Vacation

So I have to admit-- this has been a stressful summer for me. This whole teaching gig seemed like a great idea when I agreed to do it, but it turns out that preparing seven hours of lectures a week while simultaneously trying to run a house that includes two children under the age of two is very time-consuming! Craig has been wonderful about helping out, but he's been very busy with his family in town and his master's degree and working... So let's just say that the three loads of laundry waiting to be folded upstairs has been the norm this summer, and that occasionally drives me nuts.

But yesterday was different. Yesterday actually felt like summer vacation. Craig's parents had offered to take us to SplashDown, the water park here in Manassas, which was really sweet of them-- I hadn't been able to go when Jason and Jeni and their girls were here, so it was nice of them to "make it up" to me. So we got there when the water park opened and figured we'd stay until the kids went into meltdown mode. And wonder of wonders, they actually did pretty well!

The water park is pretty small, which for our purposes was actually really nice-- it means that there are hardly any of the "older" teenagers and young adults that tend to make everything crowded and scary feeling. You know what I mean, right? The type that stands around swearing a lot so that you're left trying to decide if you should ask them to stop or just cover up your toddler's ears and hope that they'll notice. Anyway, the park is too small and probably doesn't have scary enough water slides to attract that type, which was fine by me! And Bentley has just in the last week or so discovered that water is fun and not scary (when I took him to Lake Anna with Craig's family, he never touched the sand a single time and it took Jason fifteen minutes to get him to even be happy in the water!). So with him actually going down some of the kiddy slides and Craig's parents who were willing to hold Kendra so we could go on the big slides now and then, it was just a really great day.

We stayed until close to five, which really surprised me-- I never would have guessed that Bentley would last that long! He even stayed awake for the drive home, and then, when Craig opened the door to get him out, his eyes suddenly fluttered and he began to doze off! So Craig hurried him inside and got him changed out of his swimsuit and just put him to bed and he slept thirteen hours! Of course, if you've been paying attention, that means he woke up at 6:00 in the morning. But we figured he was probably just hungry, so Craig gave him a big bowl of oatmeal and some fruit and we put him right back to bed and then he slept until 9:30. Now THAT'S what I call a vacation! It was one of those rare times when you can really enjoy yourself and even notice while it's going on that this is turning out to be a really nice day. I love that!