Why do vacations pass so quickly?

Have you ever noticed that "time flies when you are having fun"? It really does. We recently took our boys to Boston to visit my brother and his awesome family. His kids are the same ages as my boys, so they have a blast together. While we were there, it was the 5th anniversary of our niece Lily's, "Gotcha Day". She was adopted from China. That certainly made me think. What will our family be like in five years? Will it seem like our little girl was always a part of our family? I am just so ready to welcome her home.

Anyway, back to time flying. We took the kids in to the city for a trip to the Aquarium. Apparently approximately a billion other people had this thought as well. The fish must have been looking out of their tanks wondering, "Hmmm, why are all those humans packed in, body to body, staring at us? At least we can swim around and not smash into each other." But we had fun and wandered the city a bit. On Friday we headed in for a Red Sox game. My 7 year old is a HUGE sports fan, so this was definitely the highlight of his trip. My brother bought amazing seats and we had a wonderful evening. It was so great that Lily's barfing in the limo on the ride home barely put a dent in the experience (ok, maybe more so for Jess, who had Lily in her lap when it happened!) What is up with kids and hair-trigger vomiting anyway? They seem to have no ability to offer warning. How many times have I heard, "Mom, I don't feel good" - only to have the statement punctuated by projectile vomit. But I digress...

While we were in Boston my brother and his lovely wife gave us a Flip Mino video recorder. The thing is so cool! It is smaller than my cell phone, but takes an hour's worth of video, only to - in true inspector gadget fashion - plug directly into the computer for downloading. Wicked Awesome. (That one is for my brother - we had a very funny discussion of random Mass. dialect idiosyncracies and bizarre sayings. I wonder if they guy who invented "Can of Corn" to describe an easy catch (or whatever simple, non-thought producing action) really thought it would stick. It makes me want to come up with something utterly ridiculous and try to get folks to start saying it. hmmm, I will have to start thinking about that one.

And finally, why is it that the reality comes crashing down on us whenever we return from a vacation? Did I know that our dishwasher was broken before I left? Yes, but I didn't have to deal with it because we were going out of town! Now, loading my dishes is like playing Plinko with Bob Barker. The door won't go down all the way so I have to essentially roll the dishes in. We have one working phone in the house. AT & T can't seem to figure out why none of the other jacks work. At one point, we had three different phone lines. Now, we just want one line coming in, yet it is apparently completely confusing the phone company. Really?

Oh, I could go on and on. But, alas, young Reilly is begging me to play wiffle ball. Definitely the better use of my time.