Family vacation - so did it get better?

Sorry to leave everyone hanging. It's been a busy time, and while my plan was to update the blog every couple of days while we were on vacation, that just didn't work out. Two reasons: sometimes we were out of wifi range (e.g. camping) and when we were in a hotel, we just all crashed asleep at the same time (except for one night when I had to write a report for work and I worked in the dark but I still think the glow of the laptop screen kept the kids awake...)

You may, at this point, be asking why bring a laptop on vacation?

To which I reply, doesn't everyone?

But seriously - I knew I had to write this work report and I ran out of time to do it before leaving. Also, we didn't exactly book accommodations ahead of time (because we were so weather dependent) so it was just easier to hotwire and such as we went. Not the way I usually like to travel, but hey - I'm becoming more flexible with old age.

So did the holiday get better? From a car point of view, yes. It didn't explode, so that was good. Also, we're amazed at how much we saw on basically one tank of gas. Our little Echo  might be slowly dying, but it still gets good mileage!

From a family point of view, well it was status quo. The kids fought daily - maybe even hourly on some days. I didn't sleep well on any night, which added to the stress and exacerbated my natural uptightness. Not a good thing. Some activities (La Ronde and Valcartier water park) were definite winners. Some activities (wandering Old Quebec City and touring La Cite d'Energie in Shawinigan) were less so. (Excusez-moi d'avoir manque des accents... I can do them in Word, but my keyboard shortcuts don't seem to work so well here on Blogger...)

One thing I will say - the Best Western in Quebec City has the worst hotel restaurant I've ever been to - and that's saying a lot. In some ways, serves us right for being lazy and wanting to stay in the hotel for dinner, but it was over-priced bland food with extremely slow service, considering we were nearly the only people in the restaurant.

The other thing is I really wish my kids were more adventurous eaters so we could go to restaurants that serve more worldly cuisine. Kid #1 will eat basic North American fare - hamburgers, steaks, chicken, etc, but nothing international except for plain pasta. Kid#2 will eat cheese omelette, grilled cheese sandwich, plain cheese pizza, plain pasta and, occasionally, chicken fingers. Honestly, I have listed all of the main courses that restaurants serve that he will eat. And usually restaurants don't serve cheese omelettes. Just one of these days, I'd like to be able to go to a Greek or Chinese restaurant with my kids and have them not complain. I'm thinking maybe by 2032. Maybe...

We got home on the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend, as I was coming down with a brutal head cold. I'm so glad we gave ourselves Monday with nothing to do (except consume copious quantities of cold-fighting medicine and vitamins for me) because we needed the break from our vacation! Does anyone else ever have that?

And now we're back at school. It's been four days, the kids have good teachers, and so far so good! Fingers crossed that the next 10 months work out so well!