I get an almost ridiculous amount of vacation time. I joke with my husband that he gets paid in actual money and I get paid in vacation time. Our fiscal year runs from July-June, and I long ago accumulated as much as I’m allowed to carry over each year, which means unless I want to lose any time (I don’t) I usually wind up with a bunch of time to take in the last few months of our year. I decided to use up some of that time by taking a week long staycation over this past week.

My original plan was to sit at home and catch up on my reading. I pretty much failed at that goal, but I did lots of other enjoyable stuff instead. I’m not entirely sure what I did with my Monday other than get my car washed. I must have done some reading as well. Most of the rest of the week was spent catching up with friends and their kids over lunches.

Tuesday I went down to meet up with my friend Kristen. I got to visit with her 1 year old daughter for a little bit and give her her birthday present. It was books of course. She apparently loves books though, so it was a good choice. Kristen and I got to enjoy a nice lunch together and catch up. After I got home I cooked up a chicken pot pie to take over to friends who just had a baby. I took that over to them and got to meet their little peanut. He’s a cutie. I got to snuggle with him while he was sleeping. It’s amazing how tiny a newborn is compared to a one year old.

Wednesday my friend Tracie and her 15 month old daughter came to meet me for lunch. My cats weren’t quite sure what to make of the creature crawling around on our floor. She’s adorable, and it cracks me up that her sign for cats is shaking a finger at them as if to say no because her cat is kind of mean and she associates bad kitty and shaking her finger at all kitties. So she kept shaking her finger at my cats too. So cute.

Thursday was my day of pampering. I got my hair cut in the morning and then got a massage in the afternoon. Paul and I had date night last night and went out to dinner at Birroteca. They were a little off their game last night for some reason. Both of our pizzas seemed overcooked, so it wasn’t as good as normal. Oh well.

Today I got to have lunch at my friend Sarah’s house. She saw on Facebook that I had taken a staycation and invited me up to check out the new house they just moved in to. I hadn’t seen her recently so it was great to hang out with her and her 2 and 1/2 year old son this afternoon. It had been even longer since I had seen him, so it was fun to see how much he’s grown since then. I remember him as a little newborn and now he’s a little man and quite the chatter box. Hanging around little kids reminds me of all my bad language habits. Not that I’m cursing or anything, but today I got corrected by him and told we don’t say yeah we say yes. It reminds me of how often my eldest niece scolds me for staying the word stupid. Oops. He also had me read him a ton of books. My friends are obviously raising their kids right since they all seem to love books.

Tonight I’m ending out my vacation by seeing the Veronica Mars movie. My thoughts on that will get a separate post tomorrow. Stay tuned.

All in all it was a good week off. It went by too fast though. Work weeks never by as quickly.