We Are Home (and the Natives are Back to Their Usual Antics)

I'm going to do an informative post with pictures about our trip to Costa Rica, in case anyone is heading to places we went-- but the trip was incredible and went very smoothly, despite our (generally) impulsive, impractical and incompetent children; today we are preparing for another vacation-- a trip to the Jersey shore with my extended family-- and so I was running some errands and on my way home-- just as I turned onto the far end of my road-- I saw two children sprinting awkwardly down the street, sprinting awkwardly because they were wearing pool slides, and then I noticed that they were my children and I asked what they were doing: why are you sprinting? why are you wearing pool slides? and they said that they got so wrapped up in their chores that they forgot about their barbershop appointments and now they were rushing there-- they both had 12:30 appointments and it was 12:36, but the barbershop is a good mile from our house so I grabbed them and gave them a ride and advised them next time to take their bikes, not rush out of the house in pool slides, or even better, keep tabs on the time, and then when I got home, I took in the situation and surmised that they weren't wrapped up with doing chores, they were wrapped up selling old toys on eBay . . . and so while I am proud of my children for not doing anything rash and stupid while navigating the jungles, hot springs and rugged coastline of Costa Rica, I have to recognize the fact that we are back in Jersey and they are returning to their native ways ( and so am I, as I totally forgot the overarching laundry rule, which is: do NOT do my wife's laundry . . . I threw it in, with good intentions, and shrunk some stuff and tie-dyed some other stuff . . . then the kids and I miscommunicated about a ride and they ran to the wrong person's house in the rain before figuring out the situation . . . we are definitely back home).