Chocolate Ex-Lax . . . the story of my life.

Sometimes I have nothing to post so I go long periods with no writing. Other times I have about a million things to write about but no time to do the writing. The latter is the case lately. I have been absolutely overwhelmed with all that is going on and I feel so out of touch with so many people. I've had no time to catch up on blogs, reply to emails, make phone calls, etc. I'm just trying to keep my head above water I guess you could say.

Anyway, I'm going to go for a funny story today to try and lighten the mood after my last post. Don't want to be too much of a downer around here even if that is the current status quo. Ok, so this weekend I took the kids on a retreat for spouses and kids of deployed soldiers from Ryan's unit. It was a nice (free) weekend at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo hotel which is somewhere I've always wanted to take Jake. I knew the weekend would be challenging but I figured "what is the worst that can happen "? Well, I don't know if the worst happened but I would say that "pretty bad" happened. Our weekend was going along ok, I'd attended a session while the kids were in child care, I took them swimming, they were fed and hydrated (I'm NOT kidding on this point - all meals were buffet style . . . 2 hands, 3 kids, 4 meals . . . the math does not work out there). On Saturday afternoon we went back to our hotel to rest before we headed to the aquarium. I put Reid down in his crib and then put on a movie for Jake and Ainsley and laid down on the bed next to them to rest. Well, I must have all but passed out from exhaustion because when I woke up 45 minutes later I discovered the remnants of what must have been Ainsley combing through my travel kit. In that travel kit is a package of chocolate ex-lax that I bought for Ainsley at Disney World because she was a little stopped up. It takes maybe half a little tablet to get her system moving. Well, exact data won't ever be found but she must have eaten at least 7 or 8 full tablets. Inches from my sleeping head.

So, at this point what can you do but wait? We got to the aquarium and back without incident. I settled the kids down to eat pizza when we returned and that is when the inevitable began to unfold. Ainsley basically pooped her head off for the next 14 hours. It was just one pull-up after another trying to contain the flow. She went through at least 3 pull-ups during breakfast alone on Sunday morning. Shortly thereafter (probably when she was standing in the child care room holding her stomach and sobbing) I decided to call the trip a wrap. I'd had enough.

Looking back now I think I just might've been crazy to attempt this trip on my own but we survived and we accomplished 2 things - we saw Chattanooga AND we got another weekend down until Ryan comes home.