indian summer vacation

The way Joe and I schedule our lives we end up planning most of our family vacations more than a year in advance, and around the Spring of 2011 we made plans to rent a cottage in Jamaica for summer vacation the following year. Well, turns out that despite my neurosis about planning things well ahead of time, you actually can make plans too far in advance, because it turns out we were a little busy this past July. Luckily, the rental place was very nice about allowing us to reschedule once we told them the reason, and so we took our family summer vacation and moved it to a week in the fall. To this week, as a matter of fact.

It actually doesn't take that long to fly from Atlanta to Jamaica, but we did have to take a car to a shuttle to a monorail to a plane to a van, so it ended up being a fairly grueling trip for the three kids. Luckily we now have no other plans for this week other than to hang around and let the kids beach and pool themselves stupid.  So you know.  Vacation.

We invited my parents to come along with us for the trip too, because it's nice for the kids to be able to spend time with them, and also (selfishly) it's nice to have another two sets of eyes around to make sure no one's playing with anything dangerous/inadvisable/flammable.  Here are each of them holding the only remaining grandchild who will agree to sit on their laps.  In the picture on the right, Nina, like Kuato, wants you to open your mind, Quaid.

(I should also note that my dad came into town one day early so that Joe could do a blepharoplasty on him, which is why his eyelids still look a little bruised.  He would also want you know to know, however, that he got this done only because his lids were drooping and obstructing his vision, and not for purely cosmetic reasons.  Now, I don't know nothin' about no oculoplastics, but I do know that doing a good blepharoplasty is sometimes a tricky and subtle business--particularly on Asian people--but even just three days post-op, I have to say that Joe did a really amazing job.  First off, my dad can see better, so already: success.  But as someone who has been looking at my dad for my entire life, I also have to say that even this soon postop, he also looks really good and natural and himself, which is important.  So good for him, and less good for, you know, Kenny Rogers.)

Anyway, so we're here.  Cal's having fun swimming, Mack's having fun bobbing, and Nina's having fun lying in a variety of shady spots and looking at the ceiling fan in the bedroom.

I suppose there might come a time where our travels might not so reliably involve going to the beach.  Just probably not anytime soon.

Vacation!