Five of Us

I don't think much of them, frankly.  Oh, sure, there's the get-away-from-your-house-and-your-usual-routine-and-do-some-stuff-you-wouldn't-get-to-do-every-day part of it that is...interesting...but all of that, I believe, comes at a price.   This vacation, that price was...vacation.

Truthfully, we can look back on our time away and comment that we had fun.  We did so much...in the midst of all of that, we have to be able to extract some fun from the memory banks.  And please understand me here...I know that we were so blessed to be able to do what we did.  I think we could have done it better.  That's all.  We have never done vacation like this before.  We've almost never done vacation before, frankly.  It's all new.  There's an art to it.  We haven't learned it yet.

High Points:

: : The kids not figuring out that we were "doing Disney" until we had pulled the van into the resort where we stayed and Seth said to them, "Guys.  Do you understand that we're in Disney World?  That we're here for four days?  That you're going to Disney World?"  I have video of us going under the "Welcome to Walt Disney World" sign with absolutely no reaction from the children.  I guess we played that one a bit too well. 

: : The beach.  Gosh, I love the beach.  I need a beach.

: : Moments at Disney.  I so enjoy Disney.  Seth made the comment that he realized as we were walking through Epcot that much of this Disney vacation was really about me.  Hmm.  I don't know that I would go that far...I just expected that the kids would love it as much as I do.  

: : Spending time with my in-laws and nephews.  It's a tangled web there...but they love us so much.  We can't walk into that house without knowing how much they love us.  And we so love them.

: : The feeling that we were spoiling our kids.  Honestly, it is one of my favorite feelings. 

: : My nephew was born last night while I was driving through Virginia.  He's beautiful!  And perfect.

: : Driving from Zephyrhills, FL to Williamsport, PA with six stops for food, bathrooms, and gasoline in 19 hours flat.

: : Unexpectedly great hotel rooms on the ride down and back.  Love last minute travelocity finds!!  Especially with good continental breakfast plans.

: : Safe travel.  My van.  Which had adequate space for 5 and all their necessities for 11 days even with 140 pounds of wild boar in a cooler next to the back seat and hanging over the rear stow and go space.  I don't love my van yet...but I'm thankful for her.

: : Chelsea, still alive--and the fact that my parents brought the dogs to us today.

We are grateful to be home.  Grateful to have had my parents with us for the afternoon/evening today.  Grateful for the experience of Florida again after 7 years away.  Grateful for the blessing of vacation and a break...and glad to be back from it.  Soooo much more to say about the trip.  So not going to tonight.  If you're planning a trip to Disney soon, call me.  Our week was a pretty good example of what not to do.  We will do it better next time.

I

can't

wait.

I will have my camera ready for the moment they realize where we are going and what we're doing there...maybe I'll have to post it tonight.  And right now I am reminding myself that tonight...will come very quickly if I don't stop looking at all of the places we could eat and the things we could do over the next four days and go to bed.  My brain just won't seem to turn off.  I probably should have done this before the night before we started driving to Orlando...but that would just take some of the fun right out of the situation, wouldn't it??  Thank goodness for my dear friend and travel agent Rich and his trip planning expertise!!  If you need someone to hook you up with a great vacation package...I can definitely give you his number!! 

OK, OK, really.  I'm going to bed now.  I might not sleep, but I'm going to bed.

*giggle*

So.  I moved on.  After those moments of really, really angry, of course.  And after I cleaned up the red Faygo from every single surface of my in-law's beautiful, perfect, white-walled, glass-tabled, Halloween-decorated kitchen.  And fought to keep an internet connection in their house (after fighting to even have a connection at the hotel) for long enough to reserve a new hotel room (because, you see, I had to move the kids and myself out of the hotel we were in this morning.  It was simply the most repulsive, irritating room I had ever, ever stayed in.  Ever.  And that includes that interesting room we slept in for two nights in Myrtle Beach in 1993, Melissa.  And the cabins and dorms at all of those camps during my summer on Heirborne tour.  And the houses we stayed in through my 4 years of Believers.).   When those things were over...and Seth gave me directions (from the car on his way home from wild boar hunting with his Dad) to get to the beach...we headed out and spent a couple of wonderful hours at Indian Rock beach.  Came back and checked into our new hotel (I've decided we're just going to choose Best Western every time from now on), had dinner with my in-laws, spent an hour at their house while the kids played guitar hero, and then crashed at the hotel.

It's vacation.  So, it's fine.  But it really has to get better tomorrow.  No more broken, too small showers, bathroom fans so loud they scare your afraid-of-the-dark children who then choose to use the bathroom in the dark instead of turning on the light, exploding soda bottles, stupid boar hunts, floors so dirty you won't let your children sit on them, unreachable sisters-in-law, in-law parents who feel terrible about all of the stuff going wrong, fighting over the condition of the van after spending the majority of three days in it...none of that.  Tomorrow, we head to the Tampa Aquarium.  Tomorrow we spend the whole day as a family.  Tomorrow...we start our vacation.  

The end.  

Our studies of ancient Egypt have come at a wonderful time for us...we always struggle at this time of year to find good costume ideas, and then I waste about two weeks thinking about how I should definitely get started on costumes and buy fabric and get organized, only to cram costume preparation into the last three days before Halloween.  This year...things become even more complicated as we leave for 11 days in Florida on the 20th of October...meaning that I don't even have the last two weeks before Halloween to lose my mind.  And, umm, unfortunately, I now have less than a week to pull it all together in order to have it done before we leave. 

We started looking at costume ideas yesterday.  Sigh.

One of the (many, many) things I love about My Father's World is that when you learn about a subject, especially in history, you read about it in three or four different places before you ever open a book from the book basket.  The book basket expands upon what you've read even further.  By the time you finish studying a topic, you've read it in so many different ways and from so many different perspectives, you literally have no choice but to remember it!  Don't you wish you had learned history in that way??  I hated history growing up.  I am nearly certain I hated it because I despised reading textbooks. Do you remember sitting at your desk in grade four, reading the information about...let's say, New York State...from your textbook, then answering 10 comprehension questions at the end of the section in proper question/answer form??   I truly don't remember rich literature experiences in elementary school regarding...well, much of anything...but certainly not history.  If you ask my kids what subject they love...they'll tell you history.  I am sure things have changed in the public schools in terms of how literature is used.  I can say that because I know what I did in the classroom after I started teaching.  But...I know that my kids will remember ancient Egypt from their Fifth Grade studies.  

Their Halloween costumes this year will remind them too. :)  During our research, Bryson decided that mummies are disgusting.  When you're a 7-year-old boy...that is so cool. He will be King Tut's mummy, of course.  Lainie?  An Egyptian Princess (which will look an awful lot like a Greek Goddess...but we'll get to Greek culture this year too...).  All that bling!!  And Reasa...she has been thinking Cleopatra.  Today, she saw a cowgirl costume...I'm trying to talk her out of it.  We'll see.

Can I just mention how glad I am that this year marks the first Halloween completely devoid of frilly princess or fairy costumes??!  Hooray for Creation to the Greeks!!