Chaos Reigns Supreme

The past two weeks have been fairly eventful. We spent the first week on a week-long family vacation in Door County, Wisconsin and this most recent week completely obliterating any sort of benefits a week of relaxation on vacation may have provided.

Vacation was awesome. Owen had been packed for about a month prior to the trip in anticipation so it had a lot to live up to. Thankfully, the trip probably exceeded his expectations. Door County, thanks to strict zoning, is largely and blissfully devoid of any national chain establishments other than gas stations and of the rampant commercialism and giant water parks found in places like Wisconsin Dells. Old fashioned entertainment is the name of the game. We went to a drive-in movie, a family sing-along at a small-town Village hall, took a car ferry, threw rocks into Lake Michigan, checked out cherry orchards and boats, hung out at the beach, frequented shops that ranged from the tacky (Owen admiring the hand-carved "tobacco" paraphernalia in a hippie store) to the sublime (yay, Maxwell's House in Egg Harbor!), played minature golf, ate at restaurants (including Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant with its grass roof and grazing goats and waitressing staff that miraculously had us in and out so fast the babies were actually still eating when the check came rather than creating havoc - a stark contrast to a place on the way up that was so slow they actually comped our entire meal without us even asking), and just generally chilled out. Despite some talk around the County that tourism is off a bit because kids are demanding giant water parks and other modern high-tech thrills for their vacations, it certainly seemed to be thriving up there. And Owen was the perfect age, reveling in every detail. The twins adjusted well and generally seemed pleased just to be checking out some different sights.

Since our return from the trip, it has been non-stop craziness. Deanna was out of town for work from Tuesday through Friday. Our nanny's mother passed away so she was out of the picture all but one day this week. This left me and my mom and father-in-law to tend to the brood as best we could (thank God for them, as I was absolutely swamped at work and was therefore stressed out and distracted). In summary, chaos reigned supreme all week. On Wednesday morning alone, our beloved 93 Camry reached the breaking point and had to be taken in for repairs in an attempt to coax it back to life and Hayden, who may or may not have eaten some glass from a broken Christmas ornament had to go to the emergency room. He is fine, by the way, although his eating nasty stuff is obviously becoming a bad habit! Can't wait until the twins stop putting stuff in their mouths. Deanna and I had set, at the outset of summer, modest goals related to emergency room visits of a maximum of one (her goal) and two (my more practical goal, considering the ages and activity levels of all the boys, and rapidly developing climbing skills of the twins). Here's hoping Deanna's prediction was the more accurate of the two, and that things settle back to somewhat normal in the coming week.