Vacation

I've been on vacation from chemotherapy these last two weeks and it's been so nice. I'm feeling great and life almost seems normal again. Tony took a week off from work last week and we went on a mini vacation to Santa Barbara. It was our first visit there and we loved everything about it. We visited all the tourist attractions. While Tony and I loved the mission, the beautiful courthouse, and all the Spanish architecture, the kids only cared about the hotel and getting to feed the ducks there. Peyton's favorite thing was the gift shop at the Natural History Museum. It's ironic she would pick the museum because she was practically scared of all the exhibits. She only liked the gift shop because she bought butterfly tattoos there. Matthew...not so sure yet. He says that he didn't really like anything except feeding the ducks, but it seemed like he had loads of fun. They sure were anxious to go home though.

I'm going back to work tomorrow, although the students are not starting until the following Monday. I'm sad because I really didn't have much of a summer. Most of my time was spent lying on the couch and not worrying about covering my head. I wore hats when I went out for short periods of time. Now I have the dilemma of finding head coverings for every day of the week. I thought about wearing a wig to work and not telling my students, but the wig thing just didn't work out. I obsessed over it and in the end, decided that I didn't want to waste money on something I knew I wouldn't wear. I have two wigs and both look totally fake. I've been pretty comfortable wearing scarves. I know this sounds stupid, but I saw recent pics of Jennifer Lopez in some pretty scarves. She tied all of her hair into the scarf and wrapped it into a bun. It looked great on her, so I decided to try it. I love the look, but can I tell you that it is so hard to match a colorful scarf to your outfit? I pretty much have to stick to solid colored clothes, otherwise everything will clash. Oh, the stress of it all. And what do I tell my students? I'm just afraid that parents will doubt my ability to teach if they know what I'm going through. I figure I'll just tell the kids that I lost my hair due to some medicine I'm taking. Most will probably figure it out. I'm not in denial, I just don't know how a teacher tells her brand new, bright-eyed students that she is fighting cancer. As a kid, I'm sure I'd be scared to hear that about my teacher and the last thing I want to do is scare my sixth graders. They're already so nervous about middle school. *Sigh* I know I will be losing sleep over this...

Here are some pictures from our last minute vacation.

I found this place on yelp and it serves some pretty amazing coffee. We had it two days in a row. Too bad the Inland Empire lacks a great coffee house like this one. 

We rented a surrey and biked along the ocean. The views were stunning, but I was very sore the following day!

Mc Connell's has the best ice cream ever. Lots of famous people have visited this little ice cream shop, including  several presidents!

Exploring downtown, while enjoying a French Press coffee!

Looks like he's having fun here!

We tried this place on State St. the first night we were there. It was featured on the Food Network by Guy Fieri in Diners, Drive-In's, and Dives. We were not impressed by the fish and chips at all.

Here, we were waiting in front of the zoo for the trolley to pick us up.