I was wrong.
I thought that when it was time for us to pack up and leave from our little cross country excursion to Yellowstone, I would be thrilled. I thought that after nearly two weeks of being together every waking moment and being on top of each other in the RV, I would be dying to get home. So imagine my surprise when we pulled out and started putting Yellowstone, beautiful Montana, Wyoming, and the Grand Tetons in our rearview mirror, and I started to get emotional. OK, maybe I got A LOT emotional and was ugly crying while my kids were yelling “What’s wrong with mom?? WHAT IS WRONG WITH MOM??” in the backseat.
The truth is, I wasn’t ready for it to be over.
I love my life. I am so very happy. I am blessed beyond measure with amazing friends and family and a life that I love living. That life that I love living also happens to be a fast-paced, go all the time, gotta be here, now you gotta be there, frenetic type of life. Just to be clear, I’m not complaining. It is what my husband and I have chosen and we are very happy. Our kids are in activities, we love to have fun with our friends and with our kid’s friends. We work. We travel. We tailgate. We go to the lake. We have fun. We do softball and baseball (times two), and basketball and music and dance and tumbling and soccer. I take pictures. He owns his own business. We are on the go, pretty much all the time.
Life in the RV is the opposite of that. It is simple. It’s me and the man that is my world and has been since I was seventeen years old, and our three precious babies. That’s it. No schedules. No “you gotta be here” and “now you gotta be there.” It’s just us, doing what we want to do when we want to do it. It’s just us, being together.
Last night when I rolled out the kid’s beds and got them settled for the night, Cohen looked up at me with the sweetest little smile and patted the bed next to him three times, inviting me to lay down with him like I have every single night since we’ve been here. I laid down with my babies, all three of them in the same room just inches away from each other, and I thought to myself “I’m sure gonna miss this.”
So without a doubt, I was wrong. I thought two weeks would be too long and it turns out that it wasn’t long enough. Until next time I will have these memories to hold onto and will look forward to our next big adventure when we will make even more: Sleeping in and eating homemade waffles together, hiking Inspiration Point at Jenny Lake, laughing until I cried with my sister at the Cody Wyoming Rodeo, Cohen telling everyone he was riding a “big buffalo” (it was actually a one ton bull) at the rodeo, going to see an old college friend and deciding on an impromptu sleepover in Livingston because we wanted more time together, falling asleep with all three of my babies in the same bed and waking up to hear their laughter, watching Michael be in his happy place while listening to country music and grilling outside of our RV, Cohen getting in a fight with a kid at our rv park, watching Old Faithful, the Old Faithful Inn, Mammoth Springs, thinking I would NOT be one of those “weirdos” on the side of the road who freak out when they see wildlife then eating my words when I absolutely FLIPPED OUT when we spotted a grizzly cub, watching my nieces and nephews and kids be in absolute heaven while they watched said grizzly cub scavenge for berries just a few feet away from us, car rides where I thought I might lose my mind, family naps back in the rv after long days of exploring, Easton taking care of Cohen and helping him “fix his hair” in the mornings, my kid’s first horseback ride (which deserves a post entirely on it’s own), watching my kids hike and explore creeks and canyons and fields and mountains they had never before seen, swimming in a boiling river with my sister and her family who we got to meet up with for a few days during our trip, driving the Beartooth and Chief Joseph Highways, touring the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, seeing Mount Rushmore, and just being together every single second of every single day for almost two weeks straight, which I loved.
Yep, I was totally wrong and I’m glad I was.
