone with the kids and me one row in front of them.
   Cue 2 children fighting over how they wanna sit with mommy and start climbing over the seats! 😐

3. 5 hour car ride with 3 year olds who haven't and won't nap. 😑

4. 3 year olds refuse to sleep at aunties house. Need tv on to fall asleep. This only half works because they won't actually fall asleep to the show, so we have to keep reminding them it's time to sleep when the tv goes off. Sleep timer malfunctions every freaking time and they don't nap. Won't sleep at night unless both Chris and I were in the room. So no staying up late visiting with family members. 😔

5. Our schedule was packed for the first 2 days with the prep for the graduation and the party and then the actual graduation and party! The kids were tired, cranky and becoming dehydrated.

6. The dehydration caused some explosive poops for Simon and we had to throw away a pair of shorts in the village inn parking lot. 😯

7. River wet her pants on the way to lunch one day and we had forgotten the diaper bag at the house. Once we got her changed and were ready to head back to meet the fam at the restaurant, Simon refused to go. So I stayed back with him at the house and Chris brought me back some food. This was a minor annoyance to me, not that big of a deal. But I'm not sure if the family was upset we didn't come back to the restaurant or not. 🤔

8. And THEN! my mom calls to tell me that one of our big garage doors is up and it wasn't when they left a few hours earlier. No one should have even been in there unless it was them, so we were pretty concerned. That door is kind of broken though, so we think it was just a malfunction. But thank goodness we have my parents here to look out for that or we could have been robbed big time. 😐

9. Night before the graduation, Simon and River were playing with their uncle James. Running from our room we stayed in, through the kitchen to the living room to say "BOO!", and then run away. Simon decided to pull his shirt up over his face while he was running and slammed right into the corner of the doorway.

Immediate goose egg on the forehead.

Now, I'm not the mom that overreacts when her kids get hurt. I'm usually pretty calm. But this shook me. I've never seen anything like that before and it looked BAD right when it happened. But I think I cried longer than he did.

I knew full well that he would be fine, but after the accident he had in 2016, You can read my old post on it here , my head went to that dark place again and I relived that scene in my head for the first time this year. 😭

The graduation itself was very lovely and for having over 400 students graduating, it didn't take all that long. But that didn't matter to the twins. They were bored before they ever started handing out the diplomas. Chris had to take them out of the stadium for a while to play at the park. River promptly fell and smashed her face above her eye. 😐 Chris came back with them once they started with the diplomas. So he got to see his nephew do that part. But after that, the kids were acting up again and we had to go sit at the car with them. 😑

Now I know why parents say they need a vacation to recover from vacation. It's all work when you're a parent. There's very little time for anything else. Chris and I tried to make sure we each got some alone time with family members to chat without kids interrupting. I think we did pretty good teamwork there!

@chackett and I only had one opportunity to venture out sans kids and enjoy each others company though. But it was nice, and we got to have Sonic! I'm addicted to the ice they make and we don't have a sonic in town at home. 😂

And to top it all off.... when we got to Denver airport to go home...River opened up my little keychain pouch on my purse as we were standing in the security line. I thought only my emergency chapstick was in there. But no. There was also an emergency half a joint that I stonerifically forgot was in there.

I figured that it had gone unnoticed at sea tac on the way there, I better just play it cool and pray they don't find it.

They didn't.

But you can be damn sure they checked the open package of nutter butter bites we had in the backpack. Insert sarcastic laughter here.

Ooh well. At least I didn't end up in jail over some stupid shit.

I'll leave you with the few pics I managed to get that showed happiness. These are how I want to remember this trip. I can't wait to settle back into our little routine and for @chackett to be home again. It feels like I didn't hardly get any time with him this trip. But honestly, for his family, I'd go through any amount of annoyance to be with them. They're my family too, and while I complain about the traveling and say we'll never do it again, we will. I know we will. But venting helps. At least for me. 😂



(The whole family enjoying some skip bo)

Thanks for reading if you got through all that!
And sorry for being mia on here last week, now you know why. 🤣

Love and light to all!