Family Vacation

It's that time of year...vacation time. Our family usually doesn't take a full-on vacation during the summer because we usually plan our big vacation during the kid's spring break from school. We are fortunate to have the freedom with our business to take the time then, and since we spend a lot of time doing "mini" vacations at our little house on the lake in the summer, we usually just plan to go "big" in the spring instead.

Not so this year.

Since my sweet daughter is headed off to college this Fall, and her spring break will be different from the boys', it occurred to my husband that this was our last chance for a true family vacation, all together, no extra friends, or boyfriends or family members... so a true family vaction we had!

Let me outline it for you...10 hour drive to South Florida, during a heat wave, in one car, in one day. Surprisingly, no one was seriously hurt. (ipods and headphones have changed the way America travels, 'eh?)

Because I was preparing for the worst, I went online in advance, looking for a website that would share fun ways to pass the time on the road with kids. (You know, those websites written by women who bake their own bread and really want to homeschool their kids to spend more time with them...no offense, I respect these women. I'm just not one of them.) So I printed out highway scavenger hunt lists and word search puzzles and about 30 other pages of things to keep the younger ones busy. They refused all of my offers of wholesome time passers...except one: the 75 square foot roll of aluminum foil that I used to make foil sculptures!

What a hoot! We made turtles, a spoon, a duck and a bowl (the unoriginal entry from the 13 year-old before he realized how fun it really was.) Who knew that a roll of foil could pass as entertainment? Some bread-baking mom with a website, that's who! And before any environmentalists call for my head over wasting paper and foil, I assure you that most of it got recycled...certainly the foil turtle was recycled into a foil ball/projectile that was hurled at me while I was doing about 75mph on the Florida Turnpike. Let me tell you, there's nothing like a golfball sized recycled turtle whizzing by your ear and bouncing off the windshield to keep you awake on the highway. That 13 year-old boy has got a pretty good arm...

At the end of the trip, we had what we were hoping for...a family vacation full of sweet memories mixed with a little sand and sunburn, one incredibly long car ride...and lots of little foil scraps under the seats of the car.

College Roommates and Retail Therapy

My college roommate drove over from the big city yesteday to spend the night at our house and to take a "breather" from the stress at her house .  

Why is it that the minute we get together, we forget we're in our mid-forties with responsibilities and kids with bedtimes, and start thinking we're 19 again?  We giggle like little kids, and as you might imagine, my kids and husband immediately start rolling their eyes... We stayed up well past my normal middle-aged bedtime, and shared a pretty good bottle of wine...

We don't care.  It's all funny to us.  Sometimes you just need a good dose of silly to set the world right again.  Or at least it works for us.  And if a dose of goofy roommate doesn't do it, there's always "retail therapy."  But in this economy, who can really get some good quality therapy in the mall?  Not us, so we just went to the Dollar Store!!!  About $100 later, we both felt pretty darn good.  And we have some incredible treasures that we're planning to bestow on some really special friends...(people should be getting nervous about now...)

All I have to say is, good friends are a blessing.  After 25 years, it's good to know I've got somebody outside of my family, that knows me well enough to laugh with me and at me, and still likes me enough to carve out time to keep the friendship going.

Blackberry Winter Strikes

It was 48 degrees this morning when I woke my sons up for their last Tuesday of school for 2009.  And since one of them had morning detention at 7:15 for an un-tucked shirt (who is really being punished?  ME!  I had to get up at 5:45 to get him out the door and still get son #2 to school at the regular time...)  But I digress... it was really cold considering we've been in the lower 80s for a couple of weeks now.  

My mom and dad are visiting for my sweet daughter's high school graduation, so I got my dad's perspective on this cold snap...he says it's Blackberry Winter.  What in the world is a Blackberry Winter, you ask?  According to the Appalachian folklore handed down for generations and eventually to my Daddy, it's a cold snap that comes around the time that blackberries are in bloom,  usually in early to mid May, and it sets the buds on the canes to insure a good crop of blackberries.  Sounds reasonable to me.  And to think, I thought it had something to do with a PDA freezing up...

And it brings back so many memories of blackberry pickin' in the Dog Days of Summer...which I will now have to ask my Daddy what that is...  My guess is that the Dog Days of Summer are those hot days when you wish you were a dog, just laying under the porch in the shade, or finding a creek to offer some relief. 

No matter.  I'm just loving spending time with my mom and dad and hearing their southern sayings and southern wisdom and wives tales while reflecting on the next generation's passing through life so quickly... I'll just put on a sweater.