Saturday, April 18, 2009

From Tragedy to Fun

On Thursday I came home to a dark house. It seems that we were not so prompt on paying our utilities bill, though we had mailed the check the previous day. Kim was having dinner with some coworkers, and did not have her cell phone on her. I took the kids to the Riverside Cafe to eat and figure out what to do.

The restaurant sits literally on Saint Marks River, and while the food is mediocre, the atmosphere is quite fun, though the sand flees are not. We ate with pelicans a stone's throw away, and a man and his guitar strumming some old country tunes. The kids really enjoyed themselves.

On Wednesday we had promised Athena that we would camp out in the Vanagon on Saturday. It is something we had been telling the kids we would eventually do, and now we where committing to it. This became my rescue plan. We would sleep in the Vanagon and use our cell phone as an alarm clock.

When we got home we played in the van until Kim got home and I explained the situation to her. We loaded up all of our food in our refrigerator likely to spoil and hauled it over to Katie's house. Then when we got home we got everything ready for the next day. We picked out our clothes, made lunches (PB&H sandwiches), put our tooth brushes and a hairbrush in the van. The idea was that when we woke up we could get ready as fast as we could and have everything already ready for us.

Athena, Arianna and I slept on the bottom while Kim and Aurora took the pop-up. Things went pretty well, but at some point in the night Arianna became restless. I changed her diaper and put more just in her sippy cup, but she was still uneasy. At some point Kim got up and started holding her. She said I could go up top, so I did and fell asleep, and Kim says that the two of them went to sleep shortly after that as well.

Around 3:30 am the phone's alarm went off. I turned it off and double-checked that it was in fact set for 5:30 am. At that point it had become chilly outside. Kim had grabbed some thicker blankets and we covered ourselves and the kid sup with that.

We where again woken up at 5:00 am. I turned the alarm off, made sure it was set for 5:30 am and went back to bed.

It did in fact go off at 5:30 am, but this time we went back to sleep. I woke up again at 6:05, and we where out of there by 6:50 am.

The kids had a good time and overall it worked out pretty well. Kim and I didn't get stressed out and the lights where turned back on Friday morning. It's pretty rare that we get behind on our bills like this, but I'm glad we where able to turn it into an oppurtunity.

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