Day Seven South Dakota - July 19, 2009

Today was the day to head home. And this was the first day that we actually slept in. I finally drug myself out of bed about 7:30 am, an hour later than I had all week, and took another shower to wake myself up. Once I was done, I woke up Sebastian and began packing us all up. We woke the kids up at 9:00, took our belongings out to the car, and headed downstairs to meet Norbert, Teri, and Elizabeth for breakfast.

Sebastian and the kids enjoyed the buffet, which was very well stocked, including chocolate dip for strawberries and marshmallows and shrimp cocktail. Elizabeth sat between the kids and after everyone was finished eating, the three of them played Go Fish and Trash (or Garbage, whatever). We enjoyed a great deal of conversation and finally headed out at 11:45 am.

For the first time during the trip, Matthew asked "Are we there yet?" He did so on a number of occasions, and finally after we reached the 680/80 split we told him to look for the yellow smiley-face water tower and that would let him know we only had an hour left. He and Gabriella began discussing when they would close their eyes to sleep, knowing that it would help pass the time more quickly, but it never happened. They were much too excited to be seeing Amber again.

When we reached Des Moines, we stopped at Papa John's Pizza for our dinner, brought it home, and I opened the back door. When I got to the top of the kitchen steps, I am pretty sure I had come home to Amber laying on the couch. She was standing in the middle of the living room acting very sheepish. She ran outside, got attention, and then refused to come in for the rest of the night. Guess we weren't as important as bunny patrol.