VACATION

Well I am officially on vacation for the next TWO WEEKS! Where am I going, you ask? NOWHERE! I get 4 weeks of vacation each year plus everyone at the college gets the week of Christmas-New Year's off, so I end up with 5 paid weeks off!! It can actually be difficult to use all of those days, believe it or not! So I had a bunch of vacation days that I needed to take by June 30, so I decided to take the whole last 2 weeks of June off and relax. With my little buddy Meg passing away last week, I've been very distracted and feeling down, so I can really use this time off.

Next week I have a pretty full agenda, doctor's appointments and dental cleanings for both kids, lunch and shopping with a friend, and the kids' last day of school is Wednesday so I promised I'd take them out to lunch that day. My parents have an inground pool, so I plan on spending some time hanging out there, too. The following week I hope to get to the beach at least for one day - I hope the majority of my time off is filled with sunshine and nice weather, but I would be OK with a day or two of rain, also - so I can do some stamping and maybe take the kids to see a movie.

I want to thank everyone for their kind words and support last week. I had planned to attend Meg's calling hours last Sunday with a friend who worked with her dad. He was supposed to pick me up at 2:00 - the services were about 2 hours away. It was over 90 degrees out - I got ready to go and called him around 2:30, he had gone golfing and had a few drinks to try not to think about where we were going that afternoon, and he ended up having a few too many and was unable to go. We both have daughters around Meg's age, and I really think that he just couldn't handle the situation - I was a little upset because I really wanted to go, and I am not the type of person who could go alone, but then I remembered my own philosophy that everything happens for a reason and I thought that maybe even I couldn't have handled it as well as I would have liked to think I would have. I sent flowers to the family last Friday at their home. I also made a beautiful sympathy card for her family with flowers and a bumblebee - I thought it came out really quite perfect - but it was so hard to make. I kept stopping and going back to it, because I kept thinking, "I cannot believe I am making a sympathy card, I cannot believe I won't be sending any more happy mail to Meg." I hated that I had to do it, it just felt so surreal. Anyway, here is the card that I made for her family, you can't see it but the bee has glitter on his wings and the purple flower has a diamond-like gem in the middle of it:

I felt a little bad for my own kids this past week. Every time they argued I just fell apart. They tend to take each other for granted - they are kids, you know? But all I could think was how lucky they are to have each other, and how Meg's sisters would give the world to have her back sneaking in their bedrooms or stealing their stuff! I cried a lot this past week and I know I was not as patient with my kids as I normally am. Luckily, they are great kids and they do understand on some level. We talk a lot - and I'm very thankful for that. I think (I hope!) these next 2 weeks will be good for all of us - I plan to enjoy my children while having some fun and relaxing!