Vacation

The last vacation I took was in 2007, my wife and I went to Hungary.  Five years and two kids latter, my wife and I took our two boys on vacation again.  This time camping in the White Mountains and StoryLand.  I hope we don't have to wait five years to do it again.

If you want cute pictures and stories, check out my wife's blog Shanbrosia.  Since you are reading my blog you are in for some introspection.  So here are some things I learned:

1: Family time is of infinite value.  Whether it was sharing a dairy free icecream and conversation with my two year old, campfire conversations with my wife, or swimming in the deep end with my four year old, there is simply nothing that compares with the value of quality time.  My favorite moment was visiting the chapel at Storyland with my two year old on my shoulders.  As we left he said "dadda, too bad we not live here, maybe in heaven"  We then talked about God, and heaven, and what Jesus did for us. In the midst of this deep conversation, I asked him how God cleans our hearts, and he cheerfully told me "With a broom".  Not exactly great theology, but a great moment with my two year old.

2: We fail when we fail to plan.  We had a plan for the first two days of our vacation, then we thought we'd play it by ear for a day.  We started off with a train ride, which was awesome, but after a nap and a swim we headed out again, our plan was just to get ice, but we got spontaneous, and headed to the Conway outlets, and it quickly descended into chaos. We pulled into McDonalds for a quick meal, and the boys wanted to play in the play place, which required socks, that we didn't have, so we spent a little extra and bought McDonalds socks (did you know you can buy socks at McDonalds?)  In the first outlet store we visited they had a table of legos for the kids to play with while Shandy shopped, we thought this was a great idea, until we tried to leave, and Isaac started screaming.  The shopping trip got worse from there, and we did that terrible thing that parents some times do.  We bribed them.  "If you are good we can buy a toy"  We'll good was relative, but it happened, then came the toy store.  Silas has expensive tastes, and didn't want anything under $30.00, and we had more crying and fussing, and shame on me I still bought him a toy.  As my wife and I debriefed in the car, on the stressful experience we realized that we both had assumed that the other had wanted to go shopping, neither of us did.  We learned that a little communication and planning goes a long way.

3: The world can survive without me. We unplugged completely.  No radio, cell phones, tv, netflix, computers, nothing that plugged in all weekend.  I have to say that I was anxious about it.  What if one of my teens needed me, could things at church possibly continue with me there to hover over it like a nervous mother hen, what if congress did something stupid, or the Red Sox traded someone!  Well the world kept turning, and nothing catastrophic happened to any of those responsibilities that seem to demand so much of my time.  The lesson here may just be that I am not as important as I think I am.  Or maybe that my responsibilities are not as 'do or die' as I think think they are when I drop everything to take care of them.  So I learned a valuable lesson about my own importance and obsessive need for information...  There is nothing that will teach you humility as quickly as unplugging yourself for a few days and seeing that everything carries on just fine without you.

So there are a few observations from vacation.  I am already looking forward to next year.