The Long Journey...from you know where Part 3

So after falling exhausted, to sleep, we were awakened at 2 in the morning, not by our baby's cry, but by our freezing bodies. We were freezing! It didn't take long to realize that the electricity had gone off if this non winterized, tile, cold Florida home. It was 40 degrees in the house and 20 degrees outside the house. I was freezing and I started freaking out about my baby who wasn't laying next to the human furnace (aka my husband), I went to check on him and his face and hands were ice cold. I scooped him up, which he was not happy about and put him between us. He doesn't breast feed anymore and nothing I could do would calm him down, including trying to breast feed him. We were sleeping on an air mattress too, and that was squeaky and bumpy. So for the next 4-5 hours. We were trying to stay warm and trying to get Barclay to sleep. Thankfully Joel had a sleeping bag that we all three got in and that saved us. Finally at around 6, the electricity came back on and we could sleep without the baby in the bed for a couple hours. When we woke up, we were all three sick and had to pack up/and clean up the house for the newlyweds when the returned. I just sat on the floor and cried and told Noah I couldn't do it. We were miserable. It took us 3 hours to pack our stuff and straighten the place. I literally felt like I was in one of that horrible dreams where you are being chased and can't run anymore because you're running in mud.

We got in the car and we all are winy and tired. We then drive 4 hours to his cousin's house in Tampa.

We had a good time visiting with them, and were glad to be "taken care of" by his very mothering cousin. The next day was emotionally draining as we visited Noah's grandmother in the nursing home who was so far gone from Alzheimer's that she couldn't even say a sentence. We also visited his Grandfather who has been really sick too.

After 36 hours there, we had to again, pack up to leave. Barclay woke up at 6 am so we decided to pack and leave then.

Then we began the LONGEST car ride of our life. On the way down, Noah was sick as a dog and on the way back, I was. I literally sneezed, blew my nose, peed from sneezing (a little sometimes), coughed so much I puked, etc and over and over and over. I used two trash bags of tissue. I ended up giving up and used my shirt, a blanket, whatever was around. It was awful. No fun stoppings to eat here, or random adventures there. We booked it and didn't stop to even eat. 12 hours later we arrived home to collapse into our beds. It was so good to be home!

Since then, I have had a fever, I have coughed so much my brain hurts, Noah has had to work early and late, Barclay has been sick and WINY. We have just been trying to get better but it's not getting any better.

And today I went to get something out of my car and a bag of rotten, wasted veggies greeted me with a horrible smell. So much for that! I'll leave that part out next time I'm packing.

And that's our "vacation" to Florida.