Vacation Reflection

By Chris

Alright. Can't let Teresa give the only vacation point of view.

Teresa gave me props for braving the cold, wet, sandy world even though being dirty, wet and cold are some of me least favorite things (sandy counts as dirty, in my book). Have to admit, it was fun playing with the kids in the ocean though. Next time, we must get a house with a pool though. There are some available with pools, gamerooms and home theatres complete with comfy movie seats and all (I know because Teresa has already been checking out the houses on the Internet that were on our street. She'll probably have us locked in soon for a return visit).

That all said, have to share a couple of comical happenings:

SPARKLERS WITH THE KIDS
On one store run, I bought sparklers, thinking the kids wouuld enjoy these harmless of all fireworks. I ventured onto the deck with Ben, Nick, Christian and Kai and came back in a little worn from the experience. The whole holding-fire-on-sticks thing freaked Kristian out enough that she retreated inside after one nervous round of the experiment. Kai decided that a fun thing to do with his sparkler would be to touch my face with it. Yep . . . walked right up and touched me on the face. Not sure what he was thinking??? Ben was as spastic with sparklers as he is with everything else. Tippy-toe hopping all over the place with his, he got behind me and burned a hole right in my shirt. I was feeling a little warm, and asked Teresa to see if I was on fire. "Nope," she replied after checking my back. "No really, it's burning a little," I replied. "Nothing there she said." Only after we came inside did she see the hole. Good grief.

BUGGIN'
Grandpa George (nobody calls him that, but it does sort of have a ring) found a neat trail made of wood that winds through the woods before dead-ending on a deck on the sound (the sound is on the West, and we could check out the sunset). On the way in, I commented that this area "looked like mosquitos." Well, they were not mosquitos, but these craze flys took a liking to me. Once we decided to retreat, they became more aggressive. I guess we should have taken the hint of the teenagers who warned us on their way out: "we gave up and turned around because of the bugs." As Teresa and I headed back to the car first, she was laughing at me swatting wildly at the stupid things, welts forming everywhere. They particularly liked my face and ears. They left everyone else pretty much alone. I finally killed one at the end of the trail. It was yellow and black striped with a big-'ol needle mouth to poke me with. The whole thing left me swollen and sick feeling until I got some Benedryl in the system.