It's Matt's last day off until our trip in the spring! We have spent the day hiding out from the blustery winds! Jake has play practice this evening, so we will have to leave our nest soon enough.
One of the things we have done today is finalize the route for the trip. It went something like this: Me: reading furiously for weeks (at least 15 guide books), making notes, looking up sites, sketching possible routes, coming up with a budget, checking room rates, calling people all over the US to talk about weather and making plans for what to pack, trying to decide where to eat and how far we can feasibly get in a day and still see at least the highlights of the area we will be in without missing anything really good, like a ghost town, hot springs or an ice cream shop. Hey, artisan ice cream is making a comeback and there are three Mother Earth News suggested shops on our route. Denver, Kansas and Memphis!
Matt: 'e-mail me that route so I can plot geocaches along it'. He's been muttering and tweaking for hours now.
Yes, that's his contribution. I am so excited I could probably explode, so excited that I am super-hyped up and I sobbed my way through 'Slipping Through My Fingers' when Chan and I watched Mamma Mia today. Okay, I cry every time I hear it, but today I boo-hooed. *sigh* The older she gets, the more I can relate. Waaaaa
Anyway, I am an emotional heap, I am exhausted by the trip already, it's an entity. Today alone I watched a documentary with the kids about Yellowstone (which scared us all!) and then we watched a slide show featuring Zion and Bryce and the Tetons, I bought 16 eco-friendly batteries and 2 chargers and I called to set up an appointment to get Jake's wisdom teeth pulled (needs to be done by April) and wrote up the play rehearsal calendar through the play at the end of next month. I also walked my 3.66 miles while watching Mamma Mia and sobbing. LOL Then, I had a bath and read half of Kenneth Oppel's new book about Victor Frankenstein. Brilliant stuff, the book. The bath was lovely as well.
Then I lined up a couple more stops, one in Salida, CO to swim in the hot springs fed pool, as Matt will fly home before we get to Thermopolis and Yellowstone to swim there. I am hoping to parcel out the rest of the work into little chunks and it will be mentally better for me. hahaha!
It's time now to get to play practice. On this, the first day of a new play season, it's hard to imagine how very very quickly it will be Show Week, it just seems like lots of running back and forth and handing over checks, but sooner than we realize, it will be the last performance and over. It's so odd when a play ends, it just stops and there's nothing after. It seems that final solid week of rehearsals and performances and that frenzy boils up and over and disappears. There's no cool down period. The dads manhandle the stage extensions into the basement, props get gathered up, the floor is swept, the chairs lined up and an hour after the last curtain call, the theater looks like nothing ever happened.
But, before the end, the start, which is today. I am so thrilled the kids are not only heading off down the yellow brick road again, but with many of their friends in tow! Emily and Zachary, Britney, Keilee, Austin and Griffin will all be there, too! What a wonderful adventure!
