Decent re-entry, back to school grey zone, car + dog updates, etc.

Re-Entry:

We got home Sunday night around 8:30 p.m. before a full work week, which is obviously the IDEAL way to transition back from vacation to regular life.

Ha.

We have had a couple trips lately where we actually had an appropriate transition time factored in, and I will say, it was very nice. BUT, we only have a limited number of PTO days, and they just do not really stretch to cover all the time we want/need off for various trips and other things!

So sometimes (actually, often), we just bite the bullet and schedule our trips to start and/or end right up against work days. (Fully understand and respect that this does NOT work for many people and I totally get it! But for us, Ivan and I both usually agree that we prefer an extra vacation day vs. another day off just at home. I mean, yes, in my perfect ideal world, I’d always get another magic day off to regroup (it really is niiiiiice!!!), but I guess I don’t care about it enough to make my trip shorter than desired, either, if I’m tight on PTO. If that makes sense?)

For Florida, we had to factor in a lot of drive time, too! That added an extra night each way. Then we had 7 nights actually in PCB which = just 6 full days which in my opinion, kinda flies by! We all wished we could have had even a couple more days… What can I say, I am a greedy vacationer. lol. GIVE ME MORE.

Re-entry was way easier this time, anyway. What a difference it makes to not have “suffered” through long flights/ airport headaches and time zone changes!!!

We literally unpacked almost everything immediately, which also helped. I texted my parents at 9:05 p.m. “all unpacked and suitcase put away!!” which may be a personal record.

On quick turnarounds from vacation –> work, this does mean we often don’t really have groceries right away, but eh. We don’t really stress about that. Yes we could order them to be delivered or something, but we have literally never once had groceries delivered, ever, so it’s just not something we do. We are usually fine with just sort of scrounging for a couple days and grabbing some milk, bread, eggs and bananas from Kwik Trip and then eating some pantry or frozen staples for a little while. Or, we just pretend we’re still on vacation for another day or two and just go out for dinner or get takeout until someone has time to actually go to the store. It works! 🤷‍♀️

Back to School Part 1:

And now we’re in official back to school season, sort of.

I already mentioned the other day how the boys have different schedules, which is rather…. annoying. I don’t love the feeling of straddling summer/ fall. Like, okay, do we lean in to all the “back to school vibes” and routines and declare summer “over”, or should we stay in summer mode until Asher goes back after Labor Day and just kind of pretend that Ethan’s taking summer classes? haha.

Today Ethan has orientation for a couple of hours and his first real day is tomorrow! I can’t believe this will be our 2nd to last “1st day of school” for him. Next year at this time he will be a SENIOR!!! omg omg omg. 😭

Ethan’s car:

Oh, and quick car update!! We still don’t have it back, but apparently it is almost done getting fixed. The big thing they’re waiting on now is just for the new passenger seat to arrive. I think the rest is all done and fixed. However, it sounds like the guy is going to let Ivan pick it up so Ethan can drive it to/from school these next few days (I guess without a passenger seat?!?), and then when the seat arrives (should be soon- early next week I think), he’ll install that and then it will be done.

(Today Ethan is catching a ride with a friend but his friend plays football and has a different after school schedule so it doesn’t really work for Ethan to not have a car to get home…). We had to turn the rental in before we went to Florida and anyway, we were paying out of pocket for that at this point and it was really adding up, so we don’t want to get another rental if we can help it. Fingers crossed this all works out! I think Ivan has stopped to check on the car a couple times and it was coming along well.

Charlie report:

I had a couple people interested to know how Charlie did this time! As a reminder, we took him back to the same kennel-free boarding place as last time.

The positives:

It went overall well, I think. I got a few more updates from the owner this time while we were gone, including some pictures, so that was nice. She reported that he was doing great and had a little boarding buddy named Teddy that he played with constantly.

He ate better this time and seemed healthy/happy when I picked him up. He did still seem ZONKED and pretty exhausted, but he bounced back much more quickly this time. I picked him up Monday morning, and by Tuesday he seemed mostly all back to normal. (The first time he slept for DAYS and seemed like a different dog for almost a week!)

The negatives:

Holy crap, boarding is expensive. I mean- obviously he is worth it! But it just really adds up. We paid $600 for these days away, and another $550 in June, and we have another 9 nights away coming up in December… assuming we are away traveling for 3-4 weeks or more a year, we’re looking at easily another $2,000+/ year. I know it’s part of dog ownership, but jeesh. It’s a pretty significant (and sudden) addition to our travel budget we hadn’t really factored in….

I also noticed some more gunk in his eye again! If you recall, he got an eye infection in June after we boarded him and I took him to the vet for antibiotic drops. Well, I think he got another one!! ugh. I still have drops left so I’m going to just do another round, I guess.

One other thing- last night I had to drive back over there (when I went to pick him up Monday, I forgot that they charge a 3.2% credit card fee, so in order to save $20, I said I’d stop back with a check later). I brought Charlie with me in the car, just to go for a ride. Well, when we pulled up, he got visibly upset looking! If you have a dog, you know what I mean. Like he put his tail down and sort of froze, kind of like he used to do when we’d tell him it was time to go in his crate.

He looked very skittish and looked at me accusingly like, Are you serious right now?! I told him, Charlie, I’m not leaving you here! I’ll be right back. I just have to run in and drop this check off!

When I got back to the car, he sniffed me like crazy- he clearly recognized the scent- and still had his tail down and was concerned looking, very tentative. His body language seemed to tell me that he didn’t want to be there.

😦

This made me feel sad, because he definitely seemed to have some sort of negative association! (I mean, I’m not sure if it’s just that he thought he was going to get left there again? I feel like he probably does enjoy playing with the other dogs and being there and the reports had all said he was doing totally fine… I’m not really sure what dogs’ sense of time is like? 9 nights IS a long time to be away from us….Ugh, this whole dog boarding thing is so stressful!)

I’m wondering if maybe we should do some occasional or regular daycare days there, so that it becomes a more routine, normal place for him versus like, “ok, I know this place, every time I go there I don’t see them again for ages!”

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That’s all for now! Hope your week is going well. 🙂

Do you always build in a travel buffer day? (Lisa, don’t answer that. 😜)

Ever drive a car without a passenger seat in it??! 😬 (Is that legal?! Obviously there will be no one riding with him!)

Anyone have any other dog thoughts? I feel like the in-our-home dog sitter option seemed like kind of a dead end/ complicated/ even MORE expensive, though I’m sure that would be the most “ideal”...

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for being reunited with Charlie. I missed him!!