3rd Week of June, 2020 (Ashcraft Switcheroo)

 Monday morning dawned bright and early.  We left the house at 8am to head to Augusta, GA.  Diana and I had arranged to meet halfway between our houses in order to switch children.  And, of course, we had to take the dogs with us.  We wouldn't want them to be lonely at home, especially since we rarely put them in the crate anymore.  About 30 seconds after this picture was taken, she was asleep.

We got to Augusta right at noon.  We brought the Ashcrafts over into our car, and ate lunch.  We hung out in the car, continuing to chat and visit for as long as we thought we could get away with it.  Then it was about time to head home.  But we figured we should stop for a potty break before we got in the car again for several hours.  The problem was, all the restaurants and similar places were closed because of dang COVID.  We ended up coming up with the genius idea of going to Target.  We could let the kids potty, walk a bit, and pick up a snack for the way home.  It was a little bit hilarious though: 2 adults + 9 kids, who had not seen each other in a year or been out of the house in 3 months = quite the spectacle!  We finally loaded back into our respective cars, with Kaitlyn going to the Ashcrafts, and Taylor coming to our house and left around 3pm.  

We ran into some issues on the way home.  First, it rained.  Like, HARD.  It hailed for a bit, but I felt like I had no choice but to keep going because Karen is too tall to fit under anything, and I was in the middle of an unfamiliar area, so I wouldn't have known where to go anyway.  At one point, traffic slowed almost to a stop because the storm had knocked a tree into the road.  We had to stop for 2 separate potty breaks.  And poor Taylor got a random nosebleed in the back of the van.  She had brought a doll that the kids were playing with that "somehow" hit her in the face, and caused her nose to bleed.  Thankfully, Kari was in the car with us, and was able to help treat Taylor's bloody nose.  Kari is very good in stressful situations, especially medically related.  I am lucky to have her around!  We finally got home at 7:30pm.  We unloaded the van and had the girls settled enough to go to bed around 9!  Phew!

Tuesday, everyone was pretty happy to play with their new playmate.  I worked on the blog some more.

And we made sure to introduce our guest to the zip line!

Wednesday I worked more on the blog and went and got my toes done with Amanda.

Thursday was more blogging and I met at Hobby Lobby with hubby.  I don't remember what we were looking for at that moment.

Friday morning we followed a similar schedule as Monday.  We left at 8, heading back to Augusta.  Dogs included.

We met up at Arby's this noon, visited until 2, and then headed home.  I arrived home around 7pm with pizza for dinner.  I am not sure why it took 5 hours to get home that time (since it should have taken 4 or less), but that seems to be my luck.  A lot of the trip home was children crying because they were missing their friends.  I appreciate that it is sad.  I miss the Ashcrafts too.  But I cannot handle separation anxiety like that every time.  It isn't worth it.

Kaitlyn said that she had a good time up in North Carolina.  She had fun hanging out with her friend!  She said they went on several walks in the woods, walked to get ice cream, played in the kiddie pool, stayed up late every night watching movies and reading books and helped Diana with the younger kids and chores.  Diana said she was very helpful.

Saturday we worked around the house a bit.  First, we had to get hubby's beard trimmed again.  Then we went to Home Depot to pick up a cabinet that was supposed to be ready for pickup 24 hours after we ordered it, but for some reason still wasn't pulled off the shelf 3 days later.  We had to help them find it!  Customer service was not great.  The rest of the weekend, we spent doing a few small projects around the house.  I'll put most of those in separate posts.

Sunday was Father's Day!  We spent time together doing a few more small projects around the house, ate blizzards from Dairy Queen, playing chess and taking naps!