On Saturday (my mom’s birthday!) we packed up and went down to the ferry terminal early because we hadn’t booked a return trip home. We figured we didn’t want to tie ourselves down to a specific time and thought returning standby would work fine.
Turns out one of the earlier ferries had been cancelled, and so now there was NO standby room because all of the earlier reservations were being put on the subsequent ferries. We lined up in the very last lot of cars for people without reservations not knowing if we would even get back that day. After parking, waiting, and figuring out we would be there for hours, we wandered to the farmer’s market, where we promptly lost Ammon.
Abe was tired and I turned around for maybe a minute to examine some cream that supposedly took away aches and pains, and when I looked back to where Ammon was supposed to be, he was gone. Now, Ammon is frequently gone so at first we didn’t worry. But after running around the very small market and not seeing him, I started to panic. A lot of people started looking with me, and within five minutes Abe found Ammon literally running around the market. We must have kept missing him because he was running. I don’t know how.
Anyway, after that scare I didn’t take my eyes off of him for a minute. We walked around and then decided to drop him and Clarissa off in this fabulous little drop-in child care center on main street. Then we took the older kids to lunch. It was INCREDIBLE to eat lunch and ice cream with just Mary and Lydia! We weren’t stressed they would run away or start screaming at some random thing. I couldn’t believe how easy everything was. And then I started the mental math to how long we have until Ammon and Clarissa are easy travelers. If they had personalities like Mary and Lydia, we’ll be free and easy in three or four years. Since they are both far more energetic than Lydia or Mary ever were, maybe it’s more like five or six years? Sob.
After lunch, we headed picked up the babies and fed them our leftovers. I started feeling really sick an hour or so later and started having diarrhea, which is NOT fun when you are stuck in a hot parking lot waiting until who-knows-when to board a ferry. I kept making emergency dashes to the public restroom two blocks away, and finally in the evening when we thought we weren’t going to make it back that day, Abe was my hero and checked me into a motel six blocks away so I could go lie down, throw up, and use the bathroom as much as I needed to. I walked the six blocks and almost made it to the room without throwing up, but didn’t quite make it. It was HEAVEN to lie down right next to a bathroom. I had a mystery novel that I read when I didn’t feel like I was about to die.
Abe took care of the kids for HOURS on end this day. He entertained them in a small little park across from the ferry parking lot. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it with a kind, upbeat attitude and a smile on his face.
After an hour, Abe found out they were actually scheduling a special ferry just for all of the people who had waited all day. So after a couple hours of recovery, I walked back to the car before we boarded the at 10:30pm. Everyone stayed in the car and slept the entire ferry ride over, and we didn’t make it to my friend Julie’s house in Puyallup until 3am. Julie as an ANGEL and was so sweet and welcoming when we pulled into her drive at that obscene hour.