Vacation commences...

Hey, I just realized yesterday was Friday the 13th and we made it through unscathed, as did everybody else we know. There is actually a condition called Paraskevidekatriaphobia, which is the fear of Friday the 13th, for those of you who never studied Greek. I was listening to the radio and heard that some Dutch insurance researchers had found that statistically, Friday the 13th was actually safer and had fewer traffic accidents than other Fridays. On the other hand, British researchers in 1993 found that "while consistently fewer people chose to drive their cars on Friday the 13th, the number of hospital admissions due to vehicular accidents was significantly higher than on "normal" Fridays". I guess it depends which country you live in? ...Or perhaps the bad luck on Friday the 13th has nothing to do with traffic accidents.
Today we officially started our summer vacation. V's parents arrived and we went to the airport to pick them up. We used the DVD player in our car for the first time. We'd been saving it for a long trip. Unfortunately we only received 2 headsets with the car, so we had to stop at the dealer to purchase a third. The third (child, that is) couldn't keep her headphones on worth beans (head too small/headset too large).
After we got to the airport, we had a hard time finding parking and had to walk about a quarter mile from the parking lot. We found the parents and stood at the luggage carousel for about 40 minutes waiting. The luggage never came, alas the others were gone, except a few random souls. We were feeling kind of lonely so I suggested to V's father he go stand in the (very long) line in the Southwest airlines office to file a claim. After he found his way to the end of the line I overheard another woman from the same flight asking an airport staff about her luggage which was missing as well. When he found out which flight she was on, he told her she was at the wrong carousel! Imagine that! So we shuffled over to the next carousel, heads hung low, tails dragging and picked up our luggage which had already been removed as unclaimed. Then I had the pleasure to go to the Southwest claim office to notify V's father of our great luck. All the other people lined up were envious (probably they were-or maybe I just added this to make it interesting).
When we came home we ate Vietnamese sandwiches, received our (many) gifts, showed off the kid's rooms, N's trophies and E's tap-dancing, then everyone had "rest time", or tried to. What this statement means is the man of the house fell asleep on the easy chair next to the couch while everyone tiptoed around him. Evening brought grocery shopping and dinner (of course at another Vietnamese restaurant-go figure!) E fell asleep in the car on the short drive to the restaurant, "wasn't hungry, had a tummy-ache, didn't want a smoothie" (usually her favorite), whined and dragged her feet, and said she was tired. I tried to tuck her in (bathless)when we returned home, at which time she decided it was her turn to vomit everywhere (3 times, 2 of them unexpectedly). I'd like to mention, we've definately gotten our money's worth out of our Dirt Devil!