Vacationing at Home

Well, we are officially on vacation - hooray! Even though CKB works from home, we don't get to see him all day so it'll be nice to have him around all the time for awhile!

Instead of a long trip in the car, gallons and gallons of ridiculously expensive gas, eating out 3x a day and a bunch of tired and grumpy children, we decided to vacation around home. Great minds think alike it seems - my friend over at The Zoo is doing the same w/her family right now! (wish we lived closer!!!).

Anyway! Yesterday afternoon after CKB finished up some work we started our vacation with dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse and thrill of thrill, we sat in the trolley car (yes, at 2 tables across the aisle from one another). Dinner was nice and everyone enjoyed the unique atmosphere. I was going to get a picture, but got self-conscious and decided against it. Next time I'll take a pic when we get there (there wasn't hardly anyone there when we showed up right at 5 pm - oh well).

After a nice dinner we headed back toward the homefront, and decided since we were "on vacation" that we'd explore a new shopping area that was recently built and is still being worked on. We drove through it and decided it was nice, but a bit on the "fancy" side of things for us :) We then drove around through the outlet mall that we pass quite often, but never stop at, just to see what stores were there. It was alllll clothing stores and a few shoe stores - maybe a suitcase store and a kitchen store, but NO BOOK STORE! Horrors! So, we kept driving....closer to home we remembered a street we pass every time we "go to town" and that we've always thought looked interesting and decided it was high time we explored down that road - we managed to not miss the turn and are so glad! The road headed out of town some and through some lovely, more "country" neighborhoods with LARGE lots and beautiful homes - and TREES! Sigh. We stumbled upon a public playground and stopped for a quick break - the children enjoyed it, but the playground was built for much bigger children - there was a slide that was at least a story high - yikes!


Here's Mr. A enjoying the swings - "higher Daddy!!!!"

"Look at me!!! MA - MA!!!! Look at me!!!!"




Anyway, we didn't stay too long, but stretching our legs and enjoying the semi-cool summer night was a treat. We got home "after bedtime" (Miss E kept noting the time and how we were out past bedtime :) ) and got everyone in bed.

Sigh.

It was a nice first day of vacation! No schedule. No requirements. Nowhere we HAVE to be. We have some places in mind we'd like to try to go in the next week or so - hoping it all works out, but if it doesn't - there's always another day! We'll probably have a lot of "crazy dinners" and some nice dinners out - we're saving a ton on gas and hotels so we can treat ourselves around town - we may never go out of town for vacation again! :)

Here's the crew before we left the playground (I forgot to change my camera settings and didn't realize it before this pic and the ones of Mr. A on the swing - sigh - so my others were blown out completely - ack!).




Stay tuned for Day 2!