Week of Vacation

It's been a week of "vacation" for us, though maybe not all of it as relaxing as other parts.

A week ago (Friday), Jesse picked up Jer for a week of vacation time. Friday evening, Jesse and Jer trimmed our hedges--which were VERY much in need of trimming. I'd borrowed the bush trimmer from our neighbor Miss K and we needed to get it back to her before we left town.

Saturday was the first clogging competition for the Orange County Cloggers to host and the first ever for BRTC to participate. We did quite well, especially if you ignore the fact that we were the only team in our age division. The team's age division is determined by averaging the ages of all the dancers in the routine. Most of the teams there were solidly teenaged and younger with maybe a couple 20-somethings dancing as leaders in the group. On Thursday at the rodeo, there had been talk of Jesse participating in a round of Cowboy Poker on Saturday at the rodeo. But by the time we headed home from the competition, it was too late for that and I was ready to head straight home and finish packing.

Sunday morning, we headed to church with the car packed for our trip to PA. After church, we grabbed lunch, made a couple of other quick stops, picked up a dog and headed north. Our first stop north of Pittsburgh was to say "hi" to Jesse's sister Margaret at work. We met the entire family--Linda, Ray, Margaret, Katie, Ryan, Christy (minus Dave--We missed you!)--at a mexican restaurant. Margaret was able to get off work a few minutes early so we wouldn't have to wait so late for supper. It was SO good to catch up with everyone!

It was the first time I had been up to Jesse's home since we got married. He'd made two previous trips, but I hadn't been able to join him for either of those.

Sunday evening, we all stayed at the house, so we got to visit more that evening and the next morning. Katie, Ryan, and Christy had to head back home on Monday afternoon. Ryan had injured his ankle some time back and had been unable to work. Just a couple days before, his doctor had released him for "light duty," but his employer didn't have any work for him that qualified as light duty. They were still figuring out their options following that news. They had also recently signed a contract with an agency to represent Christy for possible ad work. We'll see where that goes. Maybe someday, I'll be an aunt to someone famous. :-)

Monday through Thursday involved a lot of sleeping in, relaxing, helping with the family business, visiting, and having fun with Jer.

Jer and I spent one afternoon learning how to play Uno. He had found a game of Attack Uno in the game closet and wanted to play. So we played several games. The first round we didn't use the attack machine and we mostly just concentrated on matching colors or numbers and saying "Uno" when he got down to one card (he won!). With each successive round (and using the attack machine), we talked about some of the different special cards. Of course, his favorite part was hitting the attack button and having the cards spray out at him. Then he had to spread the cards out all over the floor to be able to see them, since he had so many. For the last round, he was starting to complain about never winning. So, we talked about the goal of the game being to get rid of all the cards and I insisted he only push the attack button when he was required to. That round he only had one card left when I finally went out. He would still need some tolerate co-players to play much, but he is definitely understanding most of the concepts!

I was especially pleased that Margaret was able to take off a couple days and spend time with us while we were there! I'm still far from fluent in my signing, but I'm picking up more of conversations and can even contribute a bit of my own. While Margaret has always been Jer's favorite aunt, I think this was one of the first visit's that he really had to try to understand that Margaret is deaf. Previously, there relationship was largely physical teasing and rough housing type activities. This time, Jer was trying to carry on more conversations with Margaret--ask her to play games with him, etc. We kept having to remind him that she was deaf and that she wouldn't hear or understand his requests unless she was looking at him. It was very cute when he wanted her to go outside with him to listen to the evening noises. When we reminded him that she was deaf, he mimed his request to her--please, go-outside, listen?

Other highlights of the week:
Monday was our 7-month anniversary. Ok, we didn't do anything really out of the ordinary, but I always enjoy having a reason to remind him that I'm glad I married him! :)

Wednesday, Jesse had a chance to meet with his sensei and another karate student to have a workout, even though there was none scheduled for the week. After the workout, we made a stop by Grove City College where he attended college. We got to walk around the campus and see in a few of the buildings. The library was closed (shorter summer hours) by the time we visited campus.

Thursday, we headed back to Virginia. We stopped at clogging on our way home. We got to hear a bit more about the results of the clogging competition. Jesse also heard a rumor that he'd been assigned some new responsibilities at work while he was gone. He made sure to head to work on Friday morning to find out more about that!

In his heading to work before I did Friday morning, I forgot to pick up my keys from his car, so I was left stranded at home for the day. I've been relaxing, working on unpacking, checking work e-mail, and reading a couple books--one fun and one for work.

We've got another weekend ahead of us! Life is grand!