This is my daughter and her cousin who is the same age. They don’t always look like so alike, but in this photo with the way they are holding their heads and looking and with their hair pulled back, they  look like twins.

Whew! We got back from our family vacation on Saturday. I think I have finally recovered, LOL! We spent a week in Park City thanks to the generosity of my parents who host my siblings and me with condos at the Mountain Side Marriott. We get to be together every year for a delightful week as an extended family. Here are some snapshots and nuggets of what I experienced and learned.

I have beautiful daughters and nieces. One of my daughters refused to be in the photo shoot. Apparently I am not stylish enough. I suggested my daughter wear my white top under her sundress and she declined, saying that my shirt had “mom sleeves” that were not up to her fashion standards.

 

It’s true that it’s best to be in bed by 10:30 PM so you can be asleep by 11. Your adrenals flush your body’s toxins between 11 PM and 1 AM if you are asleep. I had been pretty much in this habit of getting to bed earlier than my formernight owl ways and then it went out the window on my vacation, what with people in my family watching the Olympics on TV and kids wanting to stay up late with their cousins. When I got home from the vacation in the middle of the day, I was more tired than when I had left! It was all I could do to unpack. It must have been all those toxins backed up in my body that didn’t flush out.  I didn’t want to fix dinner or give my little kids a bath. Thank goodness it was Fast Sunday the next day, so most of us fasted dinner and my husband fixed sandwiches for the little ones. I just thought, can we just skip the evening and just go to bed? I felt totally wiped out and not physically capable of much, so I ended up watching Duggar videos on YouTube until I felt sleepy.

Anyway, back to the recap of my vacation…

This must be what heaven feels like. This hall may look boring but behind some of these doors are cousins having the time of their lives bonding with each other.  Each of my sibs and I had a unit equipped with 2-bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen and laundry machines for our own family, with my parents sharing one with my sister. This is the first year the units have all been so close together, three on one side of the hall, and two on the other. It felt like heaven to have my family close by yet not too close. The cousins absolutely loved going back and forth between places, having sleepovers, with some of the older cousins baking cookies at 3 AM! I picture heaven being like this with eternal families having our mansions side by side. We only let my kids have sleepovers with cousins. My 6 and 7 year olds had their first sleepovers with their respective cousins who are their age. Fun!

My 11 year old son is great at fixing bike and stroller tires. He got our jogging stroller ready for the trip by installing a new tube.

My little kids would rather watch wildlife than the Olympics. We had a woodchuck we could see from our window on the mountainside that fascinated them. As my 16 yo daughter said, quoting William DeMille, “Who needs TV when you have a farm?”

Letterboxing can bring you face to face with unexpected historical landmarks. We got some clues at http://letterboxing.org for an Olympic letterbox across from the Olympic ski jumps and ended up at a place that used to be a pony express station.

The kids had more fun throwing rocks into the meandering stream than learning about the pony express.

It was fun to do an Olympic letterbox and then see the U.S. women’s gymnastics team get the gold that night.

The next time I am going on vacation I am telling my homeschooling friends that I am going on vacation and not to call me unless it’s a total emergency. Vacations are supposed to be empty spaces to be filled up with non-everyday things. The root of the word means “empty.” I am feeling slightly hypocritical though because I did bring my laptop and check my email every day and night, and blog, and participate in an online colloquium on John Taylor Gatto’s article, The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher. Hmmm, maybe I should leave both my laptop and my cell phone at home to make it a true vacation, and hen see what surprises fill up the vacuum I have made by leaving my usual activities at home. It also makes me wonder about the origin of vacations. Did they start when conveyor belt living started as a way “to get away from it all”? If you live a joyfully productive, yet restful life that includes Sabbath day observance and rest during winter seasons, do you really need a vacation?

it was so wonderful to take turns cooking dinner with my sisters so we all had lots of nights off.

My little sister can make a yummy batch of Italian chicken and potatoes that smells so good that people clear at the elevator on our floor were asking what smells sooooo good. Rosemary is potent stuff! They were guessing what dish the smell was coming from and said “rice a roni.” I knew it was far more gourmet than that! I told the kids to just follow their nose from the elevator to Aunt Emily’s place for dinner.

You can spend all day at This is the Place State Park and not do or see everything there. The place has so many interesting buildings and activities: blacksmith shop, petting zoo, pony rides, Indian dancing, panning for gold (fake), a real life cabin of a pioneer family that slept one dad, two moms, and 13 kids, a replica of the Brooklyn ship, a one room schoolhouse, a train Walt Disney would be proud of, and MUCH more. We could not do it all in one day!

We had enough people in our group (mom, dad, 7 kids, plus two nephews, that by the time we paid admission, we could buy a year round pass! So we will be back soon without paying any more! Yay! We will come back for homeschool field trips with my younger children during cabin fever time especially.

Lime Ricki swimwear has some utterly adorable, feminine swimsuits, that are modest, even if they don’t meet up with the Duggars modesty standard. We decided to get my teen daughter a new suit, because the elastic on the old suit had dried up and was crunchy, since the suit was so old (we had bought it at a thrift store). Lime Ricki was the closest, cutest, cheapest place to Park City, after my daughter found an online coupon for 40% off. That’s one great reason why I am glad we brought the laptop. So we made the run down the canyon to go swimsuit shopping. The place has so many cute, feminine swimsuits that it made swimsuit shopping fun! Well, at least for her. I don’t think I could find anything that fit me. I did not even attempt it. She picked this one below.  Isn’t it darling? I love the skirts.

Clarks is the place to go for super comfy shoes and sandals that are cute too. These are the ones my sister-in-law bought at the Factory Outlet store in PC. Aren’t they pretty? This is the same sister-in-law who got me into Gymboree clothes. I asked her about a place to get feminine clothes like the Janeville line that no longer is made. She said that http://bodenusa.com has some classic feminine clothing.

My sister is reading the Mood Cure. She says it is all about how nutritional supplements can help you eliminate depression and anxiety. I am wondering if it harmonizes with what Sarah Pope over at http://thehealthyhomeeconomist.com says about healthy fats stabilizing blood sugar and moods.

My dad gave a FHE lesson to the whole extended family about the use of the word “instruments” in terms of being instruments in the hand of God. That phrase appears dozens of times in the Book of Mormon but only once in the Bible. I will have to blog about that later.

 Justin Roberts has CDs for kids that appeal to parents as well. My sister loves them!

I have nieces that are great at sewing. Before the trip, they sewed sundresses for all the girl cousins to wear to church together the first day! My younger daughter rebelled and would not get in the photo, and her younger cousin sure wanted to be out of the photo!

But I snagged a picture of her and her two favorite cousins right after the church meetings we attended at the LDS meetinghouse in Park City.

I have a beautiful, loving family that I am very grateful for. I am so glad and grateful that my parents provide this for us every year, thanks to their inheritance money from their parents. It makes me wonder what I am going to leave for my grandchildren, material and spiritual wise. What legacy am I building to leave them? I hope it can be opportunities like this for family bonding.

It’s good to be home now and back to a routine, and I look forward to next year!