Cruising to Catch Up

In some respects it feels like a lifetime has passed since the last post on the 21st. We (J & I) departed for our cruise the next morning (22nd). We woke up, spent the morning with the boys, of course left a little later than we were planning to and finally we were off. Said good bye to the boys and they did great. No tears... they were off to do something fun with Evelyn. We called from the cruise ship that night on the Internet computer camera phone set up and they did say hi but were bummed because they couldn't see the ship. Otherwise, it was like a non-event for them us being gone...

J & I (and my dad and JoAnn) had a rough night on the boat... we all felt a bit sea sick. Next day, we just tried to recover and take it slow and lazy. It was a fully day of sailing, no ports to explore. We called that evening (my mom was there at this time) and the boys were watching a movie so they couldn't be bothered to come say hi. We talked to my mom a few minutes and then said good-bye. Another rough night at sea and so J & I decided we'd exit the ship early and get off the boat (for good) in Catalina. Did the necessary paperwork, got our luggage, and off we were. We had lunch with my dad & JoAnn in Catalina and then they headed back to the boat for the rest of the trip. J & I researched the best way to get home and decided on the Long Beach Ferry. Rented a car in Long Beach and drove down to pick up J's truck in San Diego. Stayed the night at J's sister's place in San Diego and had a nice visit with her and our niece and nephew. Returned the rental car back to Long Beach and headed back home. J & I wound up going to a movie in our town and then planned to surprise the boys at Islands for dinner.

Funniest thing was while the boys may have been surprised, they were not able to take that in so much as they were really bothered that my mom didn't check in at the front with the hostess (she saw us and just headed for our table). Little things like that - rules - are important to the boys. Anyway, we had a not-so-pleasant dinner... boys were completely unruly. I'm sure there was an element of digesting the change (mom and dad home now!) but then we proceed to find out from my mom that S hadn't napped (at all) and N had only napped about 1 1/2 hours cause he heard his brother. I guess S hadn't napped Friday for my mom either. You know how when you take vacation days from work and you spend the first couple of days back catching up and really you almost spend as many hours working, you've just spread the hours around so you didn't have any on the vacation days... well, it felt similar with the boys. We were going to "pay the price" for the vacation in the sense that the boys were tired, we'd need to spend a couple of days getting everyone back to normal and doing all that would sort of negate our vacation.

I think it took S at least until Tuesday afternoon to be close to normal (in terms of sleep and thus personality and his ability to interact with us and his brother). Found out there was really no fruit ingested during the weekend. Lots of movie (screen) time. And, you know what, even though there was the recovery time, everyone was just fine. Boys did so good while we were away - it was really a non-event for them. Bodes well for J & I to take another weekend away sometime down the road.

So, since I was home Monday, I took the boys to school and picked them up... they seemed to like that. They are really comfortable there. When I drop them off, they don't look back, don't really even say good-bye. Tuesday, I was home (J was not) and Evelyn was there. Evelyn fed the boys breakfast and then the two of us went with the boys to their gym class. It is nice to see them in their classes since I don't get to do that very frequently. Evelyn fed them lunch and got them down for nap while I ran some errands. Then I came home with the intention of taking a nap as well... but no, N woke up 2 hours early. Ugh.

One thing I've noticed is on school days since the boys don't get to play with their Lego's in the AM, that is pretty much all they want to do once they get up from nap. We had hoped to carve pumpkins last night, but the boys were not interested at all. They played Lego's for a good 2 hours before we made them stop for dinner (they could have easily kept playing).

Dinner: butternut squash soup, yam biscuits, cranberry sauce

Books: Witch with a Twitch (S & N), Star Wars (N),