Scenes from our annual fantasy football draft, an adventure in strategy and luck!

We arrived back to Portland at 9:30pm Saturday night and all of our checked-in luggage arrived as well.  Normally we would have gone straight home, but Lisa was to fly out early Sunday morning to Spokane to visit with family, so we stayed overnight at the Sheraton Portland Airport.  We got pretty lucky to find this hotel and use our points with it, because all area airport hotels were fully booked due to a number of Hood to Coast participants staying overnight.  We used 7,000 of our Starwood points, which was just 1/5 of the sign-up bonus were received when we got the American Express SPG card.  We called the hotel shuttle and they picked us up in a jiff; by 10:15pm we were nicely settled into our room watching HGTV and getting ready for sleep.

Lisa was up early at 4am and got her flight to Spokane.  With late checkout offered to SPG members, I was able to stay at the hotel to rest and relax and catch up on emails and what not up until 4:00pm.  My mom picked me up shortly thereafter, and I visited with her and my brother and sister-in-law before going to pick up Lisa at 9:30pm.  And then finally it was back home…. but for poor Lisa, her school year started the very next day so she had no time to really decompress from all of our traveling!

Alas, we are back home and back to the routine of doing laundry, dirty dishes and going to work.  We had a great summer full of adventures and a little bit of work too, and we are so grateful that we have the opportunity to be together and travel together during our school furloughs.  We get to practice retirement every summer, and it doesn’t get old at all.  Yep, school has started and we are now back to work, which only means that now it is time to start planning our travels for the next summer!

I love the lazy, dog days of summer.  At this time last week, I was celebrating the end of my week of Bike Camp, and I could finally do what I do best — not work!  Here is what I have spent my last week doing…

• Family reunion with so many family members young and old.  Of course, plenty of Filipino food and entertainment — our culture’s DNA is to dance and sing and perform.  We had a great time, the only disappointment is that we didn’t get the memo that a big Motocross race was also happening in the same area, which resulted in the main road being clogged with 20,000 spectators.  Instead of a 45-minute drive to the reunion camp facility, we were stuck for over two hours
• Watched a bunch of movies and ate a lot of popcorn.  Saw Ghostbusters, Central Intelligence, Tarzan and Lights Out
• Enjoyed the Washington County Fair, checking out exhibits on animals, 4-H, hobbies, carnival rides and more
• Last Thursday on Alberta Street, including a stop for some of that famous Salt and Straw ice cream
• Collected passport stamps from various McMenamins locations
• Went to one of those home shows where you get to walk around a brand new house and imagine the possibilities of upgrading your own home
• Ate out a lot — nachos, pizza, tater tots, ice cream, corn dogs — sheesh, that is not a very healthy diet!
• Planned for more vacations, including mapping out a road trip plan for our final vacation that begins next week.

This past week has gone by so fast, and I am just so thankful that Lisa and I can afford to not work during the summer to enjoy this time together.  We make sacrifices during the year and try to budget as much as we can so that we have enough to play and rest before our school duties call us back in late August.  Which is less than four weeks away, what??!!!

At long last the week is over.  TGIF!  I made it.  I survived.  I survived a week with 9 – 12 year old kids as an instructor for bicycle camp.  We had a few crashes, some tears, some scrapes — even a bee sting.  But no one was seriously hurt and all my campers stayed as safe as they could with the occasional “Stop riding in the middle of the street, stay to the right!” reminder from me or my co-instructor.  Whew.  That was tough.  But not as tough as teachers that do this for ten months out of the year.  Mad props and respect to them.  How can they do this?!  I am completely wiped.  Happy to finally just vege out on the couch and breathe a big sigh of relief.  Yes.  Now my vacation can really begin!

After a very long day traveling back to Portland, Lisa and I were home for 12 hours (6 of those for sleeping) to do some laundry, catch up on mail and addressing other little house things.  And then we were back on the road, driving south to Eugene for a concert and fighting through the typical traffic slog.  We stayed two nights at the Holiday Inn using our IHG points to take advantage of their Point Breaks Rewards — we were able to book each night for only 5,000 points.  The rooms are normally 25,000 points per night, so this was an incredible value for a short vacation from our vacation.  Alas, we returned home and I went back to work early Monday morning and back to the routine – at least for a couple of weeks before our next trip!