A little more about vacation.

Sadly vacation was not among the best parts of the summer. In fact, I think this is the last time I'll consent to a week at the in-laws for vacation. First of all living near the beach is a lot different than living at the beach. I missed the early morning walks down the beach or evening kite flying, but it just didn't seem worth it to hop in the car and drive 15 minutes to take a walk. Actually all of the trips to the beach felt like a big production simply by adding that drive.

The second problem is lack of a quiet place to read. The house is really nice. It's U shaped with a central great room, kitchen and dining room. One arm of the U has a master bedroom/bath and 2 guest rooms with a bath. The other arm has another master bedroom/bath with an office, powder room and the laundry. There's a tv in the great room and a tv in the office. FIL or MIL were usually watching tv in the great room, the boy or hubs in the office. That left me outside (often too hot) or in the bedroom sitting on the bed trying to read. It totally trashed my back.

And, even if the spouse and his siblings don't see it I definitely see the signs of the in-laws aging. They had a yelling fight one night after dinner over whether one road was north or south of another. MIL often left their breakfast dishes for us since hubs and I were doing them after lunch and dinner. Finally FIL's driving is just getting scary. I had to yell at him to stop and at least let us put on the boys seat belt before went zooming off.

I actually think it wouldn't be too bad if there were some lively company. The pool was great, but really how many hours of "monkey in the middle" can you play with an 8 year old before you go insane. The in-laws had their set of "exercises" but that was about it for them pool-wise. Maybe if we'd played games or something it would have been more enjoyable, but the little boy played the gameboy when he wasn't swimming and the big boy read.

In the future I think it will be better in smaller chunks. Like a couple long weekends. Save the week long trip for something more enjoyable.