Another fun day...

We spent a good part of the afternoon on Monday at the National Zoo in Washington DC. We got to see lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!). Not to mention the illustrious panda bears that get so much hype and attention. :) However, my favorite exhibit at the zoo must have been the web spinner spiders that they have living out in the open (sort of) in the invertebrate house. We got to witness first hand a spider attacking, paralyzing, and eating a live cricket. Yum. Heh.

Still enjoying my vacation immensely, however today is one of those agenda-packed days. Jen & I are going to try & hit the Whole Foods Market this morning, then we're considering taking the kids downtown to see some of the Museums, and then tonight we're going to Baltimore to eat dinner & see Phantom of the Opera (which my dad got us tickets for as an early birthday present).

We leave tomorrow to head back home - definitely NOT looking forward to the long drive ahead of us.

So far so good...

8 days and counting...

That's how long I've been on vacation. And what a vacation it's been. For a change, I haven't been running around like a chicken with my head cut off to see all the sites and listen to the sounds that I had planned for. For a change, I haven't had a set daily agenda that needed to be met on a day by day basis.

I've been able to go to bed when I want, get up when I want, nap when I want - mostly tuned around the Olympics for the past couple of days. Table tennis at 5am? That meant going to bed early and waking up early. U.S. women's softball at 2am? That meant struggling for 10 min to figure out how to program my parents' VCR.

And visiting with my sister & my newborn nephew has been majorly fun. Man, what a cutie pie. He's almost as cute as Braden was at his age, but not quite. ;) He sure seems to be a mild-mannered, colicky-free baby for now. *knock on wood*

I've also been able to put work out of my mind, at least for a couple of hours at a time. Yep, this is the vacation that I needed. One in which I can say after I get back home that I actually HAD a vacation - and not that I need a vacation from my vacation.

The high point of my vacation thus far?

Receiving this from my in-laws as an early b-day present! Probably the best birthday present I've ever received! I posted on the Ascend users forum that I felt like the kid in America's Funniest Videos that screamed at the top of his lungs for minutes on end when he received his dream present. Heh. Nowhere in my wildest dreams did I expect to get anything like that from my in-laws. I expected a CD or a book from Amazon, not a high quality home theater speaker. Wow. My in-laws are the best.