I have my brain back - it temporarily disappeared after returning home from Italy and then jumping right into the back to school hoopla.  The jet lag was easily out of everyone's systems by the time the kids went back to school 5 days after we returned home, but we packed up again two days later to spend the long weekend out at the lake with my family.  We had a beautiful weekend boating, spending quality time with family, as well as celebrating Julia's birthday.  The weather complied and we gave summer a nice send-off as September will inevitably slide into fall… and before we know it winter will jump upon us.  Although, this past week shows that summer doesn't want to give up quite yet as the temperatures have been in the high 20's all week (low 80's for you Farenheiters).  Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

Unpacking when you only have carry-on bags is pretty easy, especially when almost everything is dirty and can go right into the laundry basket.  We had loaded up on Dutch candy which was quickly doled out to Jeff's family the day after we got home, so after putting our shoes away and storing the suitcases back in the garage we were done!  The first evening back was tiring as we arrived home in the early afternoon after not sleeping a wink on the plane.  We went on (what felt like) a forced family walk around 6:30 pm to avoid going to bed too early.  It was hilarious - it was a beautiful evening with families riding bikes and playing at the park but we were stumbling around like a bunch of drunkards!  It worked at helping re-set our clocks and we went to bed at a reasonable 8:30 pm and slept most of the night.

The flight back was good, although we had a little stress at the beginning.  At the airport they presented us with one boarding pass and 3 stand-by tickets.  What?!?!  The last time something like that happened to me was 15 years ago on a Southwest Flight from Boston to Chicago and I didn't know an airline like KLM would do that on a fully paid overseas ticket.  We didn't tell the kids about it because we didn't want them to freak out and we were maintaining the thought that everything would work out.  (You've all read 'The Secret', right?)  Thankfully a very nice and helpful lady at the gate spent about 20 minutes 'working' the system and not only managed to get us seats, but she got the seats all together and in the upgraded section with bigger seats and more legroom.  So, it all worked out.  (Admittedly I was feeling a underlying level of stress but working hard on maintaining outward positivity!)

In the next few weeks I intend on writing some more posts on experiences we had that didn't make it into the daily blog.  I have a lot of information regarding prices of meals, accommodation breakdowns, summary of cities, and more.  I also plan on updating a lot of my static pages with the new things I learned on this trip.  I also have our next summer trip simmering on my backburner and will update our plans as we make some decisions about when and where we go.