After three weeks of either vacation or house guests, our life is finally nearly normal again.

We left for Illinois on July 28 and visited with family in the Elgin area. My mother had been in the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia just prior to our visit, so things were a little unusual in that regard.

Then we headed to Wisconsin where we spent a week blissfully unconnected. No cell phone, no internet, only one channel on the television. The weather was perfect. It could not have been much better – perhaps a little longer. We went back to Elgin for more visiting. We even got a chance to see Wicked in Chicago.

We headed back to Maryland on Friday, August 10 and on August 11 welcomed three visitors from Japan. They remained with us for a week, and left this morning. While all of the experiences were really only minor changes, because they were in tandem, made for a bit more stress. While the visitors couldn’t have been less obtrusive, the mere fact we had to clean house, cook breakfast, a few dinners and some lunches and ferry them around the area was time-consuming and tiring. I got no work (for pay) done while they were here.

I’m glad we had the guests, but also glad to get our lives back to normal.