Surviving My Family

TRAVEL + PARENTING

It's not all sunshine and rainbows — Part One

Look at that cute little face. Don't be fooled by that gentle smile and those happy, gleaming eyes. Unknowingly, this was the beginning of what I can only explain as a vacation from Hell…but if Hell was also a little bit fun and exciting.

It all began with my husband's surprise announcement that he wanted to take a vacation immediately due to being exhausted from constantly working. He had just finished a month and a half stretch in a shithole town and needed to escape the enduring shitshow that is Alaskan winter.

We decided to book an RV through Cruise America and planned a road trip from Oregon, down the coast, and eventually end our year in Vegas.

The morning of our trip, I was already exhausted from lack of sleep. Nightmares accompanied with sleep paralysis were how I spent my final hours home after packing, repacking, and over-packing suitcases.

Thank god for my prescription of Adderall! I popped a few of those babies and quickly forgot that I was depleted from any natural energy I had left in my system. We left in a hurry and arrived at the airport just in time to order McDonalds and listen to the kids argue with each other. Super fun.

The family slept the entire flight, and luckily we weren't stuck with any screaming babies on the plane. On the other hand, I was still whirling with energy and chose to listen to an audiobook for the duration of the flight.

My first mistake was having the kids watch Final Destination a few days before we planned to set out on our adventure. I mentioned the types of words and phrases that shouldn’t be said in an airport or on a plane but hadn't expected them to start quoting the movie mid-flight.

You can imagine how it felt when I was rudely disturbed from my book to be asked if we would violently crash like that plane from the movie.

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