Happy vacation

I just finished my summer semester, so I'm both halfway done with my program and I've got a nice break of almost a month before the next semester starts. It hasn't even been 24 hours yet and I've already wiped everyone out with near-lethal amounts of fun.
After finishing my final, I worked on finding a babysitter because my company bought out a movie theater for a showing of The Bourne Legacy and I was excited to see that. It feels like it's harder than it should be to find a babysitter. Is it always hard? There were plenty of willing people, but they all live in other states. Kelsey gets points for being in the same state and volunteering. In desperation, I posted a general announcement on Facebook and we took off for the city pool.

The city pool is great because it's got a playground that sprays water and who doesn't like spraying strangers? Also, it's about a quarter of the cost of the water park by our house with just as many of the toys my kids like. They aren't big into waterslides.

We splashed around and swam for hours, Chelsea and I got sunburned, before we went home for dinner. I was wiped out and when I checked my desperate Facebook post, still no one could help, so I didn't see Bourne. Which is just as well because I fell asleep and had a lovely nap. I'd need the rest.

While I napped, Chelsea made kabobs. Pork, peaches and zucchini. They were yummy.

Then I announced that the Perseid meteor shower was going to peak really early in the morning and asked if they wanted to see it with me. Sophie and Max jumped around, all excited about it, and packed up their backpacks with things they'd need for the trip. Sweatshirts and snacks and flashlights. Then we all went to bed and I woke everyone up at 3:30. The kids were excited and grabbed their backpacks. Chelsea indulged me and came with us.

Because we live in the middle of a city with lots of lights on, I decided to drive to a dinky town in the opposite direction from Salt Lake. I noticed the name of the town on a couple of signs and remembered it from when I was looking for ghost towns in the area. At the beginning of the summer, I thought it would be fun to visit a ghost town, but haven't done it yet. It sounded like a fun little day trip, so I took notes on ghost town that aren't too far away and that's where I remembered the name. So we watched the meteor shower at a Utah ghost town. (I didn't tell anyone else that we were in a ghost town because I could see certain members of the family getting scared about that phrase.)

I read about an iPhone app you can use as you count the meteors you see, which sends the data to a global database of meteor something or other maintained by NASA. Sophie's really into space exploration at the moment, so she got super excited about that and it added a dimension of purpose to the fun of seeing streaks of fire across the sky.

And that was just one day. I wonder what the rest of my little summer break will have for me.