Vacations!

Well, I finally took a vacation. I have not been away from work for a full 5-day work-week since May 2006. How the heck did that happen? It was way overdue, so I went. Five days on Vashon Island with the family and five days in Alaska. I felt like I'd been away from work forever by the time I got back- a very good feeling.

Vashon

My mom did some great recon and found us a big, lovely house right on the water for the week. They had a dingy we could use, a hot tub and a great big dining table for eating all the fabulous meals we made! Flank steak, salmon, shrimp, blueberry-goat cheese salad, tacos and homemade guacamole... holy moly- everything we ate was so good!! That was one of my favorite parts of our time there. We also had cable so could watch the Olympics 24/7 if we wanted, though it was really just an evening activity. I lounged around, played our favorite family games of Scrabble and Yahtzee, threw rocks in the water with Ashen and generally just had a great time with my fabulous familia.

Ashen's new best friend... Charlie Dog

Chillin' on the deck- where we spent most of our time... when it wasn't raining!