Caleb & I officially took our longest vacation ever the past 2 weeks. We were gone for 12 days straight! And while we were having serious doubts about leaving... pregnancy, mid-bar renovation, puppy, no easy contact with the U.S., holiday season, severe flooding at our destination... we decided to say a little prayer & pursue the Thai adventure we had been planning for over a year. While the details of the trip will be saved for a later post, the thing I am most grateful for today is the fact that we returned to the States to be surprised by a restaurant & a home that were completely under control.... actually, even better than when we left. Now I hate to sound like a cynic but this is the first vacation we have taken that perpetuated this way. Our pup did not get arrested because he got loose in a kiddie playground & accidentally bit a toddler. None of our staff members got arrested. We didn't get an angry email about how horrible our restaurant service has become. The house was not partied in & trashed. There wasn't a 2 weeks notice on my desk that was dated the day we left. There was not a urine soaked mattress that had been fermenting all week resulting in a trip to the dumpster. And there wasn't a menagerie of Post-its on my desk requesting things like... more Post-its. No, in fact, it was quite the opposite. The dogs were happy & well fed. The restaurant had little to report out of the ordinary other than a regular customer had the "best meal of her life" one evening. And the major construction project that we left in the middle of was completed on time & even better than we had hoped! One minute we were stressing over paint colors & layout & how dumb it was that we were abandoning everything for 2 weeks.... And the next minute we return home to this....
...a new dining room & a bar in sweet motion. For the first time it not only felt good to leave but it also felt good to come home.
