Tips For the Ol' Family Vacation

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The first thing you should do, really, is to dump the kids. This is best for everybody. My first choice would be to glom them off on Grandma. Preferably the kids’ actual Grandma, but sometimes you have to compromise. Now, you might be tempted to just call a week kidless a “vacation enough” and stay home. I mean, you know where everything is already, so why leave the comfort of your own abode? Well, I’ll tell you why you should leave: If you stay put, Grandma will know where you are and can drop your kids back on you when she wises up. So your best bet is to skip town.

If you strike out on the Grandma Front, you could just stick the kids in a locker at the bus station. Only 75¢. Of course then you’ll need to skip town because the bus company and Children’s Services will be breathing down your neck in almost no time. Barricading yourself in your house with the SWAT team and the Bus Cops on your porch would definitely not be a soothing way to spend your free time. The last free time you’ll be seeing for a very long time.

If all your plans go kerflooie, just take the kids with you. But do it Kennedy Style. Send them on a different plane. Yeah, it should be a plane going the same place you are, but hey, if they can’t keep track of your luggage you might get lucky. I mean it’s not like luggage wanders off when it gets bored. Or you could take the same plane. Just check your kids in with a Flight Attendant, or Airborne Hostess, or Peanut Slingers, or whatever Stewardesses are called now and have them strapped down in “Coach” (the kids- you can’t strap down the Stewardesses (not during the flight anyway) or who will run the beverage cart?), then you get all comfy in First Class. Then, with all the modern conveniences technology has provided us, you can sit on the runway waiting for clearance, then wait out some weather, then wait while they fix whatever broke while you were waiting, then you get back in line and maybe “taxi” a little and then ZOOOOOOM! you’re off to your Vacation Destination.

But where to go? Like I care. Just go somewhere. Oh yeah, no matter where you go the kids will think it’s either boring or stupid. So just go wherever you, as the adult, want. Just not anywhere with Historic Significance. All those places have been scientifically proven to be both boring and stupid. (Except the Smithsonian, which is just plain cool.) You might try the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota. I’ll bet you’ve never been there before. And see Rock City. Just because you should. Rock City is not in Minnesota, not by a long shot. So you might want to break it up into two completely different trips.

“But what about the kids?” you whine. Like I care. Are they my kids? No, they are not. Anyway, a vacation for kids these days is a motel with air conditioning, a pool and cable TV. Throw in a free Continental breakfast and it’s Kid Heaven. Kid Heaven with Internet connections would be Ultimate Kid Heaven. So don’t sweat the kids. Just drag them wherever the heck you want to go during the day and then let them watch cable TV until the doughnuts get set out in the morning. It’s just best for everybody. (And “The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy” on Cartoon Network is quite entertaining.)

Then, like all good things, you vacation will all too soon be over and it’ll be time to come home. Now you have a huge decision to make. You have all the stuff you brought with you and all the junk you bought as souvenirs. It’s not all going to fit in your bags to go home. (Unless you decided it was easiest to rent a minivan and drive the whole way with your kids awake in the back back seat close enough to whack each other when it got too quiet. Then you’ll have plenty of room for all the gewgaws you bought.) What to do? Have you been paying attention? You just leave the kids and then you can take all your swag with you, no prob. Ha! Still, I jest. You just dump all the kids’ stuff and hog up all that space for your own stuff. We all know your stuff is way more important than the junk they have.

Now you’re back home. Are you feeling refreshed? Of course not! You just spent a week or so doing more stuff than you do in a good six months at home. That’s what vacation is all about. So you get to go back to work tireder than you were before all this “relaxing vacation” stuff started. But you have some nice pictures to show all your friends.

Unless you left your camera on the counter when you left.
-Rue.

2

What’s a “vacation?”

3

A kidless WEEK?

all i’ve been asking for is a night or two. And Grandma’s still to wise to sit for us that long. She said she’d take one kid that long but um we have two now so I still wouldn’t be kidless.

Oh yeah - what’s a vacation?

4

It’s something you get after you get a “family” Ex. One step at a time, old boy.

You know 'Nookie, it’s that thing that rolls around every five years or so. You do weird things you don’t usually do every other day. Like the Olympics, only not as often.

5

Welcome back Rue! welby did a good job with last week’s MMP, so I hope ya brung him a tshirt or sump’n cause he did a good job baby sitting all us MMPers. Actually he might enjoy some sheetrock and a case of beer too.

I am kidless (YAY!) so I get to take vacations and do whatever I want. So there! Matter of fact, some friends and I are planning a cruise for this October. I think it’s gonna be a Carribean cruise for a whole week. It’s a “let’s go on a cruise for our 50th birthdays cruise” cause we’ve all either turned 50 or are going to be 50 at some point in time this year or next year. I’ve never been on a cruise, so I’m looking forward to it.

I put the postcard you sent me on the refrigerator. All the good stuff goes there. The postcard is right next to my two great nieces kindergarten graduation pictures. Cool huh?

-swampbear (gettin’ all cruisy)

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This is why I don’t have kids yet, even though Quasi-Daughter wants quasi-siblings.

I have enough trouble with the cats.

Welcome back, Rue! What did you bring me?

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Boy, am I glad I’m in that in-between stage (grown kids, no grandchildren)! I get to go on vacation without children! Actually, I get to go on vacation without Mr. Anachi, too. Not that I wouldn’t like to go on vacation with Mr. Anachi but he doesn’t want to go to the beach so he gets to stay home and take care of the dogs and supervise the adult children (which amounts to mainly nagging them to not use the washer, dryer, lights, hot water, etc., so much…the adult children, that is, not the dogs cause they haven’t figured out how to use the washer and dryer yet. Not that they would since they run around nekit anyhoo) I get to go stay in a nice beach house and lay around all day in the sun and eat and drink too much. Whew! I will be just plum tuckered when I get back. :smiley:

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I sent you a postcard Lissla, but Swampy scammed it. Actually I sent everyone a postcard. It’s on Swampy’s fridge, so you should all go to his place and look at it.

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Ahhh. The kidless week. I’m looking forward to my own kidless week this summer. We pawned our brats off to my aunt and uncle, who planned a trip to the beach for a week. So they will look after our kids while the wife and I look after ourselves. We’ll be in Aruba, so we’ll more than likely really be looking after Pina Coladas and beer rather than ourselves. But that’s okay because we’re responsible adults. Really. I swear.

10

Rue, I just must have known you’d be posting this. I’m so very proud to report that when I went on vacation in April, which I can do because I have no kids, I saw Rock City! And it was cool.

:cool:

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So that’s why all those names were on it. Rue how ever were you able to write small enough to get all those names on the address side? Anyways, Rue wrote about slimy things that burrow in the sand and said “thinking of you” on the postcard. I was flattered.

I forgot to tell y’all that this weekend (well, Saturday) I lounged around my sister’s pool. It was a nice change of scenery. They have a neighbor behind them that likes look out of his second story window with binoculars and try to see what’s going on at my sister’s pool, which he can’t, but he can see her deck. Actually he could do that without the binoculars. I offered to stand on the deck and flash the neighbor but my BIL didn’t want me to do that, and being as I was a guest I didn’t. BIL can be such a spoilsport sometimes. I mean, all I was gonna do was change out of my shorts into my bathing suit on the deck. :smiley:

-swampbear (nudist for nosy neighbors)

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Not only do I have kidless vacations, I have kidless everything! Which may be one reason I spend most vacations going to see my family and kidnapping my neice and nephews, albeit only for a few hours at a time. That’s one reason I’m kidless–kids only like me for a few hours at a time, and that’s all right with me.

I’m going to be a great-aunt! Several nephews and one neice may tell you that I’ve always been a great aunt, but this time, there’ a hyphen. My oldest neice is having twins!!! This is big news because, well, let’s just say it’s been a long time happening and everyone was worried and now everyone is happy. She’s past the danger zones and the babies are growing at a good rates and have strong heartbeats and etc., etc. etc. The family will most likely go completely overboard at Christmas (when the twins will be less than a month old, or even younger), it will be infant, infant, infant everywhere, evrything. Of course, it doesn’t take much for my family to go overboard on presents, so other than everything being in really little sizes, it won’tl 'be much different.

Now something for Ex and the rest of you manly-men. My back fence is faling down. I was hoping it would make it though another winter, and fully expected it to rot away before it fell, but it is leaning like a drunken sailor and there’s no hope of saving it. It just has to stay up until the autumn when my go-to guy for repairs is available. So, give me all you ideas for a new fence, and all the pitfalls I should avoid and what I should know to tell Jeff (the go-to handyman) and any other manly advice you can give me.

13

After we mailed off your postcard Swampy… I mean everybody… we found out those diggy things were (or weren’t, we didn’t ask the Beach Ranger because there aren’t any such a thing) baby horshoe crabs. They are not a tidy animal in that they leave their old skins all over the beach when they’re done with them. You’d think after being around for a skabillion years they’d figure out the “hamper”.

I took a bucket and a little sand shovel away from my progeny when they weren’t looking and caught a few of the diggy things. I also caught a little fish and a clam. Soupo held the clam for a second until I told him they’d pee in his hand. Then he threw it back in the ocean and said “Aaaaaaaaaagh!” and swished his hand in the surf. That was the third day we were down there.

The first day we got there, we went down to the ocean. It was the first time the boys and the Little Woman ever saw the ocean. I stuck my finger in the water and switched fingers and stuck a second finger in my mouth and said “Hmm… you can taste it.” So Soupo stuck his finger in the ocean and then stuck it in his mouth, only he didn’t switch (although you really don’t need to switch fingers, it’s not like a taste of ocean will kill you) and got the saltwater in his mouth. “Taste what, Dad?” he asked.
“Whale pee,” I told him.

That was funny.

Pee jokes are just generally funny.

We also saw a couple ghost crabs. You can tell they are ghost crabs because they wear little sheets and wave their pinchers and go “WhooooOOOOOooooOOOOooo!!!”. They are very scary.

You really should have “accidentally” flashed the neighbor Swampy. Heck, even I’d flash the guy.

14

Now that’s profound! Soupo and Katcha will grow up to be intelligent, insightful young men what with all the sound advice they get from their father.

Kalley congrats on the Great-Aunt thing. I am a Great-Uncle (two Great-Nieces and 4 Great-Nephews) and let me tell ya it’s fun. See, the Nephew and the Nieces (just how is that world spelled anyway?) can’t say much about me spoiling their kids because they remember how much fun it was getting spoiled by me. It’s all win-win for me! :smiley:

Don’t know what to tell ya about the fence. You could try proping it up with some boards til Mr. Fixit can come replace it. Yep, it sounds like it might need replacing but since I haven’t seen it, what do I know. I bet you expected me to say paint it lavender and plant ivy to cover it up didn’t ya? :stuck_out_tongue:

As for other manly advice, it’s not polite to scratch down there in mixed company. Also, stand close enough to hit the urinal. How’s that?

15

See - that’s what’s wrong with being stuck in the middle of the country! I mean really people - 20 minutes and I’m at the Ocean!

I don’t need to take a vacation to see it - it is always there!

:slight_smile:

16

So broken up with hilarity am I at the thought of a “kidless vacation” that I have absolutely nothing of substance to say.

Well, next year we are going to the beach, when I expect to have a babe under a year old affixed to my hip. I’m not imagining a lot of relaxing there. But it WILL be the beach, so there’s that. Maybe we can scare up a ghost crab or two.

17

Ah, babies and beaches. I remember it well. I lived on Hilton Head when mine were little. Mostly I remember sand in orifices where it should never go. Oh, and the outside hose came in real handy before going in the house. Ellen, just make sure that all kid-type activities are commenced downwind of where you plan to sit. :wink:

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Are we really that bad on vacations?

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Rue, I know we’re all about fun and frivolity around here in the MMP, but I just wanted to note in all seriousness that I think you are a really cool dad.

I love the stories you tell about your kids - I bet they will have some great memories of their youth.

Okay, that’s enough! As you were!

20

Vacation? I remember having a vacation once, many years ago. We’re hoping to take one next year, assuming we don’t spend all our money fixing up our ugly house. But we don’t have to worry about the kid, seein’s as how she’s in college and all.

Speaking of our house, I would like to announce here before anywhere else that we’ll be closing on our house on July 30!! Not Aug 16 as we’d feared! So I think UglyFest will be the first weekend in Aug. Then the demolition and remodeling begins. YAAAAAAAY!

So, Rue, now that vacation is over, what do your lads have to look forward to for the rest of the summer? What sort of quality daddy-laddy time do you have planned?