Alright... so I can officially say that I have become a more well-rounded person over this past week.... in more ways than one. First of all, I entered an airport for the first time in my life, checked baggage for the first time in my life, flew on a commercial flight for the first time in my life, traveled internationally for the first time in my life, ate tons of fancy and exotic foods for the first time in my life, and celebrated my anniversary by staying at a posh hotel and resort for the first time in my life. It was absolutely fabulous! I have never been treated so well in all my life, and indeed, it was difficult to come back from being greeted by "Senora Guillen" and having my every wish attended to, to being called, "Hey! Mom!! Will you please tell so-and-so to stop aggravating me?!" and having to be the chauffeur, cook, maid, referee, and so on again. It was nearly all I could do to put my busy family life on hold long enough to escape for four nights and five days. I had a dermatologist appointment for one of the Quads (the four middle children who are around the same ages), and a dentist appointment to get spacers (for braces) for the teenager the DAY BEFORE we left, and then a surgery for one of the Quads six hours after our flight got back into Texas, and two dentist appointments the day after that (one to get actual braces on the teenager, and one cleaning for the youngest who has a serious dental-phobia issue) with the birth of my new nephew thrown in between there somewhere (I've since forgotten the exact order of things in the blur of running on six hours of sleep in the past 72 hours). But, all in all, I have to say that I appreciate the busyness of life as a mother of eight, because it made me appreciate the blissfully relaxing break of those five glorious days in Cancun that much more. I saw people at the resort lounging around looking bored and blank, and they always seemed to look at me as though I was an alien when I would laugh and exclaim over every new thing that I saw (and I saw a lot of those!) At first I felt self-conscious of my naivety, but then I realized that my life is already going by WAY too fast to waste time trying act like a classy, experienced person; that would take too much energy. Instead I decided that those bored, blank, lost people were the ones to be pitied, because they had apparently already forgotten that you should never do things for "fun" that you no longer consider fun, no matter how many other people are "doing it". And I decided that on my vacation, I was going to speak my broken Spanish, no matter how many laughs it might get, I was going to laugh like I had never had so much fun before, and I was going to walk around wide-eyed and full of childish glee and savor every sight, sound, and event that I could. It turned out to be the best thing I could have done, because in freeing myself to be naive and silly, I charmed my husband and everyone around me. Everyone told us that we looked like Honeymooners, because we looked so happy and in love. My husband looked at me with that same fascination that he used to look at me with when he saw me truly delighting in something. I made him feel as though he was still just as capable of impressing me and making me happy as he was 10 years ago. Indeed, he is; but unfortunately, I rarely ever reserve the energy to let him know that. This vacation, and coming back from this vacation, has been one of the best time periods of my married life. Today, in the midst of my migraine from lack of sleep, irritability from the stress of all the dental and surgical "patients" in my house that I now have to manage on top of everything else, and me still running around un-showered and in my pajamas, my husband greeted me with a smile and a vase of my favorite flowers (Star-gazer and Tiger Lillies) when he got home from work, then encouraged me to rest for awhile in bed, and then he got up and made dinner for the family. I am truly blessed beyond measure.