We're baaaack!

How were the past two weeks for you? I heard the rain, lightning, storms etc were many and unrelenting in this area of New York while we were gone. But the sun came out the day we arrived home. How nice, eh?!

The weather for Pennsic really could not have been better. The days were sunny and mid 80's or so with very few rain showers. The one real downpour lasted less than an hour, where, of course, we were outdoors attending our food table during the woods battle --we try our hardest to keep the exhausted fighters on their feet with fruit and water. There were only a few days when I awoke to the pitter patter of rain on our canvas tent. It is an extremely realxing sound. Cooler temps after dark allowed for a restful sleep. Good thing too, since our decision to camp without the air mattress was made - I do believe it was the only thing keeping me from getting my lower back and hip muscles to relax when we were camping previously. That's not a good thing especially when one is on their feet that much... And Dan comments that only one person on an air mattress is worse than sleeping on the hard ground. Luckily, it wasn't so bad sleeping onthe ground; I would go as far to say that it was fairly comfortable. Better than sleeping on a hard floor indoors, at any rate!

Vacation was good. Camping was good and it's a nice inexpensive vacation despite the high gas prices. I love the Freehold/Coldwood encampment; the people we camp with are our friends from upstate NY, VT and Canada. The way things are laxly organized makes sense and is very easy to handle, as vacations should be! The people are wonderful, true, but many this year were from my home area. On the trip there we stopped at friends for a day/night/day visit. They bought a nice fixer-upper in the "Swillburg" area, old downtown that is now being renovated, rejuvinated. It used to be all pig farms once upon a time, but now it has parks, homes and shops. Only a block from their house is an Asian market, and next door to that was an Indian restaurant (mmm, naan and saag, what an awesome birthday lunch!!) and next to that was an actual Indian market. And it was SO incredibly inexpensive, except the rice, strangely so. I bought lots of food from each market for our camping meals. I tell you there were not too few in our encampment who were disappointed we did not have enough to share by the end of the meal ;^)

So overall not a bad vacation at all! But then there's the drive home. Without getting into play-by-play details, we arrived home over 24 hours late and nearly $1400 lighter in the wallet (between hotel, meals and car repair). Thank goodness I brought the emergency credit card!

So we're home now. YAY!! Well, currently I am at work. I'm missing my family right now. And how silly is that?! I am lucky enough to spend nearly ALL of my time with them!! I am also dealing with some of the regular ridiculous crap here at work, am sort of looking forward to unpacking (not) and sort of looking forward to doing the mountain of laundry (again, not)...

So my family is pleasantly exhausted and quite happy to be home. Dan said that the first thing Gavin did upon arrival was to hop right on his bicycle and ride around the neighborhood. Before we left he repeatedly said he wanted to bring his bike, and while we were camping "oh how I wished I had my bike..." What a cutie. Quite conversely, Connor and Rael - who are just as cute btw -were so very tired but were jumpy and full of energy, but still too tired to run around. So they just lounged around and read the OOTS books that were purchased at Pennsic. Dan's plan is to spend the day outdoors, weather permitting, playing soccer or some sport that the boys enjoy. Two days in a car is not good. For anyone. But we did make it through with flying colors, such resilient and go-with-the-flow children and husband I have!

The pets were well cared for while we were gone, thanks to Papa, my dad. The pups were delighted to see me when I got home from work last night, as I was so happy to see them, my awesome pupalups. The bun, I imagine, was happy too, in his own punky bunny way, but he kept giving me "the ear" last night and then again this morning. He probably was happy, perhaps, but a bit PO'd that we were gone so long. By giving me "the ear," I am referring to Connor's term for when Mr.Bun is grumpy or unhappy. the pose is from a lagomorph language dictionary online, but the term is Connor's. A good example is "Uh oh, Bun's giving me the ear..." and it usually comes out sounding like "Uh oh, Bun's giving me the 'finger'..." And the sideways look Bun uses as well makes it seem like he's giving you the eyeball -- but, then again, his eyes are on the sides of his head, so he can only really give you one eye at a time, right?

I'll post a few pics once I am home from work, although I don't think my camera was used very often, darn rechargable batteries. I'll know for certain when I upload them to the computer if there's anything interesting taken by my children :D I must warn that at one point the camera was found sitting in a small puddle of water inside our tent and it spent a couple days drying out. Not that our tent leaks, mind you, it was a bottle of water that was accidently spilled. So we'll see if any of the pics come out!

Thanks for listening! More later.