My husband and I just returned from an exhausting trip, part leisure-part business to Florida. We left the crew home with grandparents because of the time crunch factor. I left no lesson plans nor any outside schoolwork for them. My mother-in-law (a former fifth grade teacher) had free reign over their time. She took them to the library, played games with them, and read books. I chalked these days up to free play and important family time. Of course, mommy is now back, so academics will begin again, tomorrow.
This trip was not restful for us. We went down to the Orlando area with an agenda of potentially investing, so we were in fast-track mode with only having a few days to spend. It went something like this:

Monday-sat in the airport for 9 hours until we finally got on a flight (flying space-A), arrived to hotel around midnight after getting very little sleep the night before.
Tuesday/Wednesday-drove around to various locations looking at properties with our realtor. Let me just add that our realtor is quite an act. I think I laughed more at her than anything else on the trip. Our first encounter with her was when we picked her up on the side of the interstate because her Jaguar had broken down. Realtors always crack me up at what they say. In the midst of our madness, back home my father-in-law had to go to the emergency room for what turned out to be a kidney stone, and my girlfriend had to watch the kids until midnight-never a dull moment. Sadly, we didn’t get to enjoy the typical attractions of Disney and Universal. I’m a sucker for that stuff. We visited Downtown Disney one evening, but that was it. We did have the pleasure of meeting another realtor visiting from Toronto. I quizzed him on the Canadian universities while at dinner. He compared their top universities to our Ivy schools saying their schools are just as good but are less in price. I’ll be calling him for a place to stay when we take the kids to visit Niagra Falls.
Thursday-we were scheduled to fly out, but that didn’t go so smoothly. We waited around for what seemed like forever for flights to go. I actually did Pilates in the corner of the airport to kill the time. All flights out of Tampa and Orlando were cancelled because of weather, so we rented a car and drove 18 hours to get home! I tried to hire the Enterprise employee to drive us home, but he didn’t take me up on my offer. We only stopped for food and restroom breaks.
So again, not what you’d consider a relaxing trip to Florida, but you just have to roll with the punches. I think I’m actually looking forward to diagramming sentences right about now..