On Memorial Day, Anna, the boys, and I went to Douthat State Park to swim in the lake. Anna's Mother and Sister's family came a long too. It was a very nice day but the water was very cold. The combination of my weight loss and the cold water caused my ring finger to shrink. I was chasing Eli through the water and realized that my wedding ring was gone! I am not too sentimental about things, but I have been wearing that ring everyday for almost 5 years. When I picked out my wedding ring, I chose the cheapest one possible because I figured I would lose it someday. On the bright side, a symbol of Anna and my lover for each other is now on the bottom of Douthat Lake. We love camping up there every year, so it just seems right.
We came back home after our Douthat trip and ate some Bojangles chicken. After dinner, I was giving the boys a bath while Anna cleaned up the kitchen. I heard a loud vehicle coming up our road, so as I was getting Coy out of the bath I looked outside the window. I saw a firetruck with its lights on, stopping at the top of our road. Firefighters got out and started running in all directions. I thought this was very strange so I stepped out on the front porch to check out things. One of the firefighters yelled at us to leave our house as soon as possible. He said that a tanker truck at wrecked in the S-turn and that gas was pouring out.
We started running around everywhere trying to get a diaper bag together. I have never had to rush out of the house like that. It was very crazy. We left the kitchen a mess and ran out to the car with the boys and a packed diaper bag. I was smart enough to grab my work laptop, but I was dumb enough to leave the power cable downstairs. So I would have only had about an hour worth of work before it ran out of battery life. As I was rushing to the car Jasper was following us. I couldn't leave him behind so I told Anna to go on in her car and Jasper and i would follow in my car.
We couldn't smell any gas fumes at our house, but as i drove down the hill to get to the main road, I suddenly smelt the strong odor of fuel. We rode over to Anna's parents house, which is only about 1 mile down the road, but they were not being evacuated. We didn't really have a lot of news about when we could go back home. So we ended up spending the night sleeping in their extra bedroom. Anna, Eli, Coy, and I slept in a double bed. Needless to say, it was a long night with two squirmy boys.
I woke up in the morning and drove to our house to see if the road was open. There were no more emergency vehicles blocking the way, so I drove to the house and got ready for work. The majority of our neighbors were still gone, so it was very eerie to see the neighborhood so empty. Later I would find out that the driver of the tanker truck had passed away in the accident. All the inconvenience of being evacuated didn't seem so bad. The truck driver was only 31 and had two young children. Not being able to sleep in my bed didn't seem so bad when you think about those two kids not being able to hug their daddy again.
The rest of the week consisted of me running, working, playing with the boys, and watching the NBA playoffs after the boys went to bed. That was the daily routine until the weekend arrived. Early Saturday morning I began assembling a new play set we got for the boys. We have been looking at getting a play set for the boys for some time. We got a really good deal on this one at Toy R Us. It was $150 off for a limited time. The directions said 8-10 hours of assembly time, but I think i spent about 16 hours over Saturday, Sunday, and tonight putting that thing together. It was officially completed tonight as the sun was going down. The only thing left to do is to fix up the ground around the set.
Did I mention I have a test on Friday that covers over 460 PowerPoint slides! I better stop typing and get to reading.
