Sabbatical

So the other night Amanda and I taught the evening Relief Society class on photo stuff and saving pictures to your computers.  It was kind of a funny fluke that we were even asked, because we are both pretty sure there are many more “qualified” people to teach that class.  Afterward, I was dropping her off at home and she asked me, “are you really interested in going to New York this summer”?  Rewind several months to a conversation we had and what led up to this conversation.
As many of you know my company has a Sabbatical program.  If you work for the company for 10 years you get a sabbatical that year and then every 5 years thereafter.  How this works is I have to use 80 hours of my own paid time off and then the company matches that with another 80 hours, giving me a month off of work.  When this first started, I said when I have worked at Alliance Title for 20 years I want to go New York at some point during my sabbatical.  As of August 2015 I have worked at Alliance for 20 years and I just scheduled my sabbatical for July 11 through August 5th.  I had talked to a few friends about the going to New York with me and some said that it would be fun, but nothing really concrete.  Well, when Ray had to quit trucking in October, I thought there is no possible way for me to even imagine going to New York.  But, I think in the back of my mind I was holding out a little hope.  However, with the recent serious lull in car sales and income I had decided there is no possible way I could go, until my conversation with Amanda the other night.  See, Amanda’s parents live in Virginia, which isn’t super far from New York.  Her plan is to fly into Virginia and have her parents pick us up at the airport.  We will stay with them for a few days and visit all of the Washington, D.C. stuff and then head into New York.  We will most likely be gone for 7 days in order to fit everything in and did I mention we are taking Jerika and Justice with us?  I am pretty excited, with intermittent bouts of anxiety.
I have actually written this post off and on during the last week.  And last night we BOOKED OUR FLIGHTS.  I am now actually counting down the days.