Home at last

We just returned from a week-long trip to Tulsa. It was kind of a crazy trip because I ran my first half marathon (2:16:47, which isn't super fast but was faster than I had expected to run). We finally got the girls baptized. Steve and I celebrated our 8th anniversary with a night at the casino, where I won $100!

But what really sticks out is the fiasco.

That's right. What Gardner family trip doesn't end in fiasco? It would actually be kind of disappointing if everything went perfectly. Well, maybe not disappointing, but shocking to the point of suspecting a slip in the time/space continuum.

Anyway, we stayed in St. Louis last night. It wasn't like the 11-hour ride to Tulsa wasn't super fun, what with the sibling fighting and all, but we thought we'd break up the trip home. And, just to set the record straight, the girls were very well behaved and delightful for most of the trip.

So we decided to take the girls to the hotel pool this morning. Our hotel pool is a closed outdoor pool but there was another Sheraton on the property with an indoor pool that we could use. We opted to drive because it was kind of far away.

Fiasco starter #1: I misunderstood the lady at the desk and thought the pool was only open from 7 until 10 a.m. Turns out she meant 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. We were sort of rushing over there around 9, not wanting the girls to miss out on valuable swimming time because, obviously, they didn't get enough of that at grandma's house, with her pool.

Fiasco starter #2 : Steve hits a curb and took out a huge portion of our tire. It wasn't flat or leaking, but the 180-mile trip home made is sort of worrisome.

Fiasco starter #3: The first dealer we took it to said they could get the $300 tire, but it wouldn't be ready until the next day and they would charge us $100 "overnight delivery fee." On top of another night hotel. And dinner. And tequila.

We decided to ride home on the spare.

But... I did finally find another dealer who found us an equally good tire. Total bill: $114. Thank you.

Fiasco ender #4: I left our iPod cord at the hotel so we had to take one last stop to pick up the cord. It's not huge fiasco or anything, but after 6 hours of getting a single tire fixed, it was not not something we felt like doing.

But we're home. The girls are in bed. We turned the air on.

Trips are fun. But nothing beats coming home, especially when after learning ants had not invaded the kitchen and our basement was not flooded. It's the best!