Is it a post-vacation hangover if you come back and immediately jump into a million other things? I’m not quite sure, but it’s 3 weeks into August and I have quite a bit of catching up to do.
On August 1 we flew to Charlotte for the much-anticipated vacation with my whole family. We spent a couple nights at my parents’ house and then everyone drove up to Lake Lure, NC. We spent 6 days and nights there with 17 people — 9 adults, 1 teenager, and 7 kids age 7 and under — and had a blast. I really, really loved it. Spending time with my parents and siblings and their spouses was wonderful, and the kids got a ton of great cousin time. I’ll post more photos later this week.
We flew back home on the 10th and had one weekend day before jumping back into normal life. Being back from vacation always leaves me feeling a little sad and stressed — wanting to go back to the more carefree nature that is easier to embrace when you’re taken away from the daily minutiae.
When I come home, I always want to minimize. To clean up all the perceived loose ends in my life. To renovate my house. To revamp our schedule to feel more relaxed, less full. I wish there were some way to capture the feeling of vacation when we are back in our normal lives — even a hint of it.
Last Friday was a big day for pretty much everyone as Emma had “meet the teacher” at her school, Charlotte got a new bed, and…
Jose spent his last day at NASA after 15 years of supporting the space shuttle and then the space station! Pretty big news that happened rather quickly. He’s unemployed this week — and actually flew to New York yesterday to spend a few days visiting a friend — and will start his new job on Monday. He’ll be joining a small engineering company that does a lot of aerospace projects, working on electrical power systems. He started talking to them in mid-July and the opportunity to go do something new and actually get to design and build hardware was too good to pass up.
Our entire relationship — 13+ years — has had both of us working at NASA, so this will be new. He’s excited, and I am too. Onward and upwards!
On Saturday we had a birthday party for Emma, since we were on vacation with my family on the actual day. I admit that I had hoped we’d get away without doing a big party this year, but she wanted one so we decided to oblige for at least one more year. We planned the party rather late, and August is tough with vacation schedules — plus this was the weekend before school started. There were several kids who couldn’t make it which stressed me out for a while, but in the end we had a nice little crowd of her friends. She had a great time!
And this week, school started! Emma is in 2nd grade this year and Charlotte moved up to the highest room at the daycare. She still has 2 more years before kindergarten due to her September birthday, so she’ll have to repeat the same room next year (or we could move her elsewhere) but I’m happy that she’ll stay with the kids she’s been with for a while now, and will get all the Pre-K stuff early.
Back to school time has me thinking about my own goals too, and fresh starts. Things are looking up, and going well.
Wow, congrats to Jose! What a change of pace!
We’re heading into the last year of daycare because we have the same problem as Charlotte—a few days after the cut off! Though, I’m glad, another year of play sounds nice!
I’m gearing up for a vacation and I already have that post vacation feeling of wanting to purge and reorganize everything. So, I know what most of my September will look like when I get back!