We’re back, and It. Was. Wonderful. I cannot remember a better vacation. I want to tell you more, but right now I have a LOT of bags to unpack, two sickly girls that need attention, a house that looks like a family of squirrels has been living in it while we were away, bills to pay, a broken air conditioner, 2 flossy finch orders to complete…welcome back to the real world, huh 🙂 Be back as soon as I can!
It seems too good to be true. I couldn’t even risk telling y’all before we left, because I was just sure if I said it out loud, it wouldn’t happen. But it did, and now here I am, in sunny Cali-forn-I-A. The weather here is startlingly perfect….especially to a person who just left 95 degrees and 100% humidity. I’ll be honest, I was a little leery that I may not be able to wear my sundresses–unsure if 70 degrees with a California breeze might be too chilly for a seasoned Southerner, but y’all, it feels like HEAVEN. I wear a sundress and keep a little light sweater in my purse for when the sun goes down but hardly need it even then.
Let me stop just a second and tell you why/how we’re here (WITHOUT ANY CHILDREN!). There is a global spine congress here this week and Jeremiah is presenting one of his spine research projects. Since he is presenting for UAB, they were paying for his hotel room and flight. Now, I had enough frequent flier miles for my ticket…all that was left was arranging child care…HOW IN THE WORLD COULD I NOT GO? So, Keke (and my Dad, and most likely other members of my extended family) are keeping the rascals so that Jeremiah’s parents can come and cheer him on with me 🙂
Last night we went out to a nice dinner and then poked around until we accidentally ran into the Golden Gate bridge (hence the pictures from earlier. And we did ask a passer-by to get a pic of us together, but there was a bit of a language barrier in explaining how to use the camera and the photo turned out so fuzzy you couldn’t tell what anything was).
Today, we did something very odd for two tourists’ first whole day in a new city. We sat in the hotel room and did exactly what you see in these two pictures. I wore a big fuzzy white robe and read my book, while Jeremiah worked like a madman on his presentation. With that bad schedule he’s had the past couple of months, he hasn’t had ONE minute to work on the presentation he’s giving until Sunday afternoon. But let me tell you the honest truth, just being able to both be present in the same room, sitting quietly on our butts, with the window open and a cool breeze and Starbucks coffee…has been MARVELOUS. I’ve just missed him so bad I didn’t want to go wander around and shop and sight-see alone. We did go out and eat lunch and get his hair cut at a local place. We did go for a run this afternoon, through the city and by the water, and we have a WHOLE WEEK to see the sights later.
I’ll end with this. I’ve been saying over and over how bad I need a “break” (and you other Moms know what that means). But as soon as I realized I was about to leave my little girlies for that long, I just about perished. I actually started talking to Jeremiah about how I bet Dapples could still count as a lap baby on the plane and maybe we had enough frequent fliers to get Pace a ticket too. He looked at me like I had lost my ever-loving mind…and he was right. We are having fun and the break is glorious and I’ve said “thank you Jesus” out loud (to myself) several times, but I do miss those little chicken wings 🙁
Be back later 🙂