Y'all Hush: Thor Comes Home - And We Hit The Road

Hey y'all -

Late one night, almost a year to the day since he first said goodbye, your dad came walking back up the driveway. I've never been so excited and overwhelmed to see someone in my life. We hugged him and clapped and Hagen asked to see his "army suit," and Laney started telling him about the shark book she'd just finished reading.

Photos by Laney:

There's video of his emotional homecoming, but I'm not going to post it because it contains lots of kissing and Laney says kissing is gross and I'm not going to argue with her.

_____

And then this happened! See if you can keep up with this itinerary, because I'm not sure how we did it:

Your dad and I got to enjoy just a few days together at home, and then *I* had to leave for a video shoot in San Antonio for World Gym. Your dad likes to make fun of me because I go off and shoot 200+ hours of instructional fitness videos, then I come back to my own gym and walk around complaining "But I don't know what I should do." Maybe I should watch my own videos. But if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times: there's nothing more exhausting than a day spent watching other people exercise, while you stand behind a cameraman, enjoying your coffee.

From San Antonio, I flew into Spokane where your dad picked me up in the truck and we went to see Garth Brooks in concert. He was only scheduled to perform one show, but tickets sold so quickly, he kept adding performances and your dad and I ended up seeing him on a Sunday afternoon at 3:00pm. Your dad kept making jokes about how we're certified old people to be so excited to see a show in the middle of the day. "Do you think we'll be able to make it to Cracker Barrel before bedtime?" he asked.

The concert was pretty incredible; everything you may have heard about his ability to put on a show is true. Your dad is a big Garth fan, so it was a great "welcome home" for him to get to see the show.

Then who should we run into in our hotel but your uncle Joey, who was on his way through town doing the lights for the Mannheim Steamroller tour. We always love a good Joey sighting.

But wait - there's more!

Because from Spokane, your dad and I kept driving to Seattle. To make our kitchen budget work, we decided we needed to purchase our cabinets and countertops during the annual 30% off sale at our closest Ikea, so we took the truck - and our enormous shopping list - to Seattle, while Grandma Sue stayed home with you for a few days.

This is the restroom signage found throughout Pike Place Market, and I can't really understand what's happening, except it looks like the baby had a massive blowout and the dad is holding it like a contaminated specimen and the mom is sorta following behind, doing that passive-aggressive "If you want me to help, I can help, but it IS your turn, but if you need me..."

Some people say if you want to test how strong your relationship is, you should take a long road trip together. I say road trips are for pansies, and here's what you should do instead:

1) Design a 2D kitchen plan that involves a lot of precise measurements and math with one spouse who is a professional scientist and mathematician and one spouse who says "But if it's flat, I can't see it, and it doesn't mean anything to me." You get a lot of this look:

2) Then, after you make your shopping list of the 400+ individual items required to build the kitchen you've just designed, go find them in a warehouse that looks like this:

3) Make sure you have enough Utrustas and Dinglefloopers and Kooorstas or whatever the hell these tiny Swedish parts are that will eventually hold your kitchen together, because you live seven hours away and there's no room for error.