Staycation

I’ve come to the conclusion that we just don’t know how to take a vacation. Anyone that knows Dave and myself would laugh at the thought of calling us “A-type” personalities (ok, well maybe Dave anyway), but when it comes to taking a vacation the work just seems to follow us. This past spring we went home to Canada to get Cole’s orthotics replaced and to have a vacation, but we felt we needed to combine work with the holiday because we couldn’t afford to use all of our vacation time for the year (Dave had had a doctor tell him when we were home for a year that missionaries are under much higher stress than then realize and that they need to take vacations on a regular basis), but we needed the time to get the orthotics made. Needless to say, it turned into more work than vacation, much to the chagrin of everyone involved.

This past week we succeeded at doing it again. The boys were off school and we were going to take “some time off” while they were home for a “staycation” (a stay at home vacation, I just learned this term from the internet recently). But that was not to be… We were able to take a slightly slower pace (because we didn’t have to drive the boys back and forth to school across town), but it seems like we did as much work as we normally would in a week if not more, due to many circumstances beyond our control (i.e. a Nigerien friend had emergency surgery, etc.)

I think that the solution is that we need to get away from Niamey in order to have a vacation, the problem is that there are no restful places that are nearby and inexpensive. If you have any suggestions, let me know!