Back to the Simple Life??

Isn't it amazing that no matter how long you look forward to a vacation - the anticipation, the planning - and no matter what you have done, what you saw, or where you went, when it's over it was just another day?? And how quickly and easy it is to get back in to the routine of things and back into normal life?

The boys picked me up from the airport yesterday after spending the weekend in Logan by myself with my family. We went straight to the Aquarium. Now, the Albuquerque Aquarium is not large - it is, in fact, quite small. But there are cool things to see there and the boys enjoy seeing the sharks and go in hope of seeing the sea turtle. We can usually spend a good hour viewing everything. However, yesterday being Labor Day, I think half of Albuqerque was at the aquarium and so we spent less than 30 minutes there. So we went to the zoo. Albuquerque's zoo is huge and even though we've been there at least a dozen times, I still find something new. We took a different route this time and discovered the tortoises! And the coolest thing is they were up and walking around - probably the most action we ever see at the zoo on a hot day!

Unfortunately, we didn't stay at the zoo for long either because Andrew was beyond tired and we had left his binkie in the car. Rhett and I had gotten a hotdog and Porter and Zach had ice cream. Andrew ended up taking my hotdog and would get upset when I would take it from him to keep it from falling on the grass and to have a bite. Andrew then got a hold of Zach's ice cream and started to eat it, but got even more upset when Zach took it back. Rhett got Andrew his own ice cream cone, but by this time he was so tired and beside himself that he would freak out everytime we would touch it to prevent it from landing on the floor and to have a taste. He finally calmed down enough to eat the ice cream and let me help him hold it. The ice cream got down to cone level and he was feeding it to me - however, he didn't want me to touch it again and to keep me from touching it he would hold the cone up by the side of his head...turning the cone upside down. About the third time he lifted up the cone to get it out of my reach, the ice cream slid out of the cone and onto the ground. This made him upset again and then mean-ol-mom threw away the cone...needless to say, we packed up and left the zoo. I think Andrew was alseep before we left the zoo parking lot.

Anyways, today was just back to normal life - school, kids, cleaning, cooking. And as hectic as it seems, I guess you could call it the simple life. I've done the routine so many times that it doesn't require thought and everything just happens as it had the day before. Every now and then there's a glitch, or variation, or vacation; something that spices things up and gives me something to talk about. I look forward to those occurances - they are what make the routine exciting and then I'm more willing to do the simple things. But I wouldn't have it any other way...