Vacation News

Last week was my vacation week. I took time off to be with the kids the week before school starts. Monday is the big day!

Sunday night, Erin came over and we left Monday morning to take her back to Sacramento. Or at least, we tried. First, there was the chicken incident. Joe forgot to close the chicken coop door and Erin let her dogs and mine out without realizing the chickens were loose in the yard. My dogs don't usually chase or harm the chickens, but this time, I guess with Erin and Nick's dogs going crazy, they lost their minds too. Two chickens were killed. The other four flew out of our yard and kept showing back up in intervals throughout the day.

Then, Joe told me his guitar for school was broken and asked if we could find a place to fix it. On the way out of town, we stopped and discovered that it would be too expensive to fix, so right then and there, we bought one of their guitars that were on special. (Can you say OUCH?) I bought the protection plan on this one so if anything happens to it for the next two years, it will be covered.

We finally made it on the road, and got so hungry in Modesto that we stopped for lunch at a Subway. While we were standing outside, a homeless man told us he was hungry, so I bought him and his sweetie lunch and listened to his story, which I shared with the kids. If someone asks me for money, I rarely give it to him, but if someone says they're hungry, then I can't turn them down. When we made it to Sacramento, we got to see Erin's new apartment. We went to Panda Express for dinner and then went to the Dessert Diner for - you guessed it - dessert. It was amazing! Unfortunately we couldn't stay overnight because the kids had orientation on Tuesday, and we had to get back for that. The drive back was uneventful.

Tuesday we spent the day buying school supplies and running people back and forth to orientations. We were able to get most of the school shopping done on Tuesday. Joe has AP Biology, AP Statistics, AP Calculus, Advanced Guitar, AP English, and Academic Decathlon. Laine has AP European History, Honors English, Trigonometry, Chemistry, Drama, and German II. Johnny has Spanish II, Literature, Geometry, PE, Physical Science, and Social Studies.

Our plan was to go to the beach on Wednesday and stay until Friday, but then Joe said he couldn't leave town because he had an academic decathlon study session. I spent Wednesday instead doing miscellaneous errands. Thursday we left to go to the beach, and we were able to take Kelly with us.