Husband, Son and I went out to dinner over the weekend and got into a conversation about family vacations. Husband said he used to take his boys camping when they were young and I said we never went camping but we did go to the dude ranch once and had a great time horseback riding with another family from our neighborhood. At which point I found out someone else on that trip had a different recollection.
OSV: Remember that first horse I was given was so mean?
SON: They were all mean. All the horses were mean. And crazy. I would never take anyone I love to a dude ranch. Whose idea was that anyway?
OSV: Come on, you were so adorable sitting on top of that horse and he wouldn’t follow the other horses and you yelled out, “Hey, mine’s broken!” We laughed so hard. I have the pictures.
SON: Am I in the picture? Am I laughing?
OSV: Well, I’d have to look again but no, I guess you weren’t laughing.
SON: There you go. What kind of vacation is that, taking pictures of your kids looking miserable? And the family we went with was nuts. They had that little kid who kept dropping his pucky under the table and started screaming and we all had to go under there and look for it so he’d shut up. I didn’t even know what a pucky was.
OSV: That’s what they called his pacifier. You were too old for a pucky.
SON: I wasn’t old enough to make you get me out of there.
Well, what a lovely sprint down memory lane. When I mentioned this conversation to Daughter and shared with her how surprised I was at Son’s recollection of our Hallmark Family Vacation she threw in her handful of bliss.
DTR: What are you talking about? It was horrible. You abandoned me. I didn’t think I’d ever find you again. I was in tears and you were all lined up laughing outside the dining room like I didn’t even exist.
OSV: All right, I said I was sorry we left the room without you. Nobody saw you go into the bathroom. It was a zoo with all those kids. We just wanted to go to dinner before that pucky got lost again and we were all on our knees banging heads looking for it.
DTR: You shut the lights. I came out and said, “Hello?” and the room was dark and you were all gone. I didn’t know where the dining room was. I started running down the halls crying and then I found you all just standing there laughing, like “Hey, where were you?” I was in hell, that’s where I was.
It wasn’t the moment to ask if she saw her brother there.
Here are some of Daughter’s (happy) vacation photos:
montreal
steamboat springs, co
road trip
vienna