Overtired and Overstimulated

Wow.  I've let the days get away from me again...with good reason.  If you've only just started following this blog, don't worry, I always come back to the blog.  Sometimes I get distracted for a few weeks at a time, but anyone that's been following this for awhile will tell you that I almost always make up for long silent stretches with multiple entries.

So my good reason was that this year, we took our annual trip back to Minnesota for the Easter break, rather than go at our usual time in the summer.  Earlier this year, John announced that we needed a vacation and we should go somewhere warm and have a beach vacation for spring break.  Hmm.  I'm not sure if you follow regional weather patterns, but Europe doesn't exactly have a Florida.  There's not really anywhere that's warm enough to lay on the beach in Europe for spring break.

We could go to Africa?  Or maybe Egypt?  Can you imagine that phone call, "hi mom and dad, just want to let you know that we're taking your grandkids to Egypt for spring break this year....what do you mean violent uprising?"  In any event, either of those destinations seemed a little overwhelming for this family of five.  That left, well, Florida.  You wouldn't believe the deals you can get on flights from Europe to Miami or Orlando.  But how silly is that?  Americans living in Europe traveling to Florida for spring break...maybe if we lived here permanently, or maybe if we talked all of our family into meeting us there....  

We came up with an alternative.  Rather than spend all of our time and money to travel to the U.S. this summer, we decided to take our trip to Minnesota for Easter, leaving a wide open schedule (and budget) for us to travel somewhere warm and vaction-y here this summer.  So that's what we did.

The kids were older, the flights much easier.  It was the first time since we've lived here that I was actually more excited to go, than I was nervous about taking the kids on the long flights.  That was a good feeling.  We all appreciated the fact that we would be there to celebrate a holiday that we usually celebrate alone, here.  We figured that we could manage it during the school year and the kids would be able to handle it.  What we didn't think about was the reality of trying to fit everything in, to a two week period, when we usually have a month.  We focused on family and overall feel like we did a good job with the schedule.

There was one of our crew that had a difficult time with all of it.  Miss B.  Over the course of two weeks, I finally figured out that she just needed to have a temper tantrum at least once a day to decompress.  I never knew when it was going to hit.  Once, in the middle of the night (sorry Fowler and Roberson families, the girl has a set of lungs and she knows how to use them) other times, after a big outing (Tritz and Morrison families, you missed a doozy after we got home from Easter dinner).  One night, when John was traveling for work, the only way she would sleep is if she had one hand on my back the entire night.  By the end of the trip, I was just as overtired and overstimulated as she was.  It's hard to be a good mom when you are so far away from home!

But we got through it, and had a wonderful time with our families.  And now we have a summer vacation to look forward to, and a wide open calendar for anyone that might want to book a visit....