Home from vacation

I sit here, in a sea of duffel bags and dirty laundry and an empty kitchen desperately in need of restocking. I can't think of a better time for blogging. Do you have a vacation coming up soon? I have a few pointers to help your trip be all that it can be...

- forget your camera. Or, remember your camera, but forget your extra set of batteries. Nothing is better than watching your kids hike mountains, ride gocarts and alpine slides, and tube down the river and think of all the memories you are NOT catching on film.

- Take 1 seven year old, 1 five year old, 2 four year olds and 3 three year olds and put them in two queen size bunk beds in the same room. Then tell them to go to sleep.

- At least once, keep your baby out until 2 in the afternoon in the sun and heat without a nap. Marvel at the meltdown.

- Drink enough coca cola that your eyeballs feel like they're constantly swimming and you are fairly certain that all progress in fitness and weight loss that you were making before your vacation is sufficiently undone.

-Realize, about thirty minutes before arriving at your destination, that you forgot your pack n' play for your baby to sleep in. Go to Wal-Mart and buy a new one, because money really does grow on trees.


On a less sarcastic note, our vacation really was a lot of fun. We traveled through the Great Smokey Mountains National Park (or, as Sam called it, the Great Spookey Mountains Natural Park) and stayed in a big house with my extended family right on the Pigeon River. We played, we ate, and we laughed, and we laughed some more.

Because I have family members who did have working cameras, I'll post some pictures soon.


On a totally un-vacation-related note, I've recently discovered that if your four year old opens and dumps one of those carbon oxygen eating preservation thingys that they put inside buckets or cans of wheat in to your wheat grinder, and then you try and grind wheat, your grinder may catch on fire. You may find yourself with actual big orange flames jumping from the bottom of the machine. Do you KNOW how expensive wheat grinders are? I love four year olds.