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Alamb

Author/Television Reporter

Amanda Lamb is a professional television journalist and author. She covers murder trials by day and reads Dora the Explorer to her children at night. Somewhere in between all of that she writes about those parenting moments that catch each us off-guard in a crazy, chaotic, and wonderful way. Aman...

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Family Vacation

Amanda Lamb

It always sounds like a good idea when you start talking about it- a family getaway.  You romanticize special moments with your children, sitting in front of a roaring fire, drinking hot cocoa and sharing laughter.  You don’t think about the fights in the car during the long drive, sharing a hotel room with your children, trying to get them to be quiet in a restaurant after a long day of sight-seeing, or the dreaded meltdown when their overtired, off-schedule little brains finally can’t take it anymore.

We spent Thanksgiving at a resort complete with beautiful Christmas decorations and even more beautiful mountain views from every window.  After our Thanksgiving meal the girls and their two friends, from the the other family we were travelling with, took off in circles around the dining room and ended up wrestling on the floor.  We exited quickly.  Next we stopped in a gift store where one child dropped a basket of soap on the floor to show the other kids.  The store manager was not amused, especially when we told her we had not planned to buy the soap.

Friday we stood in freezing temperatures and looked at small farm animals which the kids predictably loved.  I on the other hand did not love this, but I fake smiled and survived with just a minor case of hypothermia.  I washed the girls’ hands all day long convinced they had come in contact with e-coli.  We then did something I did love; we toured a beautiful old mansion which my youngest announced to everyone was “boring.”

Meals were a blur.  We made early reservations, but the kids were still tired and not inclined to sit and wait for their food.  We spent most of the time scolding them, shushing them, and letting them win at tic-tac-doe in order to keep them quiet.  Copious amounts of wine helped dull the pain of these outings.

The last night my youngest burned her tongue on hot chocolate and as a result then spilled most of it.  The bartender trying to be kind put an ice cube in what was left in her cup to cool it down.  This sent her into a complete fit on the floor.  When I tried to pick her up she ran off and hid beneath the massive Christmas tree.  I followed the wiggling branches until I saw an opening where I could grab her.  My biggest fear was that she would send it crashing down on top of everyone.  I pictured the chain reaction- people screaming and scattering, ornaments crashing in a million pieces on the floor.  It wasn’t pretty.

While the weekend was more like the Chevy Chase movie, “Family Vacation,” than a Hallmark movie, there were still some memorable moments.  After begging to do so, I let the girls sit and have their caricatures drawn.  For the first time all weekend they sat quietly and smiled proudly while the artist sketched their precious faces.  My youngest who loves to dance pulled me out on the floor to groove to big band music one evening for a full hour.  She shimmied in sheer ecstasy as I twirled her around the floor.  My oldest became fascinated with the legend of a ghost called “The Pink Lady” who supposedly lived in the historic hotel and made me walk with her to locations where the spectre was known to appear.  In the mornings both girls would get in bed with me and snuggle, their faces still soft with sleep, hair spiked in every direction, their warm breath on my face.  Moments like these are hard to put a price on.

Not unlike life, the weekend was a mix of the chaos and the tender moments we crave with our families.  Not perfect, far from it, but will we do it again?  Absolutely.  And again, and again, and again.