Family Vacation

It's that time of year...vacation time. Our family usually doesn't take a full-on vacation during the summer because we usually plan our big vacation during the kid's spring break from school. We are fortunate to have the freedom with our business to take the time then, and since we spend a lot of time doing "mini" vacations at our little house on the lake in the summer, we usually just plan to go "big" in the spring instead.

Not so this year.

Since my sweet daughter is headed off to college this Fall, and her spring break will be different from the boys', it occurred to my husband that this was our last chance for a true family vacation, all together, no extra friends, or boyfriends or family members... so a true family vaction we had!

Let me outline it for you...10 hour drive to South Florida, during a heat wave, in one car, in one day. Surprisingly, no one was seriously hurt. (ipods and headphones have changed the way America travels, 'eh?)

Because I was preparing for the worst, I went online in advance, looking for a website that would share fun ways to pass the time on the road with kids. (You know, those websites written by women who bake their own bread and really want to homeschool their kids to spend more time with them...no offense, I respect these women. I'm just not one of them.) So I printed out highway scavenger hunt lists and word search puzzles and about 30 other pages of things to keep the younger ones busy. They refused all of my offers of wholesome time passers...except one: the 75 square foot roll of aluminum foil that I used to make foil sculptures!

What a hoot! We made turtles, a spoon, a duck and a bowl (the unoriginal entry from the 13 year-old before he realized how fun it really was.) Who knew that a roll of foil could pass as entertainment? Some bread-baking mom with a website, that's who! And before any environmentalists call for my head over wasting paper and foil, I assure you that most of it got recycled...certainly the foil turtle was recycled into a foil ball/projectile that was hurled at me while I was doing about 75mph on the Florida Turnpike. Let me tell you, there's nothing like a golfball sized recycled turtle whizzing by your ear and bouncing off the windshield to keep you awake on the highway. That 13 year-old boy has got a pretty good arm...

At the end of the trip, we had what we were hoping for...a family vacation full of sweet memories mixed with a little sand and sunburn, one incredibly long car ride...and lots of little foil scraps under the seats of the car.