We need to find a new way to vacation

We've lived in Florida for almost six years. For those six years, the majority of our vacation time and money has gone to taking trips to Ohio to visit family. A small percentage has been used to take time off to entertain friends who have come to visit us, and an equally small percentage has been used to go on actual vacations not involving Ohio. This isn't the best situation. While I'm grateful that we have the means to take time off of work and buy plane tickets to Ohio, it's not a vacation in the typical sense. It *can* be restful and relaxing, but more often, for Tim and I, it's stressful, busy and leaves us feeling like we still didn't do everything or see everyone we wanted to see. We have a few days two or three times a year to squeeze in 365 days worth of visiting with family and hanging out with friends. We spend a lot of time in a car. Now that we have Elle, we feel ever more pulled to spend time with family and need to schedule around nap times and bed times, and the amount of time, money and effort involved in a trip has tripled. Elle is an easy going traveler, but it is still an ordeal.

With my new job, my vacation time has been drastically reduced. We knew that a non-Ohio trip would be highly unlikely this year, and we have one big Ohio trip planned for the fall, but that was the extent of our planned travels. But Tim's mom is retiring this year after a 40-year teaching career, and her retirement dinner was held last week. I desperately wanted to come home for a visit and had the opportunity to get away from work for a few days this week. So we decided to take a trip to Ohio. But of course it couldn't be as easy as just "taking a trip to Ohio."

At Grandma's retirement dinner.

Tim and Elle flew in on Thursday and drove to Tim's hometown for the retirement dinner. They successfully surprised Grandma and then spent the next day with family. I flew in to an airport on the other side of the state on Friday night. On Saturday, we met almost halfway to do an Elle handoff. We were fortunate that the timing of our fairly impromptu Ohio trip coincided with a dear friend's trip to Ohio, so we got to meet up with Meghan and Mike and meet Ryan.

Ohio brings everyone together.

 Tim and I hadn't seen Meg and Mike since August 2009. Before that, I think Meghan and I had seen each other at least once a year since 2001, including three times in 2008, when we both got married. So we were looonnnngggg overdue. We had both had kids in that time frame - kids who obviously needed to meet.

After lunch, Tim returned to his side of the state, and Elle and I headed east to see my family. So on our "vacation" in Ohio, Tim, Elle and I spent 90 minutes together. Before I left, one of my coworkers remarked on the fact that Tim and I see so little of each other when we're home because of our opposite shifts that it seemed semi-natural that we would vacation together-but-separately as well. Trust me, this is not ideal, and we're hoping that we don't have to do it again. The good thing is that we both got to see our families and Elle got a lengthy visit with family she doesn't get to see often. And Tim was on vacation all week, so I got to see him in the evenings, when he would normally be at work. But the rest of the situation? Not my favorite thing ever. Anyway ...

Aunt Marti (wearing birthday crown on her 35th birthday!) watches Elle,
who was searching for one of Marti's cats under the bed. Ginger knows
enough to hide when Elle is around, even in the new house.

Elle and I spent the next few days with my family, including another road trip on Sunday to see my sister and her new house. Tim was supposed to fly back to Florida on Sunday but only made it as far as Atlanta before being stranded in the airport overnight because his flight had been delayed and he missed his connection. He flew out the next morning, but we're both less than pleased with his Delta experience, and they WILL be hearing about it. Tim has vowed to never fly again, which could further complicate the whole visits-to-Ohio issue, but we'll revisit that at a later date.

On Monday, Elle and I spent the day with my family and then got together with one of my close friends from high school and her son, who is about a year younger than Elle.

The expressions on these two crack me up.

Elle has been enjoying her encounters with new friends as well as lots of fresh air, new-to-her toys and being spoiled rotten by doting grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends. She traveled well with Tim on the way up, and she's been a trooper with all of the long car rides across the state.

My 14-year-old brother accumulated a pretty awesome Thomas the Train set when he was younger.
Elle took full advantage of it and begged to play with the trains and tracks every day.

Hanging out with Uncle Doug.

She's even been sleeping fairly well at night, although I think she's longing for the comfort of her crib. Last night, though, she woke up at 3, which was entirely too early to start the day (6, maybe, 7, sure, but 3? NO WAY). I rocked her for a few minutes, then told her it was time to go back to sleep. Half an hour later, I heard her cry out again. This time, when I picked her up, I could tell something was wrong. It was dark, but I could tell she had been sick. I held her again, and she drifted off, but about thirty minutes later she started to squirm, and then she threw up again. This is only our second encounter with Elle vomit, and I'm not the best at dealing with these kinds of situations. We got up, and I prayed that this was just some small upset stomach incident and not some full-blown virus or bug that would affect our trip back to Florida tomorrow.

Our last full day in the state was spent at home, loosely following the BRAT diet and making sure she drank lots of liquids. We canceled the evening plans we had with a friend, and thankfully, Elle seemed to be nearly 100% almost immediately. After running back and forth through my parents' kitchen from 4 a.m. until 5 a.m. while my mom and brother slept and my dad prepared for work, I finally got her to crash on the living room floor with me. When we woke up a few hours later, she seemed absolutely fine. We're still taking it slow on her stomach, but I think something just wasn't sitting right with her and she's good to go now.

Elle sitting with my dad on "G's bicycle." She calls it "Suki" (short for Suzuki).
When she was prancing around the kitchen this morning at 4:30 a.m.,she was talking about this
and was super excited when my dad got home from work and brought it out for her to see.

We'll be reunited with Tim tomorrow, and I'll return to work the next day. It's been a good visit, but the general overtones of having too much to cram in to never-enough-time are definitely present, and it was less than ideal that we had our time split up (although I'm grateful that Tim didn't have Elle with him the night he got stuck spending the night in the airport).

Spending time with Grams.

And as always, it's hard to leave - it's hard knowing I didn't get to see Tim's family on this trip, didn't get to spend much time with friends, wasn't able to spend much time with my sister. It's also extremely difficult to watch Elle and my family get so close in such a short period of time and then have to take her back to Florida and know that it will be several months before we see each other again. I could go on and on, but basically, it's hard living so far away from family, not just logistically and financially, but emotionally, too. Technology allows for frequent phone calls and video chats, but there are some things that just can't be replicated.