Flight of the bumbling bees.

John is home. The end.

Okay not really, because there was quite the saga in getting him home. It went something like this (I’ve still only slept periodically this week minus a very good Saturday night, so please forgive any blunders).  

Friday at 6:05 John called. Four hours and 55 minutes from when his plane was supposed to land. Not that I was counting down or anything. Not that I was pretending I would hand him both children and run out the door to the nearest bar/mall/spa or anything. Okay I did think about that.

But only about 467 times before he made it home.

John: I may not make it home tonight. We’re supposed to take off in 30 minutes but it may not work out. If not, I won’t make it back today.

Me: Turning from the counter where I was cutting up pears to the two children in highchairs anxiously awaiting dinner with grimaces on their face. “All right.” Mental sigh.

John: I’ll call later when I know more.

I fed the kiddos. Watched Suls mash some pear in his hair while I cut up more food for Will (P.S. Children on steroids for croupe have crazy appetites – if only they had sleeping habits to match).

John texted at 6:40: Please find me flight times home tomorrow.

Me: Looking at the two kids who now had food in their hair, down their shirt, dirty diapers, a need of a bath, pajamas, and a bedtime story, their medication, and me having needed to go to the bathroom for about 4 hours. I didn’t glorify the text with a response. There were employees at the airport in blue uniforms who were trained to find flights. I was in the middle of a battle here.

8:45 rolled around and I hadn’t heard from John. My mom had come to help me and I now owe her one million, four hundred and seventy-seven dollars and a month of vacation. The boys were finally getting sleepy – the Benadryl the doctor finally told me I could after four nights of 2-hours of sleep was setting in and they were hugging their blankets. It was the most promising sight I had seen since Monday.

John called.

“I’m going to make it back.”

Perfect. Not that I didn’t want him back, but we’d avoided taking a car to the airport because we hadn’t heard from him in two hours and assumed it was a no go on the flight home for the night. Now my mom and I had to pack up the now sleepy children, take a car to the airport and drive back, hoping they would go back to sleep.

I followed my mom in to the airport. She drove my car to drop off for John and I drove John’s – the boys sound asleep in the back. While my mom was pulling the car into a parking spot at the airport I was focused on texting John where he could find it. Big mistake.

My mom hopped in the car and said, “Okay. He has a spare key to get in your car, right?”

My eyes got wide. “No. Those were the keys. The keys I had you leave in the car.”

“Well I was asking you that but you were on the phone.”

Oh. My. God.

“Plus, sweetie, your laptop was in there. I wasn’t going to leave the car unlocked.”

I put my forehead on the steering wheel and we both looked at the car that now had my keys, safely locked inside. It was now 9:45, John still had no way home. I glanced in the rearview at the two now-sleeping children in the back seat and my head began to pound.

“Okay, we’ll go home and pray I find my spare key,” I said.

But I wouldn’t.

John sometimes uses it to pull my car into the garage in the morning, and versus running back inside and having the boys go through two temper tantrums in one morning about me leaving, I’d left it under my radio in my car that week.

I was losing my mind.

My mom, being a saint, said she would drive back to the airport in her car and wait for John. I would call a locksmith in the morning.

We tucked the boys into bed and I showered and crawled under the sheets myself at about 10:45.

John made it home safely and the boys nearly slept through the night that night and I woke up with a lot less head pounding (that is until I remembered my poor little car sitting the airport).

And then, then a very good friend made my day. Miss Erin, thank you so so much for dropping off a meal for us. I cannot tell you how much it made my day. I don’t know how you do it. Kiss the kiddos for me.

All right folks. That’s all for now.

Well, until tomorrow of course.