To sleep or not to sleep...

I find it a little challenging to sleep these days...the first few days when I have to return from my relaxing vacation of traveling, sleeping, and fun back to my real world of teaching five days a week. Although I do have to say that when Samantha entered the room this morning, looked at the board for the Morning Work, and came over to me a little disappointed to say: "I was REALLY looking forward to writing in my journal this morning!" ...I just about fell out of my seat because I had actually thought I would give the kids a break from their journal writing on their first day back to school. How interesting and cool to hear on the first day back from Spring Break that one of my students was LOOKING FORWARD to composing a story in her writing journal!

I spent the past 9 days or so traveling from Durham to Boston and from Boston to Florida, just returning to Durham two days ago. (I am listening to my computer make the loudest racket and wondering when it is going to completely fail me...since I can't afford to get a new one quite yet.) Despite the bitterly cold, rainy weather in Boston on Saturday, I had a lovely time getting to be in another big city with wonderful friends. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from that leg of my trip since Saturday was rainy and spent traversing a history museum and much of Sunday was spent relaxing, watching movies, and napping (not a bad vacation, right?).

I do have some pictures to commemorate the five or so days that I spent with my dad in Florida laying by the pool, eating great food, enjoying the hot sun (without humidity), eating ice cream, spending all day on a boat, bike riding, and sleeping in until well past 10am. I watched enough TV to become familiar with the latest shows and repeatedly view the same commercials...I can't say I'm proud of that, but it does make me appreciate the fact that I don't come home and space out in front of the TV every night, which apparently I could easily do, if given the opportunity.



A palm tree at the pool...



Out to dinner in the Venice look-alike area...






You know I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take pictures of wonderful, fluffy clouds!! (Especially when you can play the: What animal, object, etc. do you see in the clouds?)






Observing the wildlife before taking our airboat ride through the Everglades...










The beautiful and intricate mangrove trees that we drove through on our wild, rollercoaster airboat ride...



My dad and I standing outside his work...



They had all these great old cars outside the entrance for some race event going on at the country club, and I couldn't resist taking pictures of these marvelous pieces of art from the past... (I secretly LOVE old cars.)



I'll take this one please! ;)