Our Welcome Home: The Great Bed Bug Incident of 2011

I'm recounting our summer beginning with the end and then I'll conclude with the beginning, our adventures in Ireland, England, and France. Just because, well, it's easier to talk about what happened most recently than go back and rack my mind about all the memories of our time across the pond. 

So, there you have it, I going to tell the story of our summer completely out of order.

Let's rewind about two and half weeks. Trey and I are blissfully enjoying our stay in a cozy little town outside Paris, called La Ferre. We are joined by about 40 other wedding guests in a Thai elephant themed Chateau complete with a pool, steam room and that European ball game where you throw baseball-sized steel balls like horseshoes. The wedding week was spent taking bike rides, indulging in very long, slow meals and drinking lots of French wine that I personally couldn't imbibe. (Side note: this is the second time I have been in Europe and pregnant. What are the odds?)

Two days later, after trekking back to Paris and taking the Eurostar train under the English Channel back to London (where we planned to spend a night before flying back to Dallas), we are interrupted in our reverie to find that the sub-lessees of our home have been trying desperately to get in contact with us. 

Why?  There were nasty little bugs invading every bedroom and feasting on our lovely sub-lessees. 

Ick. Ick. Ick. We quickly authorize them to do whatever they and the landlady deem necessary to cleanse the place of those pesky pests. 

Enter the Orkin man. 

Oh, and washing everything that can be washed and sealing it up in bags. Throwing out all cardboard and plastic, where they LOVE to lay eggs. Taking off outlets in the bedrooms because they find that another homey spot to set up house. Disassembling beds and moving all to the center of every bedroom--leaving every baseboard exposed. Finally, bagging up everything else since the little buggers can't survive limited oxygen after 24 hours. 

Once all that was done, by our sub-lessees (poor girls) then Orkin came in and blasted the place, promising it to be bug-free. Hallelujah.

All that happened while we were away. We flew from London to DFW where we resumed our parental responsibilities and rescued the grandparents from our children (just kidding--they actually adored having them). After hanging around long enough to see our first niece be born, we skedaddled out of Dallas by one long overnight drive back to Denver. 

14 hours later, a trip to Rise N Shine Biscuit Company for refreshment and a final stop at the park to sufficiently wear the kids out so we could all take a nap (they got to sleep in the car while we drove), we arrived to our beloved home. 

We entered weary and ready for one thing: a good nap. However,  as I am sure you can imagine, most of our house was in a packed up state--including our bed. It was like moving in ALL over again.

On the bright side, it was a fabulous opportunity to deep clean, reorganize and rearrange. Spring cleaning in the middle of summer. Woot woot!

Stay tuned for our next big adventure, which happened the following Saturday, July 23rd....