I have returned! After a one and a half hour flight, three hours of sitting in the airport, a four hour flight, and the hour drive home, I finally made it back to XXXXX! (I may be writing my whole life on here, but I still believe in some degree of Internet privacy.) I need to unpack, clean my room (which is for some reason dirtier than I left it?), practice my violin before Wednesday when my teacher will realize I have once again accomplished nothing, and deal with the repercussions from the vacation (many more zits, loss of much money, and gain of at least five pounds from all the restaurant food). But I am a professional procrastinator, so we'll see when that all gets done. I may still be unpacking when school starts.

I did not write about our last day on vacation, I don't think, so I'll do that now. First we went to this redwood forest and looked at trees. (I think it was a state park, but it's hard to tell when no one thinks you need to know where you are. As a result, I don't know what city we were in, or even if we were really still in California, although since it was a less-than-three-hours trip, I assumed we were.) That was kind of fun, but my mom kept stopping to take pictures, and everyone else would keep walking, and then we'd have to walk back because my mom has this thing about "how dare you go on ahead we're all supposed to stay together what kind of rotten children are you". I tried to enjoy it, I really did. The trees were pretty cool, and pretty wide. (Although I didn't get the whole height thing, because they weren't as tall as I'd thought they'd be. Honestly, we have trees that tall here.) But with my brothers bothering each other and me, and my dad yelling at us every time someone said anything, and my mom yelling just because, it was a pretty iffy trip. I got a cool wooden owl there, though.

After that, we visited Stanford. I'm not sure what the point of that trip was. Yes, I get the point of visiting a college, but when all you do is walk around looking for the gift shop (they call it a "book store" but it's really a gift shop), what's the point? There were some cool old buildings, and the weather was nice. But everything was ruined again by my mom trying to find the gift shop, and my dad yelling at all of us when he was mad at my mom for walking off in some direction without telling anyone where she was going, and my mom yelling at us for not telling my dad where she was going, even though we had no idea where she was going either, and everyone was just mad and it wasn't fun. I got a Stanford shirt there, though. Not to remember this particular visit, but to imagine a better one, I guess. I've thought about going there when I graduate from high school, but I'd imagine you'd miss the fall college atmosphere, because of the year-round fantastic weather. I'm thinking more New England area right now.

Then we visited my dad's old house in Palo Alto, on Lois Lane. (You can laugh, it's hilarious.) He lived there only until he was four or five, so he wasn't very emotionally attached to the place, but he still got upset when his house looked different from what it was when he lived there. But honestly, what did he expect? It's been like 46 years. Even houses evolve with time. He was also upset that the swirly slide he conquered just before his family moved was not there anymore. I'd be concerned if it was, because park and playground equipment tends to deteriorate pretty quickly, and a 50 year old slide sounds pretty dangerous. (The Conquering of the Slide is a fun story though, I might tell it sometime.)

So then we drove back. My mom had to get an ornament from San Francisco, so we stopped by Pier 39 again. I got a snow globe to add to my imaginary collection. (I was starting a collection a while ago, but half of them broke, so now I just have a snowman one, one from Chicago, and now one from San Francisco.) Then we got mini donuts because my youngest brother was upset about not getting ice cream. (It was 10:00, and 50 degrees.)

And that is the end of our vacation story.

Remember,

La vie est courte, mais elle est large.