Dennari43, thats sound very much like the day I had my dogs with me and got blown up by two creepers. I wrote the coords down trekked for two (RL) days to get back to those coords only to have the ground items killed when I got in the vicinity!
but the worst was having that cast on my hand and not being able to play AT ALL!
The best was just before we moved to this server... I had found two villages like less than 400 blocks from each other and I spent the summer revamping them, making guardians and fences etc.