The entire house is a testament to the fact that we left in a hurry, and, thus also, an indirect testament to why we left so quickly. Items are strewn about from where we tossed them in efforts to find only the most important items to take with us. I feel a strong need to get things back to order, above an beyond what I would ordinarily feel at the return end of a visit away from home.

First, though, I need to collect myself, or else I'll just be doing things in a horribly random order and accomplishing very little. Assess the situation: first, do laundry. That will take care of much of the suitcase situation currently crowding the kitchen floor. Second, get the toys back into their places, both the collection Sam took with him to West Virginia and the piles of toys he tossed on the floor trying to decide which to put in his backpack.

The kitchen and dining room tables will come next; they served as a staging area for me as I sorted through my bags in efforts to empty them of all items that would be nonessential for a week away. Once they're clean, I'll feel much more relaxed, I know from experience. I'll clear the kitchen counters, where Eric has apparently done what I did on the tables. The dishwasher, which we thankfully did run before leaving, can wait a bit.

How do floors manage to gather such horrible lint even when the family isn't home to walk on it? It's a mystery of the ages, but the end result is that I'll need to vacuum before I can feel good today. The kitchen floor is a mass of footprints from our snowy shoes which tracked in badness on our trips to and from the car with suitcases; our minds were far from the state in which we might have taken precautions against that. I'll mop after vacuuming.

At some point, the mail will come in the large, rubber band-bound pile which has accumulated in the post office while we've been gone. I'll have to sort through that, pulling out the bills that need to be paid in haste before we fly back out on Friday. In that administrative vein, I need to run to the bank with checks to deposit that will allow those bills to be safely paid. That trip to the bank will need to be extended, though, into a much longer trip of errands; we did remember to empty the fridge of most of the things that would spoil while we were gone, but now there's little to eat in the house for the few days we'll be here this week.

I need to do more shopping than that, too. We haven't decided definitively whether we'll be doing our little family Christmas here this week before heading back to West Virginia or whether we'll check an extra bag of gifts for the boys and just let them celebrate Christmas morning with their cousin at her house. The family is doing Christmas there this year, which I think is a grand idea, all things considered (I can't even imagine waking up on Christmas morning without my spouse for the first time while feelings are still so raw), and perhaps it would be better to simplify the gift thing that way, even if it means having to schlepp an extra suitcase through the airport with us (it's too late to try to ship the gifts there, and this way we'll have the extra bag when it comes time to bring them home). Actually, now that I think about it, it's really the best idea; I'd hate to have Sam have to watch Hailey open her mound of gifts while mournfully recalling his own presents back here in Wisconsin.

So I need to shop for the boys, and I need to shop for Hailey yet, as well as a few other people on my list (pleasepleaseplease let Amazon still be able to get things there on time...), and I need to pick up a couple of presents for the prisoners' children who we selected from our church's Angel Tree; those were supposed to be delivered to the coordinator while we were gone, but luckily said coordinator is a friend, and once I told her of our predicament, she reassured me and told me I could get them to her by Tuesday and it would be fine.

So...cleaning, sorting, and shopping, all while keeping the kids from being too crazy. This week will be one pure, concentrated holiday season - a month's worth of bustle packed into five days. I'll be lucky to survive with my sanity and nerves intact (as could probably be proven through the fact that in the time it's taken me to write this entry, I've had to answer the phone twice, deal with a particular pile of clutter within my sight that was driving me batty, and respond to no less than a half-dozen requests from Gabe for very brief nursings). Yet still I sit here, first and foremost, updating my journal. Why?

Because I love you guys.

We're mostly recovered, though my stomach is still a bit touchy whenever I try to eat more than a few bites of anything and Eric might still be running a slight fever (I didn't get a chance to ask him this morning before he left for work). Gabe was unaffected, at least as far as I can tell, and Sam's only signs of illness were a very low-grade fever for a day, a few extra trips to the potty, and once instance in which he asked Eric, "Why does my belly feel funny?" before curling up on his lap for a short rest.

The plane trips were uneventful; thank God, our first and longer leg of the journey saw another set of young brothers seated right in front of us, and the eighteen-month-old of that pair was much more restless and loud and thus took the brunt of any frustration from other passengers. Sam was enchanted by him, though, and managed to settle him on a couple of occasions (why can't he do that with Gabe once in a while?), so it was okay. The second half wasn't so bad, either, though I've never flown at night before, and it was unsettling for me to see nothing out my window when we were banking or when we were flying over Lake Michigan. To cope, I recited poems to Gabe while he sat on my lap, and that made me feel a little better. I do need to expand the number of poems I know by heart, though; "Jabberwocky" scared the crap out of Sam, apparently. (Eric suggests I memorize "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." "Har," I say to him. "Har, har.")

And to think, I get to do it yet again in a few days. What is this, some sort of desensitization therapy? I am not amused.

I'll have some pictures later today, when I manage to get around to unpacking my purse and camera. Truly, I can't rationalize making that a priority, though I wish I could.