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"Is there anything sadder than the Sunday that your vacation ends, when you know that the next day you&amp;#039;ll be rejoining reality again? It&amp;#039;s been a wonderful week with my children and I am so sad that it&amp;#039;s over and that tomorrow morning, I&amp;#039;ll be back at work without them. While my job is wonderful and I&amp;#039;m so lucky to have it, there seems to never be enough time with my kids. I have to confess though, it was an expensive vacation. Even if we didn&amp;#039;t go anywhere, I can&amp;#039;t believe how quickly the money that I budgeted for the week flew out of my wallet. In fact, if I have to be honest here, I spent a lot more than I should have. First of all, rain was predicted just about every day, so we had no idea how to plan anything. In reality, the whole week was beautiful and had I known, things would have been planned much differently. Our annual trip to Provincetown for fun and shopping was planned for Wednesday, but we ended up impulsively going Monday afternoon. This ended up costing us double in parking ($20) because we left late in the day and the usual lots were full. I had budgeted $40 for lunch for the four of us, but prices at our usual outdoor burger shack had gone up and I ended up paying $58. Everything else had gone up too, from temporary tattoos for the kids to the cookies that we always leave with from the Portuguese Bakery. Then there was the day that it actually did rain and we were all a bit stir crazy. $110 for lunch out and a movie was a lot more than the blueberry-picking day at a local farm that usually puts me out $10 for a load of fruit and a day of baking. We did have a great time though; the kids all miraculously got along for the day and we laughed until our bellies hurt at the movies. What I&amp;#039;m most ashamed of though, is the day that we just shopped to shop. About $250 later, my budget was blown and my credit cards were hurting from use. Ouch. I guess that the only good that came out of that was that I did get some Christmas shopping done. I can tell you that the most fun that we had all week were those times spent at the pool; all the kids brought friends and we just horsed around laughing and swimming until we literally exhausted ourselves to the point that we were good for nothing but showers and bed. I spent a lot of money and some of that provided great memories and some of it was just\u2026.wasteful. So, lesson learned. The best things in life are memories and those don&amp;#039;t have to cost a thing. I&amp;#039;ll keep learning. I promise. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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