Staycation Success

We did it!

It feels good just to say it. “We had a successful vacation.”

Last night, Kristen and I went for a walk in our neighborhood and this was really the summary statement of our week in Carlsbad.

It was nice to get away while only traveling about 40 minutes from our house. I don’t have any fascinating results to reveal… but here is a hodgepodge of things I’m thinking about last week.

• The rhythm and pace of the week was great. Nearly every day we woke up, watched the World Cup while drinking coffee, went to the pool, had lunch, went to the beach, ate dinner, watched a movie, and went to sleep.
• Opening up our vacation to a bigger definition of our family made a huge difference. It just wouldn’t have been as much fun without Kristen’s parent, my niece Allison, Erin, and Lisa. While it likely effected the bottom line a little, it was priceless to spend the quality/quantity time with them.
• It was also fun to bring Stoney, our yellow lab. Renting a dog-friendly house was pretty simple and it was a bonus to have him along. I don’t want to sound like one of those people but he really is part of our family.
• Kristen likes shells… a lot. One two mornings Kristen went shell hunting. It was almost embarrassing how many shells we brought home. Almost.
• We learned the playmate lesson. While it definitely helped Megan to have someone her age to play with… we REALLY needed to have a playmate as well. Next time.
• Have we found a vacation style we all like? Kristen and I like two different types of vacations. I like to unplug and do just about nothing. Kristen finds it very refreshing to explore new places. This really afforded us the opportunity to do either, neither, or both.
• Turning off the computers and my brain was awesome. I don’t have a single blog post I wrote while on vacation. Nor did I think much about work. I told Kristen last night… generally vacations make me antsy to get hyper productive and this one didn’t. I think it just revealed how exhausted I had been.
• Our party on Friday night was a blast. More on celebrating our marriage another day.
• I love hanging with my kids. I know you are supposed to like being with your kids. But I really love being with them. There’s no other way to describe it.
• I cannot get enough beach. That’s pretty funny for a guy born in Indiana. But it is true. Most of our vacations somehow involve a large body of water… I guess I’m just hard wired to relax by the ocean.
• Wine has a magical ability to multiply. We started our party on Friday night with 8 bottles of wine. By the time the party was over we had 12. It was an anniversary miracle! OK, I think its just that people like to bring wine to dinner parties. We still got a chuckle out of  that.
• Our garden didn’t take a vacation. I came back a couple of times to water and drove back up to the house with baskets of tomatoes, squash, and green beans.
• Every vacation house needs a soaking tub. The bathroom in the master suite had a massive whirlpool tub. And all of us took turns enjoying a nice bath. It’s the simple pleasures in life, sometimes!

I’ll be getting back to my normal blogging self by the end of the week.