Getting time away from the business...

I was looking at the photos tonight. We did have a great time on our vacation. Nora learned to blow bubbles:




























I decorated my friend Charles' hat with a big felt flower that made it very warm:





























Cleo did some really brave waterfall exploring. She was up a bit too high for Mom's comfort level but I restrained the voice in my heart that wanted to shout "watch out, you'll slip" and she did just fine.





























I did some very simple and very pleasing (to me) stitching to some of my assortment of thrift store sweaters.
























My husband, Galen, even finished his own crafty project. Watch out, folks, next thing you know he'll be helping you at the work table. As long as your project is finishing a leather craft kit from 1976 you'll be in good hands.

























We had such a great time, it was relaxing and easy and now, after being home for 6 days we are caught up on the laundry and have unpacked and put away everything, even the beads and paint and paper. I am still finding pine needles in odd places, but that could go on for months.

Since my husband and I both work in the business it is hard to take time off in a big chunk. If you work for someone else there is a sense (at least there was for me) that my vacation was owed to me. Even if I had things to do, I still was fine leaving when my time off was scheduled. When you work for yourself there is not that sense of someone owing you anything. There is, instead, a sense of you owing time and energy to the business, the staff, the customers. At least, for me there is. We are also always so far behind what we would like to have accomplished that there is a big sense of being too busy to take off. There is always something you could be doing to make the business better. Our list ranges from cleaning the gutters at the store to creating sample boards to finding a new, better supplier for something we need. Our good friends, Charles (with the adorned hat) and his wife, Nancy, were the ones that first proposed this annual trip and we just booked it in the hazy glow of January. That's why this trip works. We book it so far in advance. We can't back out or get too busy, we go. In the end, the gutters wouldn't have been cleaned even if we had stayed home that week. If you are in business for yourself, how do you make yourself take time off? How do you keep yourself operating at a sane level throughout the year?