Vacation - The Abbreviated Review

I had a whole big post planned out for this, but my job keeps getting in the way. Boo! I figured that I'd better get at least a shortened version up here, otherwise I'd never get it done.

To summarize: A great time was had by all. I love my crazy family.

Most Memorable Moments:

• Playing the Cranium Game for oh, so many reasons. We found out that my dad has been conditioned by his job as a Contracts Manager so that any time he has to read anything aloud, he puts on his 'game face'. This means that he gives away no emotion other than a general aura of disgust/annoyance. Every time he read a clue aloud, we were all convinced that he was pissed at us. I also learned that my husband should always do the humming part of the humdinger clues.
• Crouching on the floor of my van holding a cut open water bottle so E4.3 could pee into it because we were stuck in a construction zone on the highway. This experience will definitely make it into a book someday because it was so funny/embarrassing once we could all look back on it without shuddering in remembered horror. btw, I had no idea her bladder could hold that much. Amazing.
• The ice cream cones that tried to eat us (they were delicious but HUGE)
• Watching the kids run from ride to ride at the amusement park because they were having so much fun. If it spun, dipped, went fast or slung them around, they wanted to ride it.
• Seeing all the baby animals at the zoo. I've never seen so many animal babies at one zoo before. They were super-cute and funny as they clumsily did their thing.
• Seeing, talking and playing with all our long-lost cousins on both sides of the family. It was so nice to see everyone. I wish we all lived closer so I could get to know them as individuals.

The other thing from the trip that will make it into a book sometime has to do with a store we saw. I so wish we'd gone inside so I could have seen what it was like on the inside. The sign to lure people in from the highway read "Pepper Spray, Fireworks, Sugar-Free Fudge". Now there's a combination. Then on the windows of the store in 6-ft tall letters were the words "GUNS!", "KNIVES!", "JELLY BELLIES!". We almost collapsed laughing. There's a story there. Gotta be.