Vacation

I'm not sure what happened with my post last week. I was on vacation with my family, but I brought along my laptop and on Monday night scheduled a post to be published Tuesday.  As you know, that post was never published. And that is ironic, because my entire post was about how I felt like no one was listening to me.  I guess not publishing the post was the universe's confirmation that, indeed, no one is listening to me and that's the way it should be. 

So, on to a new topic: family vacation.  Last week, for the first time ever, we took a family vacation.  We didn't go far - only about two and a half hours - and we didn't plan a lot to do.  And that was perfect.  I was a little nervous about vacationing with my kids.  We had trouble deciding what to do or where to go: Husband doesn't want to travel with the kids on a plane and I was not willing to put them through another long car ride.  By my way of thinking, they spend at least two hours every day in the car already, there was no way I wanted them to spend a chunk of their vacation stuck in the back of the van.  So we went somewhere relatively close and rented a house and just took things from there. 

 By all accounts, it should have been a disaster.  Approximately 15 inches of rain fell on the area a week before we arrived.  As a result, there were mud slides and floods and all kinds of problems.  The outdoor pool at the resort we were staying at was damaged and closed.  The waterfall we had promised to take KJ to had taken on Niagara Falls-like qualities and was closed to visitors.  Even some of the roads had washed away entirely.  But despite all that we made it work.  We swam in the indoor pool.  We went to the coolest park ever. We visited horses.  We went down a giant slide, and back up on a ski lift.  But most of all, we just enjoyed each other. 

Not planning a super-packed, scheduled vacation was just the thing we needed.  We were able to wake up every day and talk about how we wanted to spend the day over breakfast together.  We were able to do things we didn't ordinarily do, and go at the kid's pace.  We got to come back to the house for nap time every day, and the kids were able to sleep as long as they wanted to.  We didn't have to drive anywhere far, and I made every single meal at the house.  It was ideal for us. 

This week, we're back to reality.  But it isn't so bad.  I'm so glad we took a week to just spend some time together without a lot of things planned or scheduled to do.  It was great to reconnect with the family and really focus only on the kids for a while.  I'm already looking forward to next year's vacation.


Karen