AMT: Vacation Debrief!

I fell back into bloggy silence again by accident. (Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!)

We got back yesterday afternoon from a family vacation. We are very fortunate that my parents own a house at the Jersey shore -- and let me just get this out of the way: it is NOT like you may have seen on that horrible "reality" show! -- and so we were able to have ten days of family time on the relatively-cheap. My parents provide the accommodations and we provided the food (which, given that we eat like kings on vacation, is a non-trivial expense, but it's absolutely worth it).

So now that we're home I have 80 million* non-bloggy things to do, but FIRST I have to photo dump our good time on you -- don't be mad -- and also tack an Answer Me This to the end because I accidentally haven't been attending the virtual cocktail party. 

Heeeeeeeeeeeere we go!

 

Riding in cars with dinosaurs.

"I'm ready for the beach, Mama!"

So bagel. Much happy.

And a beer-ita for Mom -- not at the same time of day. {Seriously, check out the recipe at that link. Amaze.}

Coolest.

This is her first solo ice cream experience {I have no idea how I pulled THAT off}, and her life will never be the same.

Evening grace.

That beach life.

Anna, Olaf, Elsa, and a hat that makes her look like a hobo.

Daddy swapped out a toilet for Mimi and Grandad. This photo opportunity was not to be missed. {This toilet was brand new out of the box! Relax!}

Aunt Kenzie had a bright idea. This took quite a bit of toddler wrangling, but we told her it would look like Up and she cooperated and I think the trouble was worth it!

After all that time together, I'm going to seriously miss my babies today, as they're back to daycare. (We magically got them and Daddy out the door early this morning, and that left me just enough time to blog before getting to ALL THE WORK.) As they all trundled off to their days this morning, I felt really sad.

But dat silence, doe. {Heart-eyes emoji.}

Ooooooookay: Quick AMT, and then I'm off and running!

The estimable Kendra at Catholic All Year has brought back her popular linkup, Answer Me This, for the summer. Here's how it goes: she posts the questions one week; you take your leisurely time answering. The next week, she posts her answers and next week's questions. Join us, won't you?

1. What's currently on your To Do list?
All. The. Things. We have mountains of vacation laundry, and I have to get back to work, and we have no food in the house, and I have to pick up a couple of packages at the UPS store thanks to poor we're-going-to-be-out-of-town-so-don't-order-anything-to-be-delivered-dummy planning on my part. Plus other stuff. Eek.


2. Better type of superhero: magic/radioactive powers? Or trauma/gadgets/hard work?
Hmmmm. I'm going to go with a combination platter. I like Daredevil, who lost his parents and had plenty of trauma, and is also blind. He lost his sight by accidentally coming in contact with some radioactive something-or-other that took his vision but enhanced his other senses to superhero levels. So now he can hear an eyelash hit the ground and fight like nothing else, and he goes out and dispenses vigilante justice (which is a bad, bad idea in The Real World but satisfies me to no end in the Marvel universe). By day he practices law and fights for the underdog. AND he's Catholic.

3. Finding out if baby is a boy or a girl before birth: Good idea? Bad idea?
Our first baby was a surprise. I wanted to find out but my husband really wanted to wait, so we struck a deal that if it was one baby, we'd be surprised. If it had been multiples, we would have found out. It was one baby and I was unsurprised to be told she was a girl at her birth -- we were armed with unisex everything, but I just knew. With the second baby, Daddy's practical side won out and he decided he'd like to know this time whether all of our girl stuff was going to need to be dug out of our impractical storage. So we found out at our 20 week ultrasound.

Having done both, I prefer finding out. I torture myself over baby naming, and I found it to be a huge relief to not have to decide on names for both sexes when I was only going to have one baby. And I just like to know stuff.

EDIT: I also realized that a big motivator for me is that I loathe calling my baby "It." 

4. Have you ever appeared on a stadium jumbotron?
Yes! When I was in college at the University of Delaware, we used to caravan down to Camden Yards for an Orioles game at least once a year. (I'm a Phillies fan, insofar as I follow baseball, but O's tickets are substantially cheaper!) Then we made it our mission to have enough fun -- clean, sober fun, since we could absolutely not afford stadium booze -- to be worth broadcasting on the Jumbotron. 

5. Are you more book smart or more street smart?
I'd say, just like I'm equally right- and left-brained, I'm probably pretty well equal in this sense too. I was good at school and I'm capable in life. 

(I've always thought that "capable" was a word that sounded way less impressive than it actually is; it kind of connotes "able to get by" but I always mean it as "able to figure out stuff and then do it reasonably well." And if you're able to figure out stuff and then do it reasonably well, you're doing fine.)

6. Have you had that baby yet? (Feel free to skip this one if it's not applicable to you.)
Almost seven months ago! Jeez! ;) He still sleeps like a newborn though, God help me.

* Slightest of exaggerations. {It's probably more like 76 million.}