Anyone who has ever taken a teenager on a family vacation knows the drill:You make the plans, the teenager hates the plans, the teenager makes faces and noises to alert you to this fact, you confront their attitude (often in a Starbucks), you remind them how much money you are spending to be here, and then you repeat this for as long as your trip lasts on a perpetual loop.
Nothing is impressive enough. Not the sights, or the shops, or the food; And definitely don’t try to DOCUMENT anything with a photo, because – well, just Ew.
This last week my husband Justin and I took our three youngest girls on a family vacation to the beautiful Monterey Peninsula in California –
World-renowned aquarium, absolutely breathtaking homes and views.
Every adorable place my 12-year-old, Tessa, spotted she made sure to make it known that THAT PLACE looked like a place she’d be willing to go with a DIFFERENT family to.
What more could kids want than this paradise, though, you may ask?
According to them – To never have white sand get anywhere near their 80’s throwback shoes.
I had one goal the entire time, and I made this goal well-known:
I wanted to take just a few moments out of the trip to at least walk down onto the stunning beach.
The rest of the plans could be their own.
This one thing, no matter how hard it would be to find parking, was what I wanted most to do.
I had tried to appease them and their own plans from the moment we got into our room.
My husband assumed his standard vacation position face down on the bed, and I immediately got begged to take them to the pool.
Take them but not act like I WAS WITH THEM.
That part was crucial, and *sign here* must be agreed to.
The littlest one was happy enough with her top two vacation thrills:
Being the one to always use the room key card to let everyone into the room, and pulling the chair over from the desk to peer into the hall from the peep-hole she’d seen in the door. 10/10 vacation. Trip Advisor will soon have her gleaming review.
Really, she is fairly easy to please most of the time. Keep her fed with plenty of protein, grant her internet access, and maybe rub her back once in a while.
I mean, she spent the whole trip brushing her teeth with toothpaste on a wet washcloth because she’d remembered absolute billowing armloads of toys and electronics and could just not be bothered to be expected to remember a toothbrush, too. This one is real low-maintenance for now. Not so much the other two. Not so easy once they pass 12 years old. I mean, UGH. Would they have to share a BED?!
I think parents should earn travel points for each complaint they track on a family vacation.
Maybe use one of those little tally clickers the guys at Costco use to count the number of people that enter the store.
I would have so many airline miles racked up under this plan, I’d be writing this from one of those floating huts in Bora Bora.
I’d like to see how they would fair with the types of vacations *I* was taken on growing up.
“Prepare to see some seedy strip motels, kids, where you’d better be up on all your booster shots if you want to visit the ice machine. No one researches ‘Top Breakfast spots’ here. Hope you like sweaty cellophane-wrapped muffins from the gas station with highly questionable blueberries.Here’s your own black-light, now. I SUGGEST YOU NESTLE IN.”
In one attempt to gain even a crack of a smile from Chloe, (whom for about 70% of the trip had looked like she was undergoing a medical procedure instead of a vacation) I urged her to go on into a shop when I spotted her eyeballing a swimsuit top in its window.
“Go on in and try it,” I suggested. “You never know…”
I saw her eyes spark, and thus, so did my own small glimmer of hope.
The whole family piled into the tiny boutique and after looking around for more of them on a rack unsuccessfully, I asked the clerk about the top.
Before we knew what was even happening, and without a word, she began stripping the mannequin completely nude, handing the top to Chloe, and telling her that she was in luck because that 6 square inches of black material was on sale for $90.
Now, we are mostly Target people. I’m sure by looking at us that salesgirl knew. Chloe had never held a $90 swimsuit in her life.
We all tried to be discreet, and I willed myself to not choke or blink, while I asked her if she’d like to try it on.
She stood there frozen, like she was breathing through her eyeballs, as my 12-year-old, Tessa, whispered a supportive,
“Girl, you’d have a salad dressing stain on that thing 20 minutes in. Ninety dollars…”
Paige, however, was not so discreet.
She had peep-holes to get back to, after all, and thus burst out “NINETY DOLLARS?! Girl, naw! I could literally sew a top of dollar bills and still cover more AND be cheaper than that thing.”
“It’s from Columbia,” the salesgirl meekly responded, most likely stunned, quietly; Which is when Paige responded with what would be a highlight of our trip, surprisingly, “So are drugs, but we’re not buying those either,” and we quickly left the store, for the very first time with all of us looking amused, bound together by simply recognizing we are who we are. Smiles FINALLY on every face, we hurried to the car.
In that moment I was reminded that the key to a family trip is just owning that the family going with you will be yours.
You with your eye-rolling teens, and nine year old’s eyeball peeping through the hotel door.
You with your Target swimsuits, and kids that don’t like sand even if it’s perfect and white, or family photos, or any shared space.
You as you are. Your same people, just in a different place.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
