CRAZY day - (Wednesday)

Well, Nathan has been home the last couple days! But he leaves again tomorrow :( (That's why I haven't posted much - trying to spend as much time with him as I can before he takes off....)
So - now about the crazy day! Wednesday morning I went running at Richland's path...it is a .75 mile loop. I put in my greatest distance so far - 2.5 miles! I didn't do it all at once though...I did 1.5 miles in 15:06, walked some, got a drink and stretched, then one mile in 10:12 or something like that. I came home, ate breakfast, took a shower, etc...then I went to babysit!
The way I came in contact with the family I babysat for was funny....the wife of the "pastor" (we don't call him that at our church) at my church suggested me to her daughter (last summer I think...), then her daughter suggested me to her church in March or so (and I've done quite a bit of babysitting for them). A couple weeks ago, one of the coordinators at the church asked if I would come to her house to babysit for a birthday party, so I did. One of the families there was the pastor and his wife from that church....so Tuesday night, my dad called me to say that someone he didn't know was asking me to babysit...and it took me a few minutes to figure out who it was :D
Anyways, they have five children....(girl - 8, girl - 6, boy - 5, boy - 2, girl - 10 months)...so I was pretty busy for the three hours I was there. It was very fun though. They are sweet kids for the most part. The boys loved it when I gave them horsey back rides...kind of wore me out! I really enjoy babysitting, for many reasons! :D I love being with the kids, it gives me a small taste of motherhood, and I earn money doing it!
Once I got home, I took a short nap then worked on random things, watched news, and ate dinner. (There was some thunderstorm activity - that will figure in later!) We (Dad, Mom, and I) then headed out to go to our U.S. representative's town hall meeting. It started at 7, and we got there a few minutes afterwards...as we got closer, we realized that people were having to park a ways away and walk in...Dad was nice enough to drop us off by the door so we wouldn't have to take the chance of getting rained on. As Mom and I were walking in the door, two police officers were walking out...I heard them tell all the people still coming that they wouldn't be allowed inside the building - there were too many people! So I called Dad and told him that we got in but he wouldn't be able to....he decided to go home and just come pick us up later. Well, we made our way to the room where the meeting was, only to find that it was so full of people that people were crowded outside the doors! We couldn't see and could barely hear. The representative was told to ask everyone to move quietly away from the doors because of the possible fire exit hazard, etc. We were thinking we would just leave, but as we were headed out we heard that there was a speaker in the hall, so we sat in the hall and listened. It was still really hard to hear because (ahem) some people (ahem, like the mayor!!!!!!!) were just standing in the hall chit chatting..... We left before he actually finished because we didn't want to get stuck in a big traffic jam.
That was about 8:30. Nathan's flight from Washington, D.C. was supposed to land at 9:20, so we headed for the airport. The sky was very interesting....there was a big dark cloud over about 90% of the sky. As we got closer to the airport, I noticed these very bright lights...too bright to be stars or warning lights on towers. Eventually, we figured out they were airplanes, lined up and just waiting to land at DFW...there were at least 11 planes that we could see flying around under the big cloud. Remember those thunderstorms??? DFW had to stop landing planes for a little while because of that, so they had gotten backed up....soon after that we got an automated call saying that Nathan's plane would land at 10. We headed to a mall to kill some time. While we were there, we got a phone call saying he would land at 10:30, and then another call to say his flight had to divert to Austin (getting to low on fuel) and that he would land in DFW at 11:30. The mall closed officially at 9:30 (we were still inside after that), then we just stayed out in the car a little while (I tried to sleep...) We arrived at the airport at about 11, then sat at the baggage claim area. THEN NATHAN CAME!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!! Two and a half weeks and an overseas trip - it was GOOD to see him again!!! Poor guy was exhausted though - it was 5:30 am Thursday (London time), and he had gotten up Wednesday morning in London and not really slept since then. Then, to top it all off, his luggage didn't come up the belt....we had to stand in line to talk to the baggage guy, he told us to wait 10 minutes, then we had to stand in line AGAIN, then we had to fill out all this information for a claim etc. etc.... It was nearly 12:30 by the time we left the airport...and I didn't get to bed until 1:30 a.m....it's really no wonder I slept in until 10 the next morning (usually, I can NOT sleep past 8 or so)......
So that was all about our crazy day! Nathan's luggage was found and delievered to our door the next evening.