Again.

I haven't posted nearly all summer, and now it's fall.

It's been a hard and yet only somewhat eventful summer. I didn't take a real vacation until after school went back in session. Even that was a bit of a let down. Not that it wasn't fun and relaxing! Just not what we had originally planned....

Mrs MacDude and I had decided that we were tired of going to vacation spots during vacation times. If we decided to do something, then 10,000 other people have the same idea. We went to LegoLand and the San Diego Zoo during Spring Break; so did thousands of other people. In the past we've also spent the Sunday after Thanksgiving *crawling* up I-5 with thousands of other families.

Well, Mrs. MacDude and I decided after that trip that we were going to pull one over on the throngs of tourists that follow us around. We were not going to take a summer vacation!

Instead, the plan was to wait until mid-September when the tourists were back in school and back at work. Then, take the kids out of school for a week and find someplace warm near water to sit down.

A plan was hatched. We would go down to Mexico. Cabo san Lucas, Yucatan. someplace with warmth and sand and water. (Cruises are out, Mrs. MacDude doesn't want to be trapped on a boat.)

Then a few weeks later, I decided to surprise her, and the boys, and make it even better.

You see, our wedding anniversary is in July. And it just so happens that this year would be our tenth anniversary. We still reminisce about the wonderful honeymoon we had in Maui. We had stayed in a timeshare condo on the Kaanapali shore. It was wonderful, relaxing and we've talked about taking the boys back there on and off for years. what if I surprised her and instead of booking a week in Mexico, I booked a week back in Kaanapali? Yay!

Then I investigated it. I used my formidable search skill to scour the internet. I found the same condos, I found the ones next door. I consulted with travel agents.

Six Thousand dollars? Just for airfare, a two room suite and a car? Yike!

So instead of surprising her, I figured that I couldn't spend that kind of money unilaterally. I took my findings to her. She said that it was very sweet, but she agreed that it was too expensive.

So we shelved it. Not like "Dump" and forget, but I tried to find a couple of other ways to cut it down and then slowly gave up.

Unfortunately, we didn't make Mexico plans either.

So, at the last minute (okay, planned 10 or so days before) we rented a car and drove down to Carlsbad and spent a week. 8 hours of driving there, six days of sitting by a pool or playing on the beach and eating out. 8 hours of driving back. No LegoLand, No SeaWorld, No Zoo. Nothing but relaxing.

It was nice.

But it wasn't Kaanapali.