Starting this one over again, my mojo is thrown off, so I will do my best.
Waking up, I remember it being hot, so hot that I got right out of the RV. I was surprised that the kids weren’t as warm as I was. We were in a parking lot, outside of a medical/type facility. It had a pool and we were doing the swim there. I went into the pool area and planned to swim. Casey and Aaron had their shark plan, which consisted of cardboard shark fins. I was dying laughing, “Um, those won’t stay up if they get wet.” Their response, “It only needs to be long enough for James to see us.” Point made.
I swam a few laps before they jumped in. Soon enough, they were in the pool taunting James. He continued swimming as if he hadn’t even seen them. We annoyed him on purpose, but I still kind of felt bad that we were so annoying.
After the swim, there was a nice breakfast waiting for us down the hallway. It was in a small break room, and some of the food was being cooked right there. We enjoyed an awesome breakfast, then I packed a plate for my kids out in the RV.
When I got out to the RV, the kids were up and playing. They were excited to see their dad, and to have a nice breakfast ready for them. They happily popped out of the RV, “Good morning Daddy!” The ate as he got his things together for the bike ride. The ambassador, Brian, had everything set up for the day, so it should be smooth sailing.
Once they were off, we went to the meeting point of the day. This was in a huge parking lot, in the midst of huge, grassy fields. It looked like a place where the city had sports events and things. There weren’t big plans for the day, so the Sariah Ford and Hannah Ford took Daisy, Dolly and Quinn to a water park. Brytin Delanie Waterlyn would be taking Lucy and Lily to get mani-pedis later. I went to the laundromat, then Brytin later met me there with Lucy and Lily. After a couple of calls, we found a place for them to get their nails done.
Luckily for us, there was a store next door that sold shipping supplies. We went over and got water, and we loaded up on shipping supplies to mail shirts out. We had a big mess with shirts. Our shirt supplier had sent us the wrong orders twice now. Since we didn’t have inventory, we were taking orders, then when the new order came in, we would ship the shirts. The problem was that the correct shirts never came, so not only did we not have inventory, but we didn’t have shirts to mail to the people who were waiting.
Once we got back to the RV, we set up an assembly line on the sidewalk. We parked our butts in the shade and pulled all of the stuff out. We would address the envelopes, and then Lucy and Lily would write the return addresses on the envelopes. We would write which shirt and size on the back of the envelope, then when the shirts would come, we would know which shirts went in which envelopes. It was a perfect plan! This was a huge task and took over 2 hours! By the time we finally got it finished, James was back and ready to start the run. Lucy and Lily hopped on their bikes and rode with him. The 3 littles were still at the pool, but would join him on their bikes/running later that night.
Things were starting to pick up for the night. Not only did we have our 5kers showing up, but there was also lots of people showing up for the city sports that were happening there that night. There was a ton of enthusiasm in South Dakota; people were pumped to be running with the Iron Cowboy. We had a nice dinner provided for us (as well as a lunch earlier in the day), and we were well taken care of. James ate lots of food, and was ready to start the 5k.
Off everyone went! The sky was beautiful and it was hot. We were trying to get organized as a crew. I remember there being some fiasco going on with space in the RV. I can’t remember what it was..Shad Stevens, do you remember? I also remember that we didn’t want to go into the RV to get it organized because it was so hot! I would go in for a bit, then come out. It didn’t matter that windows were open, or if the AC from the dash was going, it was too hot. I decided to start the engine and let it run for a while before I went it to get it ready to leave.
The 5k was over, and again, I remember there being some kind of issue going on. It may have been who was going in which car… One thing we knew was that we needed gas. It was getting dark, so we figured that we would get everything loaded and ready before we went for gas. We soon left to get gas, hoping to dump the septic too (didn’t work out). We went up the street a couple of miles to fill up the tank. The kids all ran into the gas station to find a souvenir. We had to pump the gas twice, since the tank stopped at $100, and we also had to switch cards.
After the kids found their treasures, windshield was cleaned, gas was full, we turned around to head back. It only took several wrong turns, and U-turns, to finally find our way back. When we arrived, James was close to being finished. I believe that Shad drove the van that night for James… We all said goodbye to James, and the RV left before him. James’ mom was arriving the next day. She would be waiting for us in the morning at the swim location. The windows were down, the air was blowing like crazy, and we rocked out to our favorite mix CD until we all fell asleep.
