Life went on....

Can you believe it?  Life went on while we were gone, and has gotten back to normal around here.  ((Sigh))  Yes, dishes, laundry, cleaning the bathrooms - all still here.  It's kind of too bad...but it's alright too I guess.
I think I could get addicted to vacation!

We had so much fun, and saw so much stuff...I was in a state of excitement for the whole 2 weeks almost.  I loved it really!  I was tired of eating in fast food restaurants, but could have done with some sit-down restaurants.  We barely ate out at all.  I really wanted to go to Outback Steakhouse, just because I have seen the commercials.  Or Sizzler...yes, I know, not very high expectations.

The thing is that there was a time when 2 weeks together uninterrupted would have been hard for my husband and me.  We would have bickered, or I would have rolled my eyes a lot, or it would have just been hard.  Now I think we must be past that.  We had a good time, and although I can't say I didn't get irritated when he was irritated about our non-right hand turn at Albuquerque, it wasn't like before.  I am so happy that we have grown past that part of our relationship - at least for the most part.

I am also glad when I think back on how we handled parenting in a tight space for all that time.  Lots of people 'warned' us about taking our 5 kids on a 8000 km road trip...they asked us if we were crazy, why would we want to go to Disneyland, how it wouldn't be fun for us...how it was the "happiest place on earth" (insert major sarcasm) and other such comments, but really it was fine.  I mean, there were definitely moments, but really they were good....they were kids, but good kids!  They got bored with reading and colouring.  They got tired of listening to the audio stories...but they didn't complain much and when they did, I thought we handled it really well.  We had made a rule that they couldn't watch a movie until it was dark - and we probably should have had that be a late afternoon activity instead of an early evening one - and they certainly needed better speakers to be able to watch on the laptop and truly enjoy it, but no one even really complained about that!  We  even had one incident where we needed the bucket we had taken just in case, although the baby wasn't old enough to ask for the bucket...and we just cleaned it up and carried on!  LOL!!!

What's the other option?  Wait until they all grow up to go anywhere?  They are too spread out in age to do that!  We would never get to take Ballerina on a holiday if we waited for the Baby to be "old enough".  No, I think they did well on our trip and I think we did too....now it must be time to go somewhere again, right??  ;)