Thanks for the Memories - Family Vacations

Jim and I are negociating a family trip this fall through the deep south with the boys and baby. It will be our first "BIG family vacation". You know the kind we all did as kids. The Brady Bunch kind. The get in the car and drive for hours, eat PB&J and Pop Tarts in the backseat, stop in cheap motels, and drag the kids through cemeteries & the 22nd president's birth place kind of vacation. Woo hoo!

My BFF was saying she never did this as a kid and didn't see why I was so adamant about doing this with our kids. How can I expain this? I started to tell her about all the great memories Jim and I each have of our family vacations with our parents. As I am telling her, I realize that the funniest and best memories are actually connected to huge mishaps - some of which probably brought our parents to the brink of disaster.

There was the time we got stuck in the middle of a field on the way to view Custer's Last Stand. Leaving us surrounded by bison and prairie grass, my dad headed off on foot to find a ranger's station. It had to have been miles and miles away. He was gone for what seemed like forever. In the days of no cell phone, my mother collapsed in tears during the wait, wondering what was to become of us if the plan failed.

There was the time I got bucked off a pony - way off - while riding in the Colorado mountains after days and days of rain - at the age of 5. Can you envision the law suit that would have followed by today's standards?

There was the burping contest my brother and I held as we lay on our sleeping bags in the very back of the station wagon with no seat belts on and playing cards while Dad drove West. "I can burp to the mountains! - UURRRPP!" "Oh yeah?! Well, I can burp to the mountains and BACK!! GRRRAAAAAAWWWWP!!"

There was the time my mother got hopelessly lost here in Florida trying to find Lion Country Safari. Tired and cranky, we returned to the Vero Beach hotel having still failed to find it. I can't even begin to imagine the chaos this would cause if I had to do this with my kids!

There was the time we watched as a man had to get taken off a mountain by paramedics due to the high altitude. I don't remember which mountain, but I remember the man droping like a stone near or in the cable car.

This is such a great lesson for me now to take with me on our future "BIG family vacations". These are the same things my kids are going to remember: the unexpected break down that cost a gazillion dollars to fix, the strange hotel that smelled like wet dog fur, Mom crying because... well that's what Mom does, and burping to the mountains and back.