Crashing Back to Reality

We weren't off the ferry 10 minutes when it became clear that our vacation in paradise was definitely over. Brian went to get the car to load it up and discovered that someone had STOLEN OUR LICENSE PLATE! Can you believe it? The car had been left in the Deep Water Marina lot for a week, and it's a safe, secure place (or so we thought).

So my very responsible husband had to make the decision to drive across the state without a license plate and to deal with this mess when he got back to Raleigh. After all, Alli needed to get back to Durham because she could have gone into labor at any moment. And Luke was screaming because he desperately needed a nap. And we were all starving. It was not a pretty sight.

We decided that we all needed Bojangles to calm ourselves down, and it did help. Until Brian got the bad news that his friend Chip's Dad was very sick and in the ICU. That news was very unsettling.

We finally made it home, and Luke and I rushed downtown to attend William's birthday party at Marbles. After a chaotic two hours, we got home to discover that Addie was sick. She had a fever.

From that day on (Aug. 24th) someone in our house was sick for the next full month. First, Addie, then Collins, and Luke, and then finally Brian got a nasty case of pneumonia.

And very sadly, Chip's Dad passed away.

It was a hard few weeks. After a perfect week. Just goes to show you that vacation cannot last forever. And this time, we came crashing back to reality.