I know you want to hear all the witty and interesting tales from our epic, 3200 mile cross-country dog & kitty show. And really, there is nothing I’d love more than to provide you with all the inane details. But really? When you spend 12 hours in the car for 6 days straight, the most exciting details you are going to get are 6 consecutive posts that include photos of road signs and my feet. Sure, I could tell you in great detail about that funny podcast we listened to in Nevada, or that time both cars almost simultaneously ran out of gas in middle-of-nowhere Wyoming, or how Brian decided his new “South” name was going to be Cotton Arbogast, or how I got a call from the house-sitter while we were somewhere in the middle of Kentucky telling me she had simultaneously locked herself out and the dog in, or how – no matter how hard I tried – I could not break myself of the understanding that traveling West meant you were traveling towards the ocean. But really, I think it’s all just one of those you-just-had-to-be-there kind of things.

Being that this trip was embarked upon for the primary purpose of alleviating some of the moving chaos for Brian and Andrea, it was not exactly designed as a sightseeing expedition. It was however going to be an opportunity to goof off for a while. Then came the call. The call we got from the mortgage broker sometime during that 600 years we spent driving through Nebraska. This, the mortgage broker who assured Andrea and Brian on no less than 7 occasions that everything was taken care of and ready to close by noon on Thursday. The mortgage broker who was shortly going to learn what it means to tangle with Cotton Arbogast. Let’s just say that on Thursday we headed into Wilmington with the realization that it was questionable if there was going to be a house for us to actually move into. But alas, after about a million mortgage reconfigurations and set-backs and nasty emails, they somehow managed to get keys in hand just before the close of business on Friday. Nothing like trying to buy a house during the apocalypse of the national mortgage market.

And so, we aired up our beds and began the celebrating. Celebrating that the drive was over. Celebrating that the escrow actually closed. Celebrating that we no longer had to relinquish any additional precious hours to the time zone gods. Celebrating that Brian had not done physical harm to their mortgage broker. And the next day? Celebration that we managed to survive the celebrating.

Andrea and I spent a day trying to buy the minimum food and kitchen items needed to sustain life in an empty house being that the moving truck was not scheduled to arrive the until day we left, and the boys set out to make sure the hard-wired speakers throughout the property were given the urgent attention they needed. With some help of a new tuner and switch box, Cotton can now listen to his 80’s Monsters of Rock box set on the screened porch OR in the living room OR on the back patio OR ON ALL THREE AT ONCE! As for the rest of the time? It was spent watching the tropical storm and enduring the 150,000% humidity. Yes, really.

After a very sad good-bye, an uneventful flight out of Raliegh, and an overwhelmingly joyful reunion with our children, we were catapulted back into real life last Thursday, and did what any other jet-lagged, out-of-sorts, family would do, and immediately began a new construction project first thing Friday morning. By Monday afternoon the tile was in and grout set, and by Tuesday Steve began his new career as a cabinet builder. Oh sweet new laundry room / pantry / office / mud room how I anticipate thee.

As for my kids, well, they are exactly the same and completely different. You can interpret that in whatever way you wish. They had an absolute ball on the trip – at least that was my interpretation. I think the various family units did their best to spare me the gory details – telling us only the high points and then leaving us to hear the kid’s version of things, which pretty much sounded like the vacation equivalent of being spoon fed sugar straight from the bag: Parties, swimming, movies, treats, kitties, dogs, unicorns, fairies, and rainbows. Which, incidentally, is exactly how I remember my summer vacations with extended family.

The aftermath is also much like I remember it, except that this time I am on the receiving end. The decompression after 11 days of Grandkids Gone Wild has been pretty much what you’d expect: usual selves, squared. Working from his typical baseline of Emotional Chernobyl, Porter fell back into old routines and habits of unleashing The Angry over all things big and small. With the added bonus that he now does it in complete sentences rather than monosyllabic barks. Stella, on the other hand, is our girl on the cusp of something big.

When she turned 4 I had imagined some big transition. I had read about it in all the books and heard about it on all the blogs. There was something about 4 that was supposed to be magical. A move away from the tumultuous 2’s and 3’s, and a move towards the kinder gentler 4’s. And when we woke up on her 4th birthday, I was ready. But it didn’t exactly come that day. Nor the next, or the next. But as we have bumped and skidded along, there has been a slow metamorphosis, one that I had started to notice in the time leading up to our trip. And upon our return, even more. It’s hard to explain exactly, except to say that the books were right. And I shall call them the fantastic 4’s. It has been a pleasant side-effect in an otherwise challenging transition back to normal life. Whatever that is.

And so. Here we are. Back in real life, adjusting to old routines and figuring out new ones. I’ve made it this far without mentioning one of the more obvious aspects of this – the real and true outcome of this adventure: the Arbogasts are gone. A full coastline away. There is lots of talk of regular visits and such, but the bigger reality – and the one that made the most impact on me when we arrived home – was that they are no longer 5 minutes up the road. Happy for them, sad for us.

I’d also like to extend one last thank you to all the friends and family members that helped make this trip possible, it was an ambitious task, made seemingly effortless by the help and coordination of the Grandparents Anderson, the Grandparents Walston, the Eskras Jr., Uncle Scott, the Bakers and of course, to our neighbors for having the spare key that allowed the housesitter back in before Ranger could successfully complete yet another chocolate chip raid on the pantry.