Post-Vacation Randomness

Greetings! We are officially home from vacation and ready to start 2009. :-) I have a few hours of free time, which I plan to spend e-mailing, reading (more on that later), and blogging, so you should have more to read in the near future. But for today I just wanted to give you all a few updates on the things that are spinning around in my head.

• First, "spinning" was not a random word choice--my head is quite literally spinning these days. I just started on a new perscription, and it is making me VERY dizzy. My doctor assures me that it will only last a few days. For now, though, it's kinda like being tipsy and sober at the same time--not entirely without merit. ;-)
• Our trip was wonderful! The four of us went, along with my mother-in-law and her best friend, and two other of our employees. We actually went on a cruise that left out of Miami and then made 3 stops in the Bahamas. The weather was wonderful, the ship was very nice, and we had a great time all around. I was thankful to have a port of call every day, because the time that we were trying to keep the kids occupied on the ship was a little bit stressful. This was mainly because it was an older ship (The newer ones have all kinds of cool stuff for kids, even little ones like ours), so it wouldn't prevent me from taking them in the future.
• The absolute highlight of the trip for me (and for Jon) was taking Grace dancing. Our room and his mom's room were adjoining, so at night we would put the kids to bed and then go to her room (with a monitor)--and most nights she came back for the night before 9PM and stayed there with the kids while we went out. (It was awesome!) Anyway, one night we decided to put Matt to bed and then let Grace stay up with us. We took her to see a live band, and she had a BLAST dancing the night away. It was without a doubt one of the cutest things I have ever seen.
• I would love to be able to share more of our trip with you all... but I have no photographic evidence of our vacation. No, I did not suddenly lost interest in photos and scrapbooking--I actually took TONS of photos. But they did not make it home with me. My camera disappeared on our last day of the trip. I have shed many tears over my lost photos. I am not totally giving up--I plan to call the cruise line today to see if it happened to turn up.
• We came home from our trip to the news that my uncle--my dad's brother--had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. He and my aunt live in California, but they had just been home to visit shortly before Christmas, and we had them over for brunch one morning. This was completely out of the blue for everyone. Please keep his wife and family (two grown children and two grandchildren) in your prayers.
• I have a new guilty pleasure: the Twilight series. Jon got me the first book for Christmas, and I read it in 2 days on our trip! I thought I was going to lose my mind when I couldn't get the next book on the ship or in port--in fact, I just picked it up at Target today. And I'm already over 50 pages into it.
• If you are one of the many people I have been neglecting for the past several weeks or months... I'm sorry. Please bear with me. In addition to the actual crazy schedule/circumstances that we've had, my emotions have also been overloaded. This has actually been going on for about 2 years now (since Matt was born), but it had started to get worse again in the past few months. I am finally getting help, so I promise to be a better friend and person now. :-)
• I have resolved that 2009 will not be as crazy busy as 2008, but so far that's not working out so well for me. I think that every weekend in January and February are already jammed!
• I am taking some steps to actually make some money this year. I am writing this here not so much because you all care if I am making money or not, but because writing it down makes me accountable--more likely to actually follow through!

OK, I am starting to bore myself here, so if you are still with me, treat yourself to a piece of chocolate! :-) I look forward to sharing more with you soon!