I'm back from vacation, and traveling with children.

Traveling with young children...that should be enough to make anyone shudder in sheer horror. Did you know that a 3 year old child has the ability to turn around a 737? Much to my embarrassment and horror, 2 parents, 1 grandmother, and 3 flight attendants are apparently not enough to strap a 3 year old into a seatbelt if she doesn't want to go in one. So, they turned around the plane, and headed back to the gate. Presumably to kick us off the plane. Just before we got back, the adrenaline required to fight off six adults must of wore off. She passed out cold, we buckled her in and off we go. I didn't dare look at anyone else on the plane. Yeesh.

Cape Breton island was awesome! We headed up the cabot trail to a cottage in Ingonish, which is a little village situated in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. We found a little deserted lake in the park, surrounded by mountains. There was rarely anyone else there, so it was like having our very own private lake. The kids really enjoyed collecting rocks and shells along the ocean beaches, and we gorged ourselves on fresh scallops.

Sometimes, you can find beads in the most unlikely places. One rainy day, while driving around the cabot trail, we discovered a neat glass shop. The owner was lovely, and she carried tons of stained, fused, and blown glass. She also had a surprisingly large selection of lampwork beads. If you're ever up in Wreck Cove, be sure to check it out!

The trip home was a breeze, armed with a bag of bribes for Isla, she was a dream child :-) All in all, it was one of the best vacations I've ever taken!

Of course, something always has to go very wrong. Upon checking my home phone messages, we discovered a message from the landlord of our other office. The other office space is used primarily by my husband for software development. It turns out, there was a fire, or overheating in the ceiling which caused the sprinkler system to go off. The water damage is very extensive. Almost everything in the office was completely destroyed. We now have the fun job of spending hours on the phone with the insurance companies, and replacing all of my husbands office stuff. Sigh.


I do get a little diversion from all of this tonight though. A bunch of lampworkers are getting together tonight for our regular lampworkers dinner. It'll be nice to talk beads again! :-)