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The Good Times ALWAYS Outweigh the Bad
By Polly | June 10, 2008
What I Think I Know - A monthly tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….
I think I was probably about 8 or 9 years old when my parents, older brother, and I took a two week vacation out west in a non-air conditioned station wagon. We were on our way to see the major sites that most families see when making a trip to the west, Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon, and Mount Rushmore. Back then my brother and I thought it was fun to bring along tape recorders and tape various parts of our trips. We would interview each other and our parents and just do silly little things with the recorder to pass the time.
We were all having a great time until we had trouble finding hotels with vacancies. It seems that my mom the planner thought we should make hotel reservations in advance so that we had places to stay whereas my father didn’t think hotel reservations were necessary. Needless to say, my mother deferred to my father’s judgment and hotel reservations didn’t get made. And this is where our pleasant fun filled trip turned for the worse at least for my parents. Tired from driving and spending a little bit too much time together, my parents began one of the worse arguments I had ever heard them have throughout their 40 years of marriage. Being young and somewhat oblivious to the fragility of the situation, my brother and I saw my parents’ moment of weakness as an opportunity and recorded their entire fight on our tape recorders. My brother and I were having a great time hunched over in the back recording and laughing at every last word. Eventually we found a place to stay and my parents made up, leaving us to record our own thoughts and silly games.
To this day my brother and I still talk about that trip and get a good laugh out of that fight and gutsiness it took on our part to record it. And I think we appreciate the memory even more because we are now both parents and can fully appreciate what our parents were feeling on that long 100 degree day in a non-air conditioned station wagon with no place to sleep.
I have to admit that there have been times on family vacations where I haven’t kept my cool. Whether it was because of the too close quarters, the lack of sleep from driving all night, squabbles from the back seat, or my husband walking away from the plan, there have been times when my tiredness overtook the excitement and I completely lost it. But yet we continue to go every year, saving money in our family vacation jar, setting family travel goals, and keeping track of everything in our family journal because the good times always outweigh the bad, and if for nothing else than to give my kids memories and laughs to last a lifetime.
Related Entries:
STOP IT! - Keeping Your Cool on Family Vacations
Managing Disruptions to the Routine
Anticipating Disruptions to the Daily Routine
A Family Journal
The Not So Perfect Family Journal