Vacation! Vacation?

If I could sum up our vacation in two words, the title would be perfect. I'm a "glass is half full" girl, but I have been trying really hard focus on all of the wonderful good that our vacation generated. The first part of our vacation was spent with Ken's family in an unbelievable beach house just off the coast in Nags Head, NC. We had the beach, house pool, and hot tub just outside our door. I couldn't have asked for anything beach-ier. Mr. Alberto did drop a boat load of rain and wind in the middle of the week, but after the storm had passed the waves were perfect for boogie boarding for the next few days.



The company was excellent. The food was divine. I was deep into a good book. Faith was loving the new scenery and faces. Grace and Jack were well behaved and cheery children. All of the cousins got along so well. We had three babies under the age of 18 months in the house, and at times we joked that we were residing in a church nursery. The babies were a new joy to have around as they were but an inkling in the 2004 Beach Trip.


Where the vacation breaks down, is that a few days into the vacation a little bug started flying around. Just a fever, and a sore throat. A few cousins caught it. A couple of adults were battling a different kind of bug. I myself had spent a couple of hours in the bathroom in the middle of one night a hair away from losing all of my cookies, but I attributed it to a very spicy crab cake. As we packed up the car to head to Florida for my family's side of the vacation, I couldn't believe we had survived the bout with illness. Our kids had been unscathed. This I had immediately attributed to only the Grace of God. We actually have a name for a curse that appears to be on our household over the last five years...as every time we go on a vacation we get some gut wrenching illness that spreads like wildfire.

So we hopped in the car and headed to Kissimee, Florida. Deciding to divide the ride up into two days, we settled in Savannah. The curse...followed. That night, Faith came down with a 102 temperature, and congestion. She was a furnace and it was a miserable night for her. Jack reacted to the mite infested sofa bed and needed a breathing treatment in the morning. We hadn't escaped. I had no idea what our week would have in store. It could have been just the beginning. It was also Faith's first illness (not vaccination induced).

I felt like an absolute heel that morning. I had to tell the children, we had to double back home. No Disney World. No Sea World. No Grandpa. I had to call my father on Father's Day, of all days, and tell him we wouldn't be coming down for the week. And my little girl had to endure more hours in a car, with a sky rocket temperature. I felt like I had been wrapped up in a blanket of guilt.

The children took it so well. They really did. I was so proud of them. They were disappointed, but I had ignorance on my side, as they had never been to Disney World or Sea World before, so they had no idea exactly what they were missing. Faith endured her high temps without medicine (meds make her puke) and the fever broke the following night. She still has the nose stuff, but the wee one is feeling much better.

So we're home. I feel rested. I've been able to find the blessing in that the Lord allowed our family to go completely untouched for the first week so that we could truly relax. I've come home to my favorite flowers (scarlet bee balm) blooming in the garden that I thought I would miss during my absence. I have to believe that there was a reason we had to come home a week early. The Lord wanted us back home. And here we are. After all of it, vacation and missed vacation, it feels good to be home.

Friday Wrap Up

I feel like I have a thousand little loose ends to tie before leaving on this two week vacation. I've a bunch of cliff hangers from this week on the blog too, so here they are:

The cyst burst this week....lovely. But at least I know it is a cyst based on its contents. (I hope you've already eaten.) Unfortunately, I wasn't able to squeeze it back to normalcy. Ok, now you're gagging. But it looks better, and I shouldn't be as self conscious on the beach (minus the skin hanging from various locations.)

Which reminds me. I wasn't able to stick with my workout program as my knees became incredibly tender from the running. I did stick to including a yogurt a day in my diet. The working out I did, must have jostled my metabolism, as it moved me past my plateau weight, and as of today, I am one pound away from my goal nursing weight. I'm very tickled about that. Nursing has its perks --- well, until you stop nursing, and then those other super perky things, shrink to almost invisible.

Ok...moving on to the three moles I had removed. Guess what? Two of them really needed to be removed according to the test results. Mild dysplastic nevi. Nothing super serious, but considered pre-cancerous. So after vacation, I scoot back in for the doctor to take two more deeper chunks out of my skin to make sure they got everything. Not so glad about the holes in my body, but I'm glad I went in.

Maggie. My sweet fiddle player, has a giant scab over half of her tail as it mends. And she has managed to clear out almost every piece of chicken in the fridge. She's doing much better, but continues to boycott all pills. I can't tell you how thankful I am for her recovery, and now the sighting of those giant tail wags again.

Now...drum roll please....WE GOT THE TOURING ODYSSEY!!!! I lurve it!!! Sagebrush exterior, black and tan interior. It is SWEET!!! I was poking around in it with Ken at midnight last night, and it felt like we were sitting in an airplane with all of the nifty controls and lighting. Ken already admitted that he enjoyed smoking another car off of a light change on the way home. (How ridiculous are we?).

Lastly, my baby girl slept through the night. And as of 10:00am, she's still snoozing. Whoo! Hooo!! Poor girl must have been so worn out from car shopping. I couldn't have asked for a better little shopper yesterday.

And so, the rest of my day is a frazzled mess of last minute errands and packing. The kids are so excited they are almost down to counting hours. This family has so needed this vacation. As anyone who owns a business knows, vacations are so rare. So are true weekends. Ken and I were just discussing yesterday, that if it was just us, we would have canceled already. The downside of owning your own business or in our case businesses, is that working never ends. It has been too long. I thank the good Lord that we have a small gaggle of kids to force us on a vacation, or we'd really be boring sticks in the mud.

It's a happy day. :)

When Things Were Simple

I was going through some pictures tonight and this one made me smile and my heart ache. That's me. My grandfather's on my right, and my grandmother is on my left. I was their first grandchild. We all look so happy. And tan.

Faith is just entering the stage where she tries to grab your nose and take it off for a closer look. But I still have the silver bells on the shoes to look forward to.

Right now I feel baptized in molasses with motherhood. I can't even begin to imagine grandmotherhood. What is it like to hold the child of your child? It must be incredible.

I really miss her.

Toyota Sienna, Honda Odyssey Or Amish Buggy

We are actually going to succumb to the inevitable. It is time. I so wish for an alternative, but short of a houseboat on wheels, there is none.

I have to admit, the minivans are quite nice these days. They practically bake fresh bread. I just have a super aversion to them, as it was what I trained on for my driver's permit. And, yes, it was "my ride" if I was ever lucky enough to figure out more than 10 reasons why I needed to take the only family car and drive 30 minutes toward civilization.

It may also have something to do with the fact that on my way home from failing my driver's test, in my first a fit of road rage I thought I could pass a team of horses pulling an Amish buggy around a curve, closed in by 3-4 foot snow banks. I got side by side with the buggy, in time to see another driver hugging the corner a little too fast in the lane I was using to pass. Did I mention the snow banks? It could have been super ugly with horse flesh everywhere. Instead, I managed to gun it, with my mother helplessly screaming a prayer to God in the passenger seat, and the dude went into the snowbank to avoid collision. Aren't you thankful I didn't pass my driver's test? That episode is in my top 10 Hall of Shame moments. Especially the fact that we couldn't stop anywhere to apologize to the guy. I knew he was alright because of the expression on his face after he hit the bank. He might of been injured, but he still had A LOT of fight in him. Because of the giant snow banks, I just had to keep driving.

Don't worry, I'm a stellar driver now. Not one speeding ticket. Just a car accident where I turned left in the wrong lane and a car full of innocent old Mennonite women nailed my giant Chevy truck.

Any hoo....I digress...So we've checked out both, and neither of us can decide. Well...I like the spruced up Toyota Sienna because of girly things...neat steering wheel, nice little button to close the doors (no pulling on a handle), the seat just fits my tushie better. He, of course, is leaning toward the Odyssey because of more man-ly features...more horsepower for maintaining some sense of dignity and smoking past other mini vans on the highway, lots of buttons and gadgets, better navigation system.

On Friday, we buy it just in time to slap on headphones over our children's ears and hope for a quiet ride to the beach minus the irrate screaming baby confined to a car seat for 8 hours. But which one???? Perhaps the better question is which one would help our family survive if I ever manage to get back in Lancaster county and at the mercy of creepingly slow Amish buggys, snow banks, and other drivers like...myself.