Family Summer Vacations

Ahhh summer vacation as a kid. School's out. I can FINALLY watch The Price is Right at 10am--someone could win a Coleman's Camper or a hot dog stand!!! Mom makes a lot of macaroni & cheese, chicken strips, and applesauce--my fav meal! My brother & I take swimming lessons. My friends and I bike around the cemetery, (don't hate until you see the endless smooth pavement in my hometown's cemetery. Be jealous). My brother and I climb trees and pretend to be spies. We eat wild blackberries. I host a few lackluster lemonade stands on our dead-end street where I sell Country Time to my loyal customers: my grandma, a kind lady who lives on our street and waters her flower beds daily, Radar our Welsh Corgi, and my grandpa as he takes a brief break from his rural mail route.

Rewind....I left out my most favorite thing about my childhood summers...

Family Summer Vacations.

There was something so magical about going on family vacations during summer break. It was an adventure! I get so nostalgic when I reflect on the family vacations we took when I was little. Mom would always make snickerdoodle cookies for the road. Dad would take the Dodge Chrysler Caravan to the shop for a tune-up. My grandma would agree to watch my beloved cross-eyed, half Siamese cat, Cleo, and our 2 dogs while we were away. Dad would load all of our luggage into the EsCARgo. And we were off!!

Frequently we would motor to Branson, Missouri and visit Silver Dollar City. Dad would try to get me and my brother interested in watching a man blow glass or an old lady make brooms. Really we just wanted to ride the Log Ride over and over again and wave at Dad filming us on the RCA Shoulder Mount Camcorder as we plummeted down the watery chute. I would purchase a wood-carving of my name to set on my bedroom desk or perhaps a puff-painted umbrella which I would do absolutely nothing with. At night we would see a show at the Grand Ole Opry. I remember seeing Louise Mandrell, who I thought was gorgeous and looked at me several times. I remember not getting any of the jokes at the Ray Stevens show but loving it because my big brother did!! And lastly, I remember John Davidson--the old host of Hollywood Squares--serenading me and ending it with a kiss on the cheek. I was furious at him for doing that!! But mostly, I was furious that my brother called John Davidson my boyfriend for the rest of the trip. Alas, all was well once we rode go-carts and bumper boats, as you can see from our smiling faces below.
A trip to Branson was never complete unless Mom got to shop in one of the thousands of Christmas shoppes around the city. I never understood why she wanted to shop for Christmas when it was June, but few people love Christmas quite like my mom does. Here we are in one of the cute shopping centers that was home to Mom's favorite Christmas shoppe. And P.S. please disregard my...outfit??


Other times we visited Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Dad would burn out his lungs blowing up air mattresses, while my brother and I wore huge goggles and searched for buried treasure (aka--rocks). My brother taught me that spitting in my goggles would keep them from fogging up so much.
There were other trips to Disneyworld; Opryland, USA in Nashville, TN; Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, TN; and Gulf Shores, AL. And so it continued each summer until our lives were too full of basketball camps, church camps, and other teenager things. Eventually my brother left for college, and a couple of years later I moved 305 miles away.

Sifting for "precious gems" in Pigeon Forge!!

Now instead of 10am episodes of The Price Is Right, lemonade stands, and eating snickerdoodles in the backseat of a minivan, my summers are full of work, trips with my friends...and the occasional visit home to see my incredible family. Although summer family vacations are over for me to experience as a child, I cling to these memories. I hold them tightly in my heart. But I like to leave a little room for new memories. New memories I plan to make once I have a family of my own. Because when I reflect and think about it, the location and souvenirs aren't what made our family summer vacations so special. It was the other stuff that did--my brother and I playing games over the bench seats in the mini-van, Dad making up funny songs about our trips, Mom taking time to always educate us on what we were touring, Dad once refusing to leave our hotel until he found my lost, cherished puffalump, Pesky Rabbit, and my parents' determination to always instill tons of love and fun into our childhood.

And this is why Family Summer Vacations are one of my favorite things.....