Challenge YOUrself #80 - Vacation Mode

Hello, everyone! Happy Friday to you all! After enjoying a week of beautiful - cool weather for the first week of August - it is back to summer this weekend with temps in the 90's. That's all right with me. There's still a lot of summer left and the cooler temps will be here before we know it. 

It's time for this month's challenge at Challenge YOUrself today. The challenge is - Vacation Mode - and you must include a photo of "you" on your layout.

This one was hard for me seeing as how the last real vacation where we were gone for a week, left the state to visit a beach, was back in 2006. Sure we've gone camping for a couple of days here and there, and we've done day trips, but to be honest, the hard part was finding a photo that I was actually that I haven't already scrapped! So, I took it in another direction and scrapped about why we don't do vacations anymore and this is what I came up with:

I have used Simple Stories Sunshine and Blue Skies collection for my layout. It was fun to use the tropical flowers and have a beachy theme for a layout that is not about going to the beach - although I would love to do that again!

My journaling is a bit long but the gist of it is that we haven't been on a real vacation in a long time. Things were much easier when Shane was little and we could easily handle a meltdown - redirect - and get back on track. As he has gotten older - and bigger - well, it's not nearly as easy to pick up and go. We've done camping trips and still do an occasional day trip, but big crowds and strange places that are not his home when it comes to bedtime have gotten harder for him to handle. So, we bought a pool and our vacations now are spent in our own backyard with all of us enjoying the comforts of home. Sure we would love to travel and have new experiences, but for right now it is just not worth the stress and anxiety that it causes Shane. I am all right with spending another day in paradise - in our own backyard!

Here are a couple of close-ups:

I hope you have a chance to play along with us this month! I would love to see your vacation layouts!

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today! Have a great Friday!