Dear Henry

We went on vacation with Richard and Helaine last week. Here are some pictures. This is the 4th year in a row we have gone away with them around this time of year. The first trip was 5 years ago right after you died. Mom and I went by ourselves to a place called St. John. It was a really special 40th birthday present from all my friends. It gave Mom and me some time away to try and recover from your death. I was thinking back to that trip a lot on this go around.

Mom got hurt one day near the end of this trip. She got pushed by a wave into a coral reef. Then when she was trying to get unstuck, she stepped on a see urchin. A spine went through her toe. I have never seen Mom so physically hurt and scared before. It is hard to see people you love in pain. It is harder when you know there isn't a whole lot you can do for them. You will like this though - the way to make the sea urchin spine dissolve is to pee on it. How crazy is that. You can help someone feel better by peeing on them. It is the same thing if you get stung by a jellyfish.

I volunteered but Mom wasn't too psyched. Instead, we bought some vinegar and she soaked her toe. Helaine also did her best to try and remove what she could with a needle and a tweezer. That was as much excitement as I ever want on vacation. It was not good.

Otherwise, like everyone else, I got a lot of sleep and with that sleep came a lot of dreams. I need to go and see if I emailed myself notes about what I dreamt. I do that.

Joe and Jack had bad dreams the other night. Jack had a dream that Nana and Aunt Tracy had heart attacks. Joe dreamt that an elephant crushed a man and then Joe picked up the elephant. These dreams came a day after Joe said something sad in the car on the way to the bus in the morning. He said that he thought the little sister of one of his classmates had died. I said that I was pretty sure that wasn't the case but I would check. Thankfully Joe had misheard what his classmate had said. Jack told me he had his dream because of what Joe had said in the car.

As you can see, it is really beautiful where we went. We sat, read, watched the sunset and swam. That was it. Oh yeah, I do remember one dream I had. A big snake hit me hard in the shoulder with its head. It didn't bit me. It just smacked me hard. The day before I had the dream I ran over a snake on the road by accident. I thought it was just a branch. I felt pretty bad. I feel worse about hurting snakes ever since we started watching Jeff Corwin on Animal Planet.