Wyoming Day 18: Bear River State Park RiverWalk

This post is about Thursday and I'm frantically writing it Thursday night because Friday we are finally going to Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City!!! So we will be gone all day ... it takes 1.5 hours to get there from where we are so we plan to close the place down then drive home. I want to make sure you have something to read on Friday so here goes.

The morning started nice and slooooooooooow. The kids slept in, so I snuggled with Sam while I read a book (the 2nd Sweep book ... which is actually books 3-6 ... yes, it's about witches ... it's a young adult book and an easy read until I can find something else to read that's not as hard as War and Peace but not as easy as Twilight). I felt guilty for laying around in bed reading until I realized I NEVER do that at home. Like ever. Why is it hard for moms to treat themselves sometimes?

I made bacon and omelets for breakfast, with two little helpers on the counter.

A Lincoln Logs creation by Joel displayed on the ping pong table.

After breakfast we watched a little of the movie Backdraft ... Billy Baldwin, Kurt Russell, DeNiro and more. The point is Sam is CRAZY  over firetrucks and firemen so it was a decent movie for him to watch parts of. It's too dang long, though, so we took off to see the kittens for a while. Ting-a-ling, Milo, Pepe and Piss (because he is pissy, but when Callie holds him he is quiet as a mouse and content). Got an email from my mom ... AN EMAIL! She does not send email! It contained many cuss words (she gets that from me) about how much she misses us and how we can't leave for this long ever again. Such is the life of an only child :-)

Two kitties in my jacket! They give me my Baby Fix!

We don't have pictures of the rest of the day because we left the camera at home. We headed straight for McDonald's again since it was a chilly day and played inside for quite a while. I got to talk to my friend for a while and the boys talked to her kids. Did you know you can buy Happy Meal toys by themselves for like $1.25? A shout-out to Candace, who is the sweetest person there and puts up with us coming to the counter like 500 times each time we go.

After that it was warming up a bit so we headed to Bear River State Park ... the RiverWalk. It's so cool. I posted some pics of it from the first weekend we were here. We walked along the river forever. I finally got Aron on the phone and he told me they are still giving him trouble about coming home with us on Monday. I think he should tell his boss that my DAD will kick Aron's and the bossman's bungaloids if I am sent home in a rickety van with 5 kidlets. That almost happened on the way here, and my dad was ready to follow me if he had to. You don't mess with a woman's father.

He also told me that he probably can't go on our lake vacation with my family. I get all stoic and strong and "we can make it work no matter what" but sometimes I am a human woman and I do get emotional and I do break down. After we hung up, I walked behind the kids crying. Not sobbing, so as to scare them. Just sad, quiet crying. I'm not so much crying for myself (kinda; I love my man and would love to see him more ... have barely had time with him since February). I'm crying for the time the kids are missing with him. I'm crying for the way his bosses do not seem to be able to read a vacation request in advance or know what "we are leaving in 3 weeks" means. Aron is a hard worker, a good man. He bends over backwards for his employer and has for 15 years there. I'm wondering about the future.

Shake it off.

Oh, when we first got to the park it was a total scene from The Birds ... seagulls EVERYWHERE flying low and going nuts! Michael loved chasing them away and being loud. It was only in the 50s here today. I ran into a woman at McD's who lives here now and she wore a KANSAS shirt. She said she lived in Overland Park and that she would move back in a second! I'm torn; it's gorgeous here but I miss everyone so much.

As we walked the final part of the walk, Sam and I held hands and I looked at our shadows. I cried a little more when I realized someday his shadow would be taller than mine and would we still hold hands? We drove a little in the park and saw baby buffalo ("in captivity" says my smart son Joel) and elk. I miss home, yet I will so badly miss it here.

Let's just say we played chicken in the road some more with the cows when we got back to the ranch. Aron got home by 8 p.m. and made sure the big kids got showers before dinner so I could type up this bloggy post! He's making brownies with Sam and Eva right now, it's about 9:30 p.m. and more is brewing that I can't discuss now, so stay tuned.

If you missed any installments of the Real World: Wyoming series, head to the right-hand side of this here blog, look for Categories, then click on Wyoming. And if you aren't following The Kerrie Show on Facebook, you are really missing out on spoilers!