It's over. Vacation is now a thing of the past. Now, I must work through the weekend to make up for it.

It wasn't as hectic as usual, even with the multi-state destinations. Let me tell you all about it.

Thursday June 9:

At work from 6:30 - 9:30

Last minute details that took many minutes.

Left Austin @ 3 pm, taking the OK / KS interstate route

Friday June 10:

Around 3 am, hit major storms with a great deal of electricity and harsh wind. I tell my spouse, "There is a tornado nearby..."

9 am, at a truck stop in KS my spouse hears that a tornado turned over two semi's and a motorhome in Hays (where we were in the storm at about that time). Someone was looking over us.

1 pm, arrive in Guernsey, Wyoming to a turkey dinner (as if we weren't tired enough!) with 7 children, their parents and my husband's parents...(if you were in this scene, you would totally understand why I don't want children).

Saturday June 11:

8:30 am, head for Scottsbluff, NE

11 am, wedding starts, last 15 minutes. In this time, I sunburn.

We hang out for lunch, then head to the reception, then head to a bar in Tarrytown where we proceed to have a good time until about 1 in the morning.

Sunday June 12:

Breakfast with Lisa and Mike Gaspers, our last good bye as she will be moving to Oregon, Illinois in just a few short days.

1 pm, arrive in Lusk hang out with spouse's mom all night

Monday June 13:

Surprise old friend Carrie, who suprises me with her 3 month old daughter (you'd think someone would call...), hang out with spouse's mom until about 9 pm at which point we head to the "hip" bar The Pub (my grandmother built this bar, in which sits this nude painting that she commissioned from a NY artist in the 60's and is rumored to be my grandma (it's not, but we let the rumor stay a float for the sake of the tale)). Nobody was there except a table of crazy, white trash locals that we didn't want to hang out with, so we headed to the "teeth are not required" Silver Dollar Bar. It had a small crowd with some railroaders, a couple of the local alchies, and some others. Ran into Kelli Robertson, a girl I had grown up with who I had not seen in 10 years. It was nice to catch up.

Go home at 2, where my spouse proceeds to vomit for many, many hours (we don't drink, so when we actually sit down with the intention of getting intoxicated we regret it for many months).

Tuesday June 14:

Head to Harrison, Nebraska with the hope of finding my mother. No luck, even though the town is populated with less than 500...you should be able to pick someone out of this crowd. This is a very distressing day. Rumors of mother being evicted, jobless and such...along with a warrant out back in Lusk for back child support on my sister...Yeah, I'm still upset. Left her a note to at least call my sister.

Go back to Lusk, take a walk, make myself a bit more sad as we pass my childhood home that is now lost to me...

Visit gramps the rest of the night, he'd only had a couple of toddies, so it wasn't too bad.

Wednesday June 15:

Take gramps to breakfast while Chris visits his great aunt.

11:30 am head back to Guernsey for Lunch

Then we decided to visit his dad's new office at the ammo supply area of the Guard Camp. His dad is a "Bullet Fairy". It was cool to tour the site and see all the ammunition and watch what my father-in-law does for a living. He showed me all of the heat seeking missle parts, the bunker busters, etc...it was, strangely, fun. We got to keep an ammo box as a souvenier.

6 pm head back home

8:30 make it to Casa Bonita's in Denver just in time to catch 2 cliff dives, one comedic skit and the mariachi band's last round

Thursday June 16:

1 am, nearly die in Colorado Springs due to a high speed chase

3 am camp in Raton, New Mexico Best Western until 9 am at which point we start driving again, arriving home at 11 pm to my beautiful Hunter who missed me terribly.

I'm so glad it's over!!