My husband G. Grod, 5yo son Drake, 3yo son Guppy, and I just returned from a week in Miami with my family. We had a good time, and did a lot of fun things. But it was very different from my expectations beforehand.
Here’s what I thought I would do on vacation:
Read several books and magazines, both fun and substantive.
Go out to movies.
Watch DVDs at night.
Go out to dinner at nice restaurants.
Catch up on my online reading. (I had a list of 200+ unread feeds, and it wasn’t getting smaller.)
Catch up on my blogging.
Play Scrabble with my sisters.
Sleep in.
Have a swanky, kid-free spa day.
Go to the pool and play with my kids.
Go to the beach and play with my kids.
Use liberal amounts of sunscreen and avoid sunburn.
What I actually did:
Spent time with family. Better got to know my sweet 2you nephew, Bird.
Returned a book with only 100 pages to go before trip. Read one fluffy book. Made a bare start on another.
No movies. Only dvds were parts of Scooby Doo, Madagascar and Monsters, Inc. with kids.
Read one magazine, In Style, on the flight home.
Went out to several lovely dinners at nice restaurants: Versailles (Cuban), Andiamo Pizza, Matsuri sushi, 5300 Chop House, Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink.
Made a dent in my online reading, but got nowhere near to zero.
Barely blogged.
Played Lexulous with my online friends. No Scrabble with sisters.
Didn’t get uninterrupted sleep because of, variously: kids, strange bed, and extreme bedding choices of sheet or duvet making me either too hot or too cold to sleep.
Had a pretty good spa afternoon.
Went to the pool and played with my kids. Went down the giant slide. Saved Drake from drowning when he bolted down the slide himself. My mom saved him from drowning with he barged into the deep end where Guppy threw a ball.
Put ice on gigantic head lump Drake got when he ran full speed into the plate-glass sliding door, thinking it was open.
Went to the beach and played with my kids. Built a sand castle with moat. Decorated it with pink seaweed. Wondered if seaweed was edible, but didn’t feel like experimenting. Contentedly watched castle gradually reclaimed by ocean. Got sunburned on knees and back of legs. G. got bad sunburn on top of feet. Boys? Maybe a little pink.
So, mostly good. As usual, G. and I wished for even more downtime grown-up time. Lessons learned: Boys need to learn to swim. Be more even more careful about sunscreen. And adjust expectations and pack lighter for things like books and movies.
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on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Parenthood, Self-care.
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April 27th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
It may not be the vacation you planned/dreamed of, but it sounds like it was a good one nonetheless. Tony & I took our first vacation together to Miami, so it holds a special place in my heart… I spent a lot of time sleeping, but didn’t get to go to half of the restaurants I had planned (and finished 0 books!).
April 28th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Mom was griping that after you instructed us all to bring magazines for you to read on vacation, you didn’t touch any of them. Her carry-on weighed about a zillion pounds filled with Vogue, T&C, Real Simple, etc. for you.
I would like to add that I, too, had a great time. But next time, I will be getting a room of my own. 7 am wake-up calls from nephews is NOT my idea of vacation.
Sorry we didn’t get to Scrabble. I owe you one.