Congratulations! By all means take a short break! You've earned it and deserve it!
Oddly enough, I was talking along similar lines just last night and one of the grads said it was a lot like post partem depression for her and subsided markedly as soon as started on her master's .
Now that you've see what it's all about, you'll build on that knowledge in graduate school, so it's quite reasonable to expect to bring that laude up to a magna *** laude or even summa! I'm not up to speed on CJ but generally all graduate programs are more intense reading and writing - whether the later takes the form of much longer papers or more of them or both! Knowing that in advance will make it easier for you and you've already proven that you can do the work.
Course load in distance learning is too personal, with too many random variables. You'll have to talk this over with your mentor or advisor; if three courses made it very hard on you, two might be better off taking only two - although it will necessarily extend your completion time by half. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint; and think of that 'summa' looming on the horizon if your planning and execution are worthy of it ;-)