A mini day-cation

Eric works a lot. Now, he does take a day here and there to work from home or on the road, but it's very seldom that he just takes a day off. We were invited to go to holiday world with our best friends in the world and just couldn't pass up a little vacay from everything. A day to forget about the messy rooms at home, all the adoption stuff we have no control over, and everything else that's just happening in our lives.

We loaded up early and headed to Santa Claus, Indiana for our trip to Holiday World, or as I like to call it, boost-your-self-esteem world. if you have never been to Holiday World, it's so much fun. Even our kids, who are not thrill seekers enjoy their time there. We stayed in the Splashing Safari side of the park because it was in the high 90s all day with intense humidity. HW is a great place to people watch too. I'm pretty sure some folks don't have mirrors or friends to be honest to them about their choice of body art and swimsuit styles for their body type. Now, I am in no way skinny, and I'm not going to post pics of me in my swimsuit, but people, please cover up. It's a family park!

JD had most of his ball playing buddies along and hung out with them most of the day playing on some of the tamer slides, the lazy river, and the wave pool. Jules and Em spent the day with me in the kids slides (they have two different kids areas aside from the baby area), lazy river, and wave pool.

I told Eric on the way home yesterday I really enjoyed the day together. We NEVER take a day and do things like this. I told him I want to be more intentional with our time together with the kids. We're always shuttling to one activity or another and are just never really together with the kids. My goal is to take these little day-cations every other month or so with our regular family vacation in the fall(which by the way I can't wait for!) so now I'm on the search for some inexspensive family fun for the Elliott family.
All in all, we had an amazing time! We drove up, spent the day, and drove home. What a great break from everything.

Summertime

Yesterday was the official first day of summer break for us. Since I teach, I get summer break too. But, how do I keep all three (Emma, my niece, JD, and Jules) busy all summer. We dont do a big family vacay in the summer-its just too hot! Right now, we have a schedule of sorts. I go for a run before anyone gets out of bed, take a shower, check email, etc. Around 8, if the kiddie aren't up, I'll get them up (except Monday's, our do what you want day). We have breakfast, brush teeth, and put on some clothes. Then, we have about 15 mins of "school work." today we used kid college for the oldest two, and Jules did a couple math worksheets from her workbooks from school and practiced writing her name. Today was errand day, so we went to get the oil changed, waited on the air guy (because it's 9000 degrees upstairs). We planned on going to the library, but the air guy had to come back. Tomorrow will just have to be our library day for the week. Thrown in the mix is laundry and picking up their rooms. We have some crafts planned for Friday and maybe some free bowling on Thursday. I love summer break!