The Vacation

I'M BAAACK! I'm so happy to be back home. In my own house, using my own bathroom, my kids in their own beds, sitting on my own couch and touching a computer for the first time in seven days.

Last Saturday, I left in the van with the babies and Scott with Jacob in the truck towing the boat. I was getting sick. I could barely keep my eyes open during the trip, I'm not sure if its a cold or allergies or a bit of both. Pretty scary driving with your precious cargo when you're not feeling well. But I had a lot of caffeine and had the window open. No accidents that day.
The next morning I took the kiddos to Walmart to get some infant Tylenol, a tarp and some milk. On the way back, I wasn't feeling well, hadn't gotten a lot of sleep, my head felt like, like, like a block of snot. I pulled into our resort, and was careful not to drive on the grass. But in the meanwhile, I sideswiped my sister-in-laws SUV. Yep. Ahhuh. Read it again. I hit a car.

So with that said, get all your snide remarks out of the way. Lucky for me the taillight was just cracked on her car, but I have a nice four foot mark on mine. Now, if I had been feeling 100%, the likeliness of this happening would have gone down dramatically. This is just a great life lesson of not driving while impaired (even it is sick in the head).

So, each day Scott, my brother Jim, my nephew Sam and Jacob went fishing each morning, most afternoons and every night. So their vacation was probably pretty good. Jim and Scott found a fishing spot on Blue Lake that there were tons of small mouth Bass and were really fun to catch. They caught a bunch of them and they were 18- 21 inches.

The babies learned a lot of new words and loved spending time with Daisy the dog. Johnny especially. He would get down to Daisy's level (well, he'd bend over a bit) and then pet her and look her in the eye. Maybe he'll be an animal tamer. The next dog whisperer. Brooke said her first 3 word sentence. "Where dog go?" "No, dog, no!" And Johnny's every other word was Daisy.

The babies loved to roam around the resort. There were really nice playsets and Matthew surprisingly was fearless and would climb up them to go down the slide. Johnny decided after landing on his butt that he didn't really like a bruised bum. I'll post pictures in the next few days of our adventures.

Also, our vacation was riddled with sickness. I was sick first, then Matthew came down with a fever and a cough, then Brooke, then John (and the world ends when he gets sick), then my nephew Sam and then today Jacob woke up with a fever in the middle of the night. And then he threw up at the cabin. Yep. Ahhuh. Lucky for me the Green Machine was there to clean it up.

Johnny knew something was up and cried and screamed all morning so we left at 9:30 a.m. to go back to Appleton. When we got home, Grandma Callaway came over so I could run to the laundromat to do six huge loads of laundry (it was all I could fit in my van). Then, when Scott got home tonight, he brought home the rest of the laundry and I think I've done four or five loads with another two to go.

The babies somewhat enjoyed the beach and water. Matthew and Brooke liked playing in the sand and Matthew loved to tromp through the freezing cold water. But John would rather sit on my lap and cling to me. I don't think he was comfortable around the water. Or maybe because of the new situation, he wanted to melt into me.

Regardless, it was a MUCH better vacation than last year. I even got to read two whole books at night. I LOVE Janet Evanovich. She's hilarious. She's got a line of books - the Stephanie Plum series - that are just a hoot. Jacob asked me what the book was about. For those of you who know Stephanie Plum, its hard to describe to a five year old without being PG-13. So I told him I was reading a book about a girl who gets bad guys and puts them in jail who have been bonded out for their crimes.