Sunday, March 18, 2007

We Interupt This Program...


Sorry for the delay once again for two weeks as I have taken a short sabbatical to the beautiful islands of Hawaii, Kauai to be specific. Needless to say, not much has been accomplished on the house over the past two Saturdays as I have been traveling with a two year old on a plane. One way by myself (the return flight) and the other with my sister-in-law and her boyfriend. Man I am truly blessed to have such a well behaved little girl that likes to make friends with everyone, usually stating conversation with a very excited, "Hi!".

I went with Leslie's family on the vacation they had been planning since June of last year. I wasn't originally supposed to go as this is THE busiest time of the year for me at work, but life changes and sometimes schedules need to be rethought. I stayed up all night on the 9th trying to get things tidied up at work and then left in the early a.m. on Saturday to the bright sunny paradise of our 50th state. It truly was a land of beauty, sunshine and when I would allow myself, relaxation.


I'll be honest, vacations for me for a while are not going to be what most people experience. You see, Leslie and I worked so we could go on vacation, plain and simple. In the five years of being together we went to a lot of great places that I never thought I'd see and I was able to share every one of them with the love of my life. It was amazing to go some place and have every moment be better than the last. Our home is filled with token items of the places we visited, a vase here, a crystal bowl there, a mirror over there. All things that remind me of the great vacations, and the great moments of learning more about the person I married as well as about myself. Vacations are funny sometimes that if you have the time to slow down and reflect, you find answers to things you didn't realize there was even a question for.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy myself or have a great time with the Van Hemerts, honestly it's quite the opposite. Heck, I got to play two rounds of golf at an AWESOME course and got to go mountain hiking and sat by the pool and ate way too much as well as kayakling down a moutain-fed river and swinging from a tree swing. I think going on this vacation has continued to force me forward in facing the hard reality I live in and all of the facets of that reality will continue to bring in the years to come. There were moments of laughter and kidding around as well as moments where I just wanted to crawl up in a corner and let the day pass me by. Hopefully the latter didn't affect the others around me too much. We had a great time overall and the weather was as beautiful as you'd hope it to be. Although we had a few mornings of rain, we never lost a whole day to bad weather, in fact we were pleasantly surprised that we were able to be out in the sun for the majority of every day (due to the forecast in the early part of the week being heavily expecting of rain).

All in all a great week for me, and I'm ready to get back to building stuff and spending money! See you all there!

P.S. If you want to see more Hawaii photos just shout!!

5 comments:

Muddy said...

Hi John. This is Sara Campau Day. I am so so sorry to hear about your wife. Just so awful. I have been thinking about you a lot because Peter and I are planning on driving through Iowa next fall and the two people I really want to see are you and Deb. If you want to connect my email address is dexterday(at)comcast.net. I put the @ as (at) to avoid spamming. It is wonderful about your house...reminds me of your parents. Anyway, email me if you want. Love, Sara

Sean said...

LOVE the shorts.

Sean said...

LOVE the shorts.

Sean said...

No. Really. LOVE 'em. HOT.
Love ya!

Jana said...

Oh my goodness, Ellie is ADORABLE!