My Vacation Slideshow

Remember back in the 70's when your neighbours came home from vacation and invited you over to see their slides? You'd have to either say you were busy and then sit in your living room all night with the lights off and curtains closed, or you'd have to go over there and look at 378 pictures of them in Bermuda shorts, all the while pretending to be interested. Thank heavens for the age of the internet! Now you can be bored stiff in the comfort of your own home!

A few of you have asked how the vacation went. My stock answer is that it was both awesome and exhausting. I'm glad we went, but I'm also glad to be home again. Oh, and for all you kind folks from the tri-state area who warned me not to get excited because North Carolina was freezing in the winter, you are cordially invited to come visit me here in Manitoba next January!

Hotels and airports were the definite downside of travelling with kids, especially when one kid has special needs. Rosemary's Baby was extremely displeased at the prospect of taking off his coat and shoes at airport security. And then they took away his blankie too. How we didn't end up getting wrestled to the ground and tasered, I will never know.

The Captain, after successfully spending more than 13 years on the cigarette bandwagon, came back to North America with a pack-a-day habit and a box of patches. He'd made some headway by the time we sent him back to Afghanistan, so my hope is that he will come home having kicked the habit for good. Returning safely from war kind of loses its happy glow if you have emphysema.

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I packed way too much in hopes of keeping the kids occupied, and the next time I fly, I know that I only need 3 things in my carry-on bag: a small ziploc bag of lego, a portable dvd player (no screens on ANY of our 4 flights--nightmare!!) and enough snacks to feed an army. The gravol was nice too.

Onto the slideshow:

While having my husband back is always the best gift, it's also nice when he arrives home with a souvenir for me. I finally own REAL pearls! And they didn't even come from the dollar store like my last string!

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We started out in North Carolina visiting Sister #4. Firstborn started enjoying himself really quickly, for reasons that are about to become abundantly clear.

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I'd like to thank my sister for getting my kids interested in the Wii...

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...and my brother for getting them interested in the drums. Sigh...

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Brother #2 took us to this great place in Northern Florida called Wakulla Springs where we took a boat ride and saw some local wildlife. Look how smiley the 'gators are. I wanted to wade out and give them a hug!

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Does this palm tree make me look fat?

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The kids hangin' with my little brother in Tallahassee. I remember the day he was born. Now he's smarter than me. It's the circle of life...

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I'm not generally one to use my blog to trash anyone. But my biggest complaint from this trip involves the hotels. Out of the SIX we stayed in, only TWO honoured our request for a first-floor room. We weren't trying to be difficult. Our autistic kid makes a lot of running-across-the-floor noise when he stims. He can't help it, we can't control it, and we wanted to be respectful of other guests. It made every second-floor stay very stressful. Our worst experience was at a Super 8 in Texas. After refusing to give us a room on the first floor on a Monday night when the place was really not that busy, they then called our room at 8:30 PM to ask us to keep the kids on the beds for the duration of our stay because the running was disturbing the person below us. Would they have put us on the first floor if our kid had been visibly disabled? My guess is yes. So, to punish them, I took a picture of the shower in our room. Is that supposed to look like marble? Because to me it looks like one of Rosemary's Baby's poop murals. TAKE THAT, Super 8!

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One of the best things about the Captain is his ability to plan a trip around the local food. We did not eat at McD's once. We had some amazing, memorable meals on this trip, and when we crossed the state line into New Mexico, we stopped here. It was loud and busy, the walls were electric teal, there was Mexican memorabilia everywhere, neither of the two clocks worked, you could buy any candy bar imaginable at the cash register, and the waitresses had the biggest hair you've ever seen. When I bit into my tostada, I had an out-of-body experience.

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For all their trouble at hotels and airports, my kids were great travellers. I never thought I'd be saying this, but I'm thinking about taking a warm-weather vacation every winter now!

The original spawn of satan (AKA Brother #1) teaching the next generation of evil how to ruin the local foliage.

This is probably the best family picture we will ever get. And we're sitting on a lizard.

So there you have it--my vacation in a nutshell. It was so wonderful to escape the snow, see my siblings, and be a family again for a couple of weeks!

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Don't forget to spring forward!