Back from Vacation

I just got back from a week of vacation.

It was great, but now I feel like I need some recovery from the vacation! We (I and the kids) went to Utah for our annual summer family visit. It was so much fun. Well, we didn't do anything really spectacular, just caught up with each other, did some activities and so on.

My parents' house was packed with 14 grandkids, 5 kids + various spouses at certain points in time. It's a good thing they have a big house. We had a tent trailer set up outside so some of the older kids slept out there on a rotating basis (girls night then boys night.) My kids are old enough (13 and 15) that I don't really worry about what they are doing, i.e. no disciplinary moments for me. I didn't go to bed before midnight on any night, so I'm definitely short on sleep, but it was more than worth it.

We played games - sometimes until 4:30 am, the kids got together and played games almost every day, my son was in his element, he loves to play games with other people. He plays online games a lot but there is something very satisfying about the interaction between a board game (if it's a good one) and the people playing the game.

We spent a lot of time talking and joking around with each other. It was great to have everyone together that hasn't actually happened for a while, due to other commitments.

There was lots of really fattening stuff to eat, cookies, brownies, a 5 lb box of chocolates, and since my sister is addicted to these chocolate donuts that you can only buy in Utah, we had a lot of those too.

We also spent a lot of time working on the Craft of the Year, which this year happened to be tie-dye. So, a lot of time was spent, tying, dying, and checking out the tie-dyed items once they were finished. It's a lot of work which is why we don't do it every year, but it was a lot of fun, and everything turned out cool, even if not exactly as expected.