I'm back from Vacation 2006 and I survived. It was one of those things you just have to get through. I'll share the particularly exciting details - hold onto your hat, it doesn't get much better than this folks!

• Arrival: We get in in the evening. It rains. And rains and rains. I think this might be an omen. No one wants to sleep in the tent. It is 1000 degrees and muggy. I consider sleeping in the tent by myself and leaving everyone else in the cabin to battle it out. No one gets much sleep.
  
• Day 1: Hubby's 6 year old required a lot more structure and routine than one family vacation can offer so he gets two bonus days of local daycamp to keep him happy and us sane. I get lost going to daycamp located in a local ski resort/golf course. Clarified directions are "It's near a big hill like a sledding hill". Um, ok, it's a SKI RESORT! Finally find and drop off the boy, spend my morning internet time* (my indulgent vacation from the vacation) at the laundromat doing pj-and-sleeping-bag-laundry because my husband's 12 year old wet the bed. We had anticipated bedwetting with the 6 year old and prepared accordingly. No one anticipated the 12 year old. I get to clean it up - why we did not think to have him come along and do his own laundry is beyond me. I think I was still in denial about my "quiet trip into town". Haha. I somehow miss breakfast and lunch and end up at The Walmart where every single person in a 100 mile radius hangs out for fun. I had to pick up groceries for the entire week. Nothing like running errands on my vacation. All morning long. Laundry, groceries, carting kids off to camp. Are we home yet?! I grab lunch late in the afternoon after not eating for 24 hours. The week is off to a roaring relaxing start! Not.
  
• Day 2: no camp today. Today we spent the day at the beach where every single horsefly in Michigan decided to attack. We managed to have a good time anyway and swam for something like 3 hours straight. My trip into town was a little more enjoyable today. We expect very very bad storms. And suddenly there are 1000 flies in the kids' bedroom. This happened to us a few years ago and we know from experience it gets worse before it gets better. My Dad whips out the vacuum and sucks them up. No one wants to sleep in the kid's room tonight. No one wants to sleep in the tent due to the impending storms. Bedtime was fun.
  
• Day 3: camp again, this time hubby makes the trek. We expect rain and prepare to be stuck indoors (which means 9 of us in about 600 sq feet or less). the rain never comes. The storms, last night, never came. The flies seem to have disappeared. I take my 11 year old son (hey - he ASKED to come), my 9 year old stepdaughter and stepmother three-generations of steps - a virtual flight of stairs - head into town to shop the yarn and quilt stores. This is pure luxury. The owner of the knit shop was the loudest woman I have ever met and SO enthusiastic about her job. She cornered my stepdaughter and shouted to her for about 10 minutes straight about the perfect yarn for a scarf project she was considering. After that I had to reward my poor girl for her politeness and for her new hearing-impaired status by buying her the yarn she definitely earned. Later I made the trip in to pick up the 6 year old from camp and got my daily internet fix. It proved disappointing and I miss dinner along the way which is ok because it is lasagna and I don't eat lasagna. I do eat ice cream, though.
  
• Day 4: last day of paradise. We plan to head up to Pestoskey to hang out at the beach and search for Petoskey stones - an annual tradition. Guess what? TODAY the rain comes. It was overcast and really really cold (and I, of course, did not even bring along the sweatshirts/pants I painstakingly packed for each of us). It was the ONLY day the weather predicted it to be beautiful. Go figure. We went anyway. We took lunch. The 500 ducks and geese thought this was a great idea. I"m surprised someone didn't get bit. Most of the kids swam, freezing or not. A few looked for stones, 2 found petoskeys. My oldest son took off to go fishing and spent the entire time hanging out with other people's families and I didn't even blame him! haha. My parents and I went on a nice window shopping tour of sail and speed boats. We wrapped it up and headed back to the cabin. This is approximately when the kids started acting insanely obnoxious and I gave them all tattoos (like "kick me" on one child's back or "L" on one child's forehead). Great fun. Apparently too much fun for one day as my Dad really freaked out at my 4 year old and of course I caught it all on video! The only, might I add, footage of video we took the entire trip. Swell. I called it a day and went to bed.
  
• Homecoming day: I woke up at 7am sharp (two hours before any other day this week) and had the entire 8 person ensemble packed, fed and out the door by 8:30. I have never felt more energetic and excited in my life! Hope it wasn't too obvious to anyone else. There was much fun ahead - we promised the kids a stop off at our favorite shop in Frankenmuth - Bronner's Christmas Wonderland. Our 4 year old repeated the phrase "We're going to the christmas shop" over and over for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Straight. Literally. In a sort of sing-songy voice that he said qualified as a "song" about the christmas shop. The christmas shop, as it turns out, was further away than he anticipated and he finally got mad and stopped his song/chant. We got there about a half hour later. After the christmas shop, he repeated "Are we there yet" over and over and over but, thankfully, only managed this one for about 15 minutes. The boy has stamina and I think I deserve to be sainted for not driving the car off the road OR yelling at him to stop :-) And now we are back.
  
• The day after: last night I slept GREAT in my own bed, in my own home in my cushy air conditioned house. There is nothing like a vacation like this to remind you of how important home is. I asked hubby if he would help me reorganize our bedroom today (It is the collection point for every pile of anything in the house as well as my workshop for sewing/kintting/quilting and my homeschool center and my office). Who ever thought I would consider cleaning to be a perfect way to spend the day?!! It sounds positively divine!!!!!!

Coming soon to a blog near you:

Ten things adoptive parents don't want to hear
Ten things I said I would never do as a parent
Ten things I actually said I wouldn't do and haven't
Three things I would so if failure wasn't possible
Pictures and 10 great vacation memories (really!)