Last day of vacation - mixed feelings.

I think mostly I'm ready to go home. Jake & the kids decided that they wanted to see the Earthquakes play (Major League Soccer) so we are now in Santa Clara. Tate & I are at the hotel & the rest of the group are at Buck Shaw Stadium. I'm sure it's totally fun but I wasn't prepared to be that cold & Tate would have just been a grump anyway. He's happy vegging out in front of the tv. We will be off for home in the morning & a couple of hours in the car is a much easier thing to stomach than the whole drive in one day. The car is FULL. Overflowing full. Tanner's been keeping home ready for us & it'll be nice to see Tanner & the laundry room & my pillow. Not that vacation wasn't awesome, it really was.

We picked up Chase and Matt from EFY today. They've spent since Monday with a large group of LDS kids on the UC Santa Barbara campus. Both of them have raved about it since we picked them up. They liked their groups, had tons of fun, met a lot of girls (less important are the guys they met) and also had some spiritual moments. I'm so glad that family helped us to be able to send Chase & that he got to go with his favorite cousin. Not far behind in what I'm glad for is that we got to spend the week in Santa Barbara, too. I mean, seriously, what's not to love about that?

We had some craziness. Losing wetsuits out of the pod while driving. Changing hotels unexpectedly. Tate had a splinter incident. The splinter incident was today. I was in the car & the kids had walked down the pier. First, Jake comes and reports that Kaleb is missing and he goes off on the search. Seconds after finding Kaleb, Chloe calls me and says that Tate had gotten a splinter, saw blood and seemed like he was going to pass out. Great big sister that she is, she reported the incident and carried the little guy back to the car (Jake met the part way out). Of course, all color had drained out of his face & he was in a cold sweat. I put a bandage over the splinter since we didn't want a full-scale pass out/seizure looking thing on the boardwalk in SB. Never a dull moment, right?

Travelling with Jake lends itself to me having to let go a little. He likes to see where the day or road takes us rather than make a plan ahead of time. Today we were going to take Matt and Chase to the beach & spend the day there then drive part of the way home. Instead we did a small amount of SB sightseeing/shopping & then hit the road. Partially with the idea that we would stop farther north at the beach. Until he got the idea that we could take 101 home and hit the Earthquakes game on the way home. Way in that sentence should have finger quotes. Or real quotes.

It's ok because after tomorrow morning, we have to go back to real life. Back to bill paying, school doing, kid driving, dinner cooking, soccer game watching, church attending, house cleaning real life. For a whole week we've gotten to have vacation life & it's been a blessing.