Trying to blog from the train again.

We're back from Florida but hardly settled yet. It was a great trip, but far too short. We'd just gotten used to the sun and warmth when it was time to come back. We spent two days on the beach, one day at a small zoo and one day at Disney World. The rest of the time we played games and read and ran around the yard. M and I ran in the morning for the first part of the week, but Disney still wore us out.

Speaking of Disney, it had been a while since I was at one of their parks, but they still seem to know how to do this stuff well. There were a lot of new rides and attraction, but most of my favorites (space mountain, thunder mountain) were still the same. I was a bit disappointed by the upgrade to the Pirates ride. Of course, they needed to upgrade it to reference the movies, but that seemed to suck some of the cheesy fun out of it. The animatronics were much better on Captain Jack, and that made him seem even more out of place. On the other hand, the Jungle Cruise is desperately in need of an update. They seem to be using foreign students as guides now (ours was from South or Central America), and while that idea adds a nice touch of flavor, the bad puns (which are most of the fun) fall a bit flat when delivered by a non-native speaker. That, and the ride looks its age. In any case, both boys loved the experience, even though they were scared by some of the rides. It's not worth doing again soon (as it is a pretty pricey day) but I'm glad we made time for it.

The beach days were almost too good to be true. The weather was warm, but far from too hot. The beach was nice and sandy with a fairly long shallow area into the water. The boys could wade out about 15 yards and still be only about waist deep. They spent the first day splashing in the surf. For the second day, my brother-in-law bought them a couple of foam boogie boards and they took to them fairly quickly. The waves were a bit bigger and they are both fairly light, so they could really surf their way almost all the way onto the beach. The boards weren't quite heavy enough to work for adults, but that didn't keep a couple of us from trying it. We did have a few cases of water up the nose and scraped knees from grinding on the sand, but a good time was had by all.

It was also good to be surrounded by Americans for a while. I feel a bit recharged by it, but none of us was really ready to come back. I'm finding it difficult to keep an open mind toward the Dutch at the moment, but I suspect that will pass.

I wrote the paragraph above on the way to work, and I'm feeling more back in place now on the way home. I really do like my co-workers, and spending the day getting things done always helps my mood.

It's also not as though we didn't see plenty of problems in the US. The downturn is evident in the part of Florida we were in, and the car culture has become a real drag to me. Even my dad complained about not being able to walk or bike to anything. Of course, it would have been more expensive to rent a place closer to the center of town, but there weren't any alternatives available to driving.

Still, it's a shock to go from 80+ to 50- weather. My bones are warmer than when I left, but I hope spring comes soon. And with a bike ride ahead of me, I find myself reconsidering how I feel about driving.

I've been racing to the finish before our holiday. This week was a whirlwind of finishing up this and checking on that. We're now all ready to go with the car rented, the taxi reserved. We'll need to pack and drop off the pets, but otherwise, we're ready to go.

As far as work goes, I clearly have too much to do before we leave, but there's simply nothing to be done about that. I spent the day today trying to prioritize the things on my list and knocking down a significant number of them. The next three days will still be a push so that I can go away with a relatively clean conscience. As a further complication, I need to have my tax data in by the end of the week we get back. Bleh!

I find myself really needing this time off. The Christmas break wasn't enough time to really recharge my batteries and we haven't been away from here since the end of August. To be honest, I can really stand to hear some American accents for a while, and it will be great to see my family. A week in the sun won't hurt either.

Well, off to bed. I need to get to work early tomorrow if I'm going be able to leave work behind while I'm out.

We are all still sick to one extent or another. The Older has a touch of stomach bug, the Younger seems to have a fountain in his nose, M is just feeling generally sad and I seem to have something going on in my right sinus. We all function fine for the majority of the day, and I think we're on the downhill side, but there's a good chance we'll pass whatever each of us has to one of the others before we're through.

The boys haven't had a soccer game since their indoor game just after the New Year. The fields have either been too frozen (and thus dangerous to the boys) or too muddy (and thus dangerous to the field). It's gotten cold again. We half expected there to be skating on the canals again this weekend, but it wasn't to be. We have seen some snow today (didn't stick) and the last couple mornings, we've had to scrape windows before going anywhere with the car.

Yesterday, the boys had drama (since voetbal wasn't in the way). They've been enjoying the classes and there is a play they're putting on in March. We're all looking forward to it, but it probably means we'll miss a soccer game that day. Not much of a problem there, I think. I'm curious to see how they do. Most of what I've seen of their class so far has been motion or emotion games where they've had to run around like crazy until the music stopped, then stand very still or act as though they were happy or sad or mad. The have a lot of fun doing it, and I've seen some of the "drama" come home in the Younger's storytelling.

This morning, we worked as a family to tidy up the house. It was good to be working together toward a goal, and it only took us a couple of hours to make the place look pretty good. Later in the afternoon, we interviewed a house keeper. She's from Poland and has been living here for a while. I think she'll work out fine, especially since we're a bit lazy on our housekeeping. She also baby sits for one of the Older's good friends, so we may have more opportunities for dinners out to ourselves as well.

Not much else to tell. Today is the Super Bowl, but I'm not interested in either team (although I really dislike Pittsburgh...) and the game doesn't start until after midnight our time, so I won't be watching any of it or the commercials. I guess I can already see those on YouTube if I want anyway. I also need to get to bed relatively early tonight to help fight off whatever this thing I have is. Two weeks from the past Thursday, we'll be in the States visiting my family, and I'd like to be relatively healthy when we get there.