My list of great vacation happenings...

~ My car made it 700 miles there and 700 miles back
~ I spent many hours in the car with my family and never (severely) lost my temper :)
~ I spent five days with my best friend... laughing
~ The sun was shining for the three days on the beach
~ Landry didn't get stung by a jellyfish
~ We took LOTS of wonderful pictures to remember our vacation









My list of no-so-great vacation happenings...

~ My car didn't act like it was going to make it, sputtering up every incline for 700 miles both ways
~ I spent many hours in the car with my family
~ I spent five days with my best friend ~ so now I miss her terribly!
~ It rained all the 700 miles there and most of the way back
~ Katy, Sydney AND MacKenzie got stung my jellyfish - more than once
~ Sydney accidentally deleted all the vacation pictures in the digital camera before they were downloaded

That all said, it was a great vacation. My wonderful husband drove me absolutely mad procrastinating about getting the car repaired until we got home. After we actually made it home and the repair bill was over $1100, he said "See, now if we would have done that during vacation it would have ruined it for all of us". True enough, but so would sitting on the side of a two lane road (with no shoulder) with four kids in tow in the pouring rain, hundreds of miles from home. Sigh...

Now we're back to REAL life... the teenager begging for a car (all in good time),
issues at both jobs (at least we HAVE jobs), the preteen wanting to go, go, go (which is translated to spend, spend, spend)... I need another vacation and I've been home less than a week :)

Vacation recovery is always a challenge. Thank goodness I am so fortunate to experience it.

We're off on a short little vacation in a couple of days... and to say the least, the girls CAN'T WAIT!!! We're going to the beach in Alabama to visit my best friend Aimee' and her crew. It should be fun, minus the 600+ miles in the car. Honestly, I'm even looking forward to the car trip (I know I'm officially now a nut case). It's sometimes a challenge just to get the six of us, 7 miles to church, so why on earth would I look forward to a 600 mile trip with everyone in the car TOGETHER? Note to self: Look at this post in a week or so... I love having my family all together -- yes, even in the close quarters of "the car". I guess I see the days ahead when Katy's off to college and we're not taking family vacations anymore.

We're excited. It's been a challenging week, but I'm not certain of the last one that wasn't. It will be fun to hang out with my BFF and all our kiddos.

I'll write when we're home -- and you remind me of how excited I was about the car trip :)

Labels: BFF, car trips, vacation

I don't think I can remember the last day it DIDN'T rain. This is really strange weather for Dallas, Texas. By now, we normally can't wait for the weather to turn cooler and we're praying for an "under 100 degree" day. We haven't even reached 100 degrees this summer. Don't get me wrong, we are all thankful. But the Lord has answered a lot of prayers simultaneously, turning our two year drought into a daily flash flood. We live near Grapevine Lake, which has had many boat ramps closed due to low water during the past two years. Now we have one boat ramp open, due to the high water. They say the lake level is 26 feet above the normal levels. We took the girls out there this weekend for a little history lesson...





Rain, rain, go away, come again another day :)