"These things always happen when you are away...."

When I was a baby, my dad traveled out of town for work on occasion. To say I was a mischievous child would be an understatement. My parents often tease me that they didn't know if I would make it past my 2nd birthday....I think it was just lack of supervision :) At any rate, my dad tells the story that each time he would call home, my brother (eight years older than me) would answer the phone and when dad asked how everyone was, he would reply "Dad, these things always happen when you are away..." Well I think I finally know what that means. My parents left for Italy and a Mediterranean cruise on April 26. When they return tomorrow that will make 19 days that they have been gone. Back in August, right after school started, they left for an Alaskan Cruise in which they were gone 17 days. I just knew Will would get sick and not be able to go to daycare and my Plan B (my parents) would be gone and I would have to take off work right at the beginning of school. As Murphy (as in Murphy's law) would have it, we went to the pediatrician a few days after my parents were gone only to be scheduled for Will to have tubes put in and his adnoids taken out the next week. Will had never had surgery at this point in his short little life, so it only made sense that when my parents left us, this would happen. We survived and I only ended up having to take off 3 days of work. I teased my parents when they planned this trip that I was going to go ahead and prepare myself for Will to need an appendectomy or something major! Well let's review what all has happened since my parents departure...
They left town on April 26...
-On April 27th F5 tornadoes ripped through our state...F2 tornadoes ripped through their neighborhood leaving my grandmother and uncle (who live in their basement with assisstance) without power on and off for several days. They were lucky and their house suffered no damage, just the loss of a few big trees.
-On April 28th Will threw up 20 minutes after I dropped him off at school. Luckily, John was going into work a little late this day and he hadn't left yet. He had no other choice but to pick him up and stay home with him. Will couldn't go to school Friday either, but thankfully John's sister Stephanie helped us out and kept him so I wouldn't have to take a day.
-On May 1st news broke that the terrorist we had been hunting down for 10 years had finally been caught and killed...the US citizen travel alert went up and of course my parents are on a cruise ship whose next stop was Turkey...great.....
-Will returned to school on May 2, only to throw up all over me as I was putting him to sleep on the night of May 3. At 8pm, I had to put in for a sub, run up to the school and make sub plans so something would be prepared for my kids the next day (it is days like that that having a desk job would be much easier!!) Don't get me wrong, I love the chance to spend a day loving on my little boy - it is just much trickier when we don't have my parents to fall back on.
TOMORROW at 6pm can't come soon enough! We have missed Kiki and Pops dearly!!