back on island

We arrived back on island late Saturday afternoon, after two days of airplane travel. We can travel in one very long day, but choose to spend the night in Atlanta for our sanity; we get a couple of good meals and some sleep. Traveling with smaller kids on a redeye flight never sounds good - and never sounds comfortable for adults either. With travel over long distances there is the added issues of good food, enough water, sleep, entertainment and time zone adjustments and some of us do well at making the changes than others. So the days following our arrival are always days I care not to remember from a parenting standpoint. We try but it is just plain hard. Our objectives are always to get the kids some sleep and some solid meals and let the rest fall to the wayside. But here we are, rested, fed, on the new time zone and we've had some productive days. C started school right away and is happy to be back with friends and in the structured environment. The girls and I had a few more days together with activities around the house and errands out and about; filling the fridge and pantry, clearing out the old and bringing in the new, reorganizing - and making birthday preps for the soon-to-be five year old. Personally, I prefer hiding out in the AC most of the day but have found the water to be a very comfortable place to be right now - especially in the evenings when the sun is behind the hill next to our beach. I am a bit self-concious about being out in a bikini with this huge belly but I don't have much of a choice if I want to be in the water. So in I go, avoiding eye contact with other bathers at the beach.