We never did the "family vacation" thing when I was a kid. I alway assumed it was because my parents family lived across the state from us, so when we had time off, we went to see family. Now I'm married with kids, most of my family is gone, and my wifes family lives in the same town we do. There's no excuse to avoid the vacation thing.
A blogg or web site somewhere describes our last vacation when we journeyed to Galveston, Texas. If you missed it, suffice to say it sucked. The beaches all had swim warnings, it rained daily, the rain was almost as bad IN OUR ROOM as outside, except outside it dried out faster!
A few years after that, I managed to avoided vacations because we had a houseboat. Every weekend we were at the boat and if there was a week to kill we could spend it at the lake. We sold the boat and that excuse is gone.
This year, I once again was forced into a vacation. Since money was tight, and the cost of gas through the roof, we journeyed from St. Charles to Branson, Missouri. Branson is where all the has been country tainted acts have ended up. For some reason totally beyond me Dolly Parton, Jim Stafford, Andy Williams, even Roy Rogers and Dale Evans have ended up having a theater here (interesting since I'm pretty sure some of the folks are dead) as well as acts I've never heard of like the "Baldknobbers", and acts tried to cash in on famous acts like Jackson Cash and his tribute to the Man in Black, and the Presley Review, The boys from Liverpool, etc.
Our trips to grandmas were 14-16 hours drive time one way. Once dad fired up the car, there were stops for gas and burger to eat in the car. If we were lucky we stopped for Bar-Be-Cue which meant we stopped at a rest area to eat. Branson was a little over 4 hours away per mapquest. With stops it took us almost 6 hours. A big chunk of the was to the dulcet sound of kids screaming, squabbling, and fighting.
Even after the short drive, everyone was too tired and crabby to use any of the tickets we had bought for friday night. Saturday morning, we went to breakfast. Both kids decided they didn't like ANYTHING on the free breakfast buffet, so the whining/squabbling/fighting started early.
After eating, we started our journey (along with everyone else in Branson) to Silver Dollar City. Before we even got there I decided that I HAD to make a blog entry if for no other reason than to remind myself to NEVER TAKE ANOTHER FAMILY VACATION. Before we are there the kids are crying saying they want to go home, hitting each other and the previously mentioned whining/squabbling/fighting. We get there and it is HOT, with temperatures in the 90's. To the best of my knowledge, there are 2 water fountains in all of Silver Dollar City, but every place is happy to sell you a bottle of water at $2.50 each.
Between the shops being air conditioned, the kids still whining and moping, mom not being able to walk well and just the generally malaise of the family vacation, we left our hotel at around 10AM, were at the park until 5PM, and we rode one ride. But there were at least a dozen fights, countless whining, one incident where Anh tried out her shoplifting skills, and everyone sick from the heat by the time we left (Kay refuses to drink water, and the kids mimick her, so between the three of them they drank less than one bottle of water.
Eventually we get back to the hotel so the kids can again squabble, this time over the PSP and DS Lite.
Obviously, I had fun. So much that I swear that this is our LAST family vacation!! And I haven't even mentioned the hassles getting ready to go (finding someone to keep all the dogs! ) and the fact that one of the dogs bit my mother in law when she was nice enough to watch the for us.
No more! Next year I'll burn my vacation time on hangovers and babysitting!
