Time off (for good behavior?)

So it's been two weeks since I posted.  It's not that I'm not doing anything notable, more that I'm doing too much to have time to make note of it.  Having spent the week of Valentines day on a whirlwind work-related tour of Europe (London, Oslo and Hamburg-all in 6 days!) I returned to a very full email in box and a lot of in person work that needed to be done in the day I was in the office before I took off the end of the week for a short family vacation.  Add to that the necessary shopping for the vacation, food for three days, snow gear for me, some place to pack our luggage and food when the station wagon is fully loaded with adults, children and dogs and I was more or less running non-stop right up to the last moment. Phew.  I'm tired just typing that.
Well it all came together and on Wednesday, despite the severe weather warnings, last minute rental of an All-wheel drive vehicle and a meltdown over the possibility that all of this planning would be undone if the roads required tire chains since the rental car contract absolutely did not allow them, we made our way to the little "chalet" we'd rented near Stevens Pass.
Mr. Dog had worked late into the night (actually very early morning!) on Tuesday, so we decided to make a more relaxed morning of it and head out a bit later than originally planned.  We took our time with breakfast and packing, only to be reminded that Wednesday is the day when the housekeepers come.  Oops!  We managed to get out of the house with only a minimal overlap, hopefully not too irritating to them as I had to keep rushing across their work to get this or that thing that needed to be put into the car.  Finally we left the house and headed off to the snow.
By the time we arrived at the cabin it was time for lunch.  The boys happily settled in while I made a cold-weather friendly meal of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  After eating they had a good old fashioned snowball fight with Mr. Dog.  They even got to build a snowman, though sadly abandoned without a face it ended up looking a bit more like a snow-turd. Ah the family memories, right?
Although we brought our laptops, we hardly opened them.  Turns out they aren't that interesting or useful when there is no wifi.  Heck, we hardly had cell signal.  For me, the disconnectedness was probably the most unusual part of the vacation. 
It isn't often that I don't have my computer on my lap.  When I don't it's pretty common for me to have my iPhone in hand happily tapping away on the little screen.  I find it difficult to ignore the siren song of the internet.  I enjoy it, and then there's my work that doesn't rest even when I sleep.  In an international company there is always someone working and emails that I can, if I choose to, take time to answer.
Yes, here is the part where you can scold me for always making the choice to respond.  I have a hard time not doing it, and when I don't it seems like controversy pops up and I'm the only one who doesn't step up to offer a solution.  This is something I need to get more comfortable with as I take on more and more responsibility.  It is hard to be "on" all of the time if you never give yourself a chance to really be "off".  And for the past three days, save a few hours while the boys were skiing and I got a 3G signal to my phone at the bar of the ski lodge, I was forced to be off.  Deliciously, completely unavoidably off.
In my downtime, I got to watch the boys take ski lessons, snuggled with our kids and did some fantastic nothing.  I'm going to have to try to do that a bit more often.