Do Ya Think We Need a Vacation Yet?

Ever have one of those days? Where you have a million things to do, and everything seems to go haywire?

Well, we’ve had one of those SUMMERS.

Earlier this year, our kitchen in our 1855 home started to fall apart. It has been slowly disintegrating before us for a decade, but we always put off fixing it. This year, it had to be done. The insurance man wants to come see the house (our policy is very old), and if he saw the crumbling plaster, bare wires hanging from rafters, moldy countertops, and sagging flooring… we’d be in trouble.

We started gutting the downstairs of the house in May. Very little of the home has been untouched in about 100 years. The wiring (what was still working) was still the old knob and tube from the 1920s. Since we are a one-income family, we wanted to save a little money and do all the work ourselves.

WOOOOO, what a job!

And everything seemed to come at us during this time. My father died after a log illness. I was audited by the IRS. My dog died. My husband lost his work hours before the renovation, and then, when I needed his help to work on the renovation, his hours suddenly flooded in. :-p Wow.

All the while, we’ve kept our chin up. The kids have been INCREDIBLE. But they are overworked and overtired. I have been promising them a vacation to Virginia or to North Carolina for many years.. I think I may have to keep my promise in the near future. It would be cruel to them to not keep it! They deserve a vacation. See for yourself! We made a cute video detailing all the stuff going on around here.

That website they were visiting is the exquisite Carolina Designs website, where there are photos of the glorious Outer Banks rentals by the North Carolina shore. We haven’t been on a *real* vacation in about 15 years… I want them to see the ocean, to travel a little. No cheesy hotel for these kids! I want a nice rental unit where we can relax and do nothing but play a little billiards, splash in the Atlantic’s salty waves, lounge in front of a fireplace or the private pool, and rest from all our labors and tribulations. Just to think of it makes my heart sigh a little.

The rental units are very spacious, too. We’d have loads of space for all six of us. Oh! It would be so, so wonderful. My kids have never left New York State (except for a short stint in Massachusetts when they were babies). I would like to expose them to a little of that Southern hospitality. Prices are very good for such a luxurious rental location.

Anyway, all I can say about a vacation at this point is what I kept saying in the video: We’ll see.