One of us has to stay sober, right?

So, if Brett's still on his pain medication, that means the bottle of pineapple rum that is calling to me in my cabinet, is still off limits.

Wow. What a crazy day and a half its been. I don't think I've even had the chance to comprehend that Brett had surgery yesterday. Seeing as our "adventure" started out at 4:30am, it has all kinda felt like a dream.

Actually, our "adventure" started more at 12:30 the night before, when I was so exhausted, but I still laid there not able to sleep. "Go check on the kids," I told Brett, "I just have this weird feeling." All the kids were fine, so I attributed it to the fact that I was so not ready to leave town the next morning. The kids were packed, food bought, but I just didn't feel ready.

When Brett woke me up at about 4:30, I knew something was wrong. He never gets sick; he never complains. When he told me he thought he needed to go to the hospital, there was no doubt in my mind we needed to go.

The ER took us quickly, the nurse in the room commented, "Holy sh*t" when she found out we had five kids, looked slightly embarrassed by her slip, then looked directly at us and said, "That's a lot of freaking kids." We smiled politely.

Luckily, Brett was never in excruciating amount of pain, so he was able to keep up conversation and his typically sarcastic comments. His parents joined us once we found out he was going to be taken straight back to surgery. The surgeon was very nice and gave a very thorough explanation for what she was going to do. He was done in the amount of time she quoted: forty-five minutes. An hour after that he was in a recovery room (shared-boo).

Brett did great and was able to come home only seven hours after his surgery. That scared me, but it turned out fine. We both slept well last night while the kids got another sleepover with my parents.

Today has been a little bit trying for me. I know I have no right to complain, but I am just wiped. And poor Brett has been just great. I feel bad that I haven't done more for him, but he just doesn't need that much. My great friends have all volunteered to entertain the oldest three the rest of the week because I feel bad they're missing out on going to the lake. Eli is literally the perfect child and just plays with his toys or asks me to read him a story. He has been the angel to my devil-baby that is Lizzie. She is definitely in the "terrible twos". She won't wear a diaper and does anything she can to rip it off, but then goes ahead and pees all over my floor. I don't think she's ready to potty train, but she sure seems to think she is. Except for the whole actually peeing in the potty thing. She fights me on every little thing and just screams bloody murder when she doesn't get her way.

I spent a good portion of the day trying to figure out what my deal is. I'm used to dealing with Lizzie, I'm used to not getting a full night's sleep, I'm used to dealing with sick people (and Brett is SO much easier than the kids). So, why do I want to curl up with my bottle of Parrot's Bay and a tub of ice cream? The only revelation I came to was that my brain was in vacation mode. This week was supposed to be our last week of relaxation before school, scheduled activities, and chaos ensue next week. I still have some planning and preparation to tackle, and now that I'm home, I should get right on that. But instead, I want to pretend its June 1st, and that we can start the whole summer over.

What's worse is that I know Brett feels bad and its so totally not his fault. And he knows this, but still. He can see the frustrations and stress popping out in the form of gray hairs and new wrinkle lines on his under-30 wife. And he hates not being able to jump up and help me. I am so lucky that way, that as soon as he does recover, he will be right there - frustrated and stressed, but at least he'll be by my side.

Now, he's probably going to hate me for posting this, but I love this picture from dinner on Saturday night.