September 2008 - Vacation: Recipe for a Family

A few short days and it was all over. Vacations - why are they so short? Before you can say the three syllable word, vacation, time has lapsed and your time off is gone.

We planned months in advance to visit our daughter in Florida during June. We actually wanted to go earlier in the year, but illness and her elective classes blocked an early departure. Knowing that we would not be leaving until after school was out - we had consciously made the decision to take our five-year-old grandson and our nine-year-old granddaughter with us. We also knew it would take us two days to get there via our four-door sedan car. Taking two long-distant novice travelers and two grandparents for a 14-hour trip required a two day venture.

Shoving all the necessary items in the trunk, under our feet and in the middle of the back seat, we left mid Friday morning.

A road trip is a fine means to discover people in their real sense. Our grandchildren were armed with several time consuming toys and gadgets. However, it was the time-old activities that kept the kids busy - fighting. Exchanging blows and whispering about exchanging blows occupied their minds and hands. Grandma was armed with books. I read to them, sang songs and counted all the red cars. We did delightfully accept one surprise - our grandchildren did not require pit stops. They have some kind of aversion to public restrooms. (Okay.) They waited until we either arrived at our destination or to the hotel room.

With that in mind and no stops the second day our grandson made himself at home on our daughter’s backyard shrub as soon as we got out of the car in Florida. (Welcome to the neighborhood.)

The kids made themselves comfortable at the very beginning. It was drop and run. Drop their clothes and shoes and run into the pool to swim. Our daughter has a swimming pool at her apartment complex. Under the Florida sun creatures of the Sunshine State made themselves visible. Our five-year-old chased green lizards and our nine-year-old watched for green snakes that slithered across the sidewalk paths. Our daughter explained the tails fall off the lizards if caught by their ends, but that didn’t stop our grandson from chasing them, day and night.

Our granddaughter didn’t catch on to surf fishing until grandpa began to pull in a few baby sharks. Then she became a pro at casting, before she tangled her line with others and reeled in sea weed. On the fishing pier our grandson bragged about us catching baby sharks in the ocean cast fishing after a veteran fisherman landed a four-foot shark. He knows no strangers.

After nine days of beach, sunburns and sightseeing, it was time to head back to the Mountain State. Goodbye’s are always hard, but our grandson found it to be too much. His cries of wanting to stay in Florida were contagious.

In the beginning making plans for our Florida trip, I was very concerned that our grandson would be too young and would become homesick causing us to cut our vacation short. But on the other hand we weren’t going without him. We were so glad we didn’t and crossed our fingers that he would be okay. He evidently was.

Repacking our luggage into the compact car we headed back home. We have all come back with extra baggage. Our grandson has named his grandpa, "grumpy man," because of his early morning growl, and grandma has a new recipe: one red car, two small children, one grandpa, one grandma, shut the doors, mix together, add a little pain reliever when necessary and when you’ve reached Florida, the doors will open and out pours a family.