The family vacation thing worked really well. The worst day was one we spent gift-shopping, which would have been miserable had the weather not been delightful and had South Beach not been full of people shopping with their itty-bitty dogs. People-watching is good, People-with-dogs-watching is great. The best day was visiting the Everglades, which was full of birds and alligators. In between, there was a lot of sitting on the beach and walking along the boardwalk. We managed to skirt all the weather-related travel problems on both ends of the trip, luckily.
Back at home, we have not settled much. Victoria doesn't want to resume school when her neighborhood friends are on vacation. Brian has been home every day--I don't know why this is disruptive, as he stays out of my way for the most part, but I never get very much done in the house when he's here. I do have a tutoring session and art class scheduled for Wednesday, but the rest of the week will probably be filled with nothing. I've been spending a lot of time filling my iPod. My fake one finally gave out--it was a Creative Zen Nomad, it lasted for six years. I've been ripping a lot of CDs, but they are in awful shape and I have to listen to each song to see if it's ok before transferring. That takes a lot of time. It's maddening, too, since so many of them are unusable. Take care of your stuff!