Hola from Cozumel

We are actually at the airport awaiting boarding time for our return flight.

I edited a video of day one of our trip. I did it for Annie's parents, but I thought you might like to see it also.

More soon.


Cozumel - Day One from Catherine Banks on Vimeo.

Headed for Cozumel

Our Swedish exchange student and our entire family will be leaving for the Iberostar Cozumel in the morning.

I hope to upload some pictures while we're there..but it may have to wait until we get home.

Here's what went on at our house yesterday....

CISV Sweden USA Welcome Party 2008 from Catherine Banks on Vimeo.

Welcome Home

At Legacy Travel, we call each client when they return from their trip. I'd say we successfully reach about 98% of returning clients. The feedback we get from them is so valuable as we keep our fingers on the pulse of each resort and destination.

Philip does the lions share of these calls. I help him when he gets overwhelmed.

Today he had 58 in his queue. (That's more than I've ever seen in a single day.)

I've gotten it down to 29. He'd better appreciate it. :-)

....and so it starts...

Tomorrow our CISV Interchange starts. The welcome party is at our house, so I've been making a quadruple batch of Tollhouse cookies. We have quite the menu planned. There will be music and swimming and teenagers hyped on sugar and jetlag. It has all the makings of a great day.

Life Lessons from Running

After somewhat of a hiatus because of injury and time constraints, I have resumed my running career. I am gradually increasing my mileage so as not to re-injure my 43.5 year old self. As I was contemplating the best time to increase from two miles per day to two and a half, it occurred to me that there were two possibilities.

1) I could continue to run two miles per day until that run felt really easy.

or

2) I could go ahead and (after a prudent amount of time) increase my mileage.

The problem with these two choices is that number one doesn't work. Two miles is never going to feel easy until I push forward to more miles. What I'm doing now is never going to seem easy until I extend myself to do more than I currently think I can.

No one ever achieved greatness by sticking with what they'd already proven they could do. In running or in life..

Happy Father's Day!

Friday at the office turned out to be a better than average day saleswise, despite all of the goofing off we did playing bad music.

We celebrated Father's Day at the Banks household on Saturday by doing..nothing! That's right...Philip's best day is one where we don't have to go to anything..so that's what we did. We played in the pool, hung out..etc..

Then today (Sunday) the kids and I headed down and surprised my dad and his wife at their home. We were sitting on the sofa when they came in from church. (Jean knew we were coming, but it was a surprise for Daddy. He was really shocked..great fun. I love surprising people.

We also had another surprise yesterday. We were chosen as the Best Travel Agency in Plano in both the "Plano/Murphy" edition and the West Plano edition of "Go Neighborhood" (a publication of the Dallas Morning News). We had no idea and would probably not know we even won except that we got a congratulation email from a client.

What an honor! If you voted for us, thank you.

Friday Afternoon at Legacy Travel

Friday afternoons in the summer time can be slow at a travel agency. We're having a great month..but on Friday afternoons in the summer lots of people are on weekend trips and not really thinking about another trip.

Anyway, today we have been thinking of the worst songs ever written and playing them via iTunes on my laptop. It's been great fun. Here are a few of our choices...

Love Will Keep us Together
Disco Duck
Mandy
Afternoon Delight
Don't Give up on us Baby
Nobody
Wildfare
Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald
Don't go Breaking my Heart
Run Joey Run

You get the idea...it's bad....so bad it's good

Summertime!

...and the livin' is easy.


I must say I really appreciate not having to manage getting kids to school, making sure homework gets done, making sure kids get to bed on time, etc etc etc.

I know I'll be ready for school to start back up come August 26, but for now.......

Tomorrow is leisure day at the Banks house. Philip and I have massages scheduled, we plan to float in the pool and just enjoy hanging out.