And I Hit the Ground Running

Whew. After a completely brutal travel day, we are back from Coeur d'Alene. And by brutal, I mean long and punishing. We started out in a van to the airport that managed to induce immediate car sickness allowing me to spend the entire 45 minute ride focused entirely on not vomiting. We then took three planes routing us home from Spokane to Minneapolis to Atlanta to Roanoke. By our arrival chez nous at 11:30pm, I was beat.

But you can't complain about homecoming when Doug and Nancy (my in-laws) are babysitting. The house and grounds were in decidedly better condition than we left them: weeds pulled, garage cleaned, flower beds mulched, retaining wall repaired. And the kids were happy too! They might be too good - my friends want to hire them. And they probably pay better than we do!

The remainder of our trip was relaxing and refreshing. Coeur d'Alene is a lovely town, if a bit sleepy, which suited us just fine. The scenery was gorgeous:

There was a three-ish mile hiking trail not far from the hotel which was fantastic. Its accent was not as steep as many around here, but it a great hike. On our last day we looped it twice.

The town also had fun details like the many artistic bike racks. I just loved these.

When Tim was in his conference (sadly, he did have to work), I roamed the town, ran, went to the spa and caught some of the US Open - when I needed a break from all my relaxing.

Wonderful, low-key vacation. And I think I came back just relaxed enough to hit the ground running and tackle the veritable mountain of paperwork from the children's schools waiting for me. More about that later...