More Vacation Talk. If You Think You're Sick of It Now, Wait Until the End of the Week.

My word. Vacationing with boys is, um, yeh. Don't get me wrong. Vacationing with boys would probably be a lot of fun if they wouldn't be MY boys. You'd think John-Boy and Billy Bob have never been off the farm.

Let me start off by saying that I had grand plans of hanging about the room and leisurely getting ready for the day because it IS vacation, even if Micah was up at the plumbers crack of dawn. Someone forgot to shut the drapes last night. You can bet THAT won't happen again. I have my doubts if it'll help with the internal wake-up call that boy is programmed with, but I've got to make the effort.

So anyhoo, I was sitting around in my PJs watching Madagascar 2. (What, I forgot to tell you that we were checked into the room for all of 3 hours before we were forced to go to Wal-Mart to buy a DVD and a player for the boy? Yeh, we did. That would be a vacation fail.) Sam had gone down for breakfast and a shuttle to the school. (Poor guy. If it wouldn't be for him we wouldn't be here, and he's here for schooling. Life truly isn't fair.) He called to ask me to come down NOW because the shuttle was a bust and he was going to be late for his first day of class. Apparently when we were told that the shuttle service is available from 7 AM to 10 PM and that we didn't need to make a reservation for it but simply call 10 minutes in advance of leaving, they didn't really mean it. Instead they meant that their Tuesday driver doesn't show up until 8:30 and their backup driver runs late without warning and if you had time to wait around all day they'd eventually get you to where you needed to go but if you had somewhere to be first thing in the morning then you were hosed. Not being hotel shuttle savvy, we didn't know the secret language of the concierge.

So I hurriedly threw on some clothes and ran Sam to class sans make-up, with unbrushed hair. Thank goodness for that marvy new cut that looks just as great messed as it does styled.

Upon our return, we got ready for the day (because the boys were still in PJs) and went down for breakfast. We take our boys out for meals in restaurants. Really. But you'd never know it.

Luke was eating with his hands. In public. What is wrong with these kids?!

After I got through to him that we use silverware just like we do any other time that we eat, I caught him with a piece of ham speared on a fork, and he was leisurely nibbling around the edges. I am grateful that we waited until all the hotel guests were gone for the day before gracing the lobby with our presence because MY WORD the boys have no idea how to act in public.

And there were all the fun comments - very loudly, I might add - about how "this is how you place your napkin when you're done eating" and "if we were famous people we would have to sit like this and be quiet when we eat" and other such statements that gave the entire waitstaff the idea that our boys have never been in public before in their lives. I'm beginning to wonder if they have been.

My kids will be thrilled to know that I'm thinking of implementing a Formal Dinner Night once a week at home. We'll break out the good china (since it never gets used any other time) and drink from real glassware and not plastic, and they'll learn how to properly set the table and eat with their mouths closed and not burp. You know, how they act every time they are at a restaurant but not at a hotel. I wonder how long that will last before the fun wears off and the kids learn to hate their mother for making them mind their manners. I'm guessing five minutes into the first Formal Dinner Night.

I will give mad props to Micah for not stripping right there in the lobby when he discovered the pool off the patio. At least there's that.