Great Vacation... A Bit Too Great

Today is back to the grind for most of us. Chad still has this one last day of vacation, which is awesome, but the rest of us are back to rushed mornings and running for the bus. Our last week has been so unbelievably relaxed and enjoyable - family fun at it's finest. In fact, our vacation might have been a little too good, as we had a real challenge getting the boys off to school this morning! Very unusual, as the boys both love school. But, this morning, I had to wake up Brandon at 7am and nag him about 10 times to get dressed. Then, he kept saying all through breakfast, "I'm not going to school today." I think that having Chad home actually made it harder for him to leave. Eventually, I did get him to eat breakfast, and Chad rushed him out to the bus, against his protests. Parker didn't wake up until 8am, and then he was in a BAD mood. After finally getting him out of the bathroom (he was laying on the floor in there with the door shut, telling us to leave him alone), Chad had to literally force him to get dressed. Then, while I was putting his breakfast on the table, Parker ran back upstairs to his room, undressed himself, and was in the process on putting back on his pajamas when I finally tracked him down. Whoo boy, was he ever cranky. Suffice to say, we eventually got him to school, and then Chad and I went out to breakfast to celebrate our child-free state.

And let me just say that my morning before the kids got up wasn't much smoother. I went to the gym to run this morning at 5:30am (which was harsh in and of itself, after sleeping in all last week). I was about 3.6 miles into my run, going fast and feeling really good, when the electricity went out. And I started to see and smell smoke. Some astute readers may remember that this happened last winter as well. Delightful. So, everyone's kind of bumbling around, trying to figure out what to do, but I just grabbed my stuff and left, figuring I could finish my workout on our home treadmill. And yes, most people were not leaving, even though only the emergency lights were on, and there was smoke. In fact, the spin class was still moving full steam ahead when I passed it, without music of course. I'm sorry, but if I smell smoke in a building, I'm outta there. So, I hop in my car to head home and get stuck about 3 blocks from our house by an accident on the road. Luckily, after about 4 minutes of idling, I was able to pull around it. And I did eventually complete the last 2.4 miles of my run, just with a weird 15 minute intermission in the middle.

The good news is, if my gym is going to annually catch on fire, at least I've been on the treadmill every time it's happened. It would stink to be in the pool, where you can't even see or hear anything going on in the rest of the gym. The whole place could burn down, and I'd probably still be swimming laps, back and forth, back and forth.

Okay, so that's my complaints about this morning all taken care of. Now let me get to how amazing our week+ of vacation was!! The boys were unbelievably well-behaved. They were so easy and pleasant to be around all week! We did lots of fun stuff like sledding, ice skating, going out to lunch, and spending a day walking around Harvard Square. But, we also just relaxed and hung out alot. I read two books, did two jigsaw puzzles, caught up on my magazines, watched the whole first season of "Breaking Bad" with Chad and just in general felt like I got lots of "Beth-time". And we instituted a nightly game of Kinect bowling every evening after dinner. It's a good game for right before bed because you aren't jumping around and getting riled up like some of the other sports and because all four of us can all do it fairly well without much learning curve. It's so fun! I'm not a huge videogame person, but I am wowed by the Kinect. It's the coolest thing ever.

I'm very sad that the vacation is over because it's rare when all four of us have a stretch of days together like that without any responsibilities. But, as I told Brandon, he has to go back to school so that we can get to the next fun thing to look forward to... Valentines Day??!! Maybe not.