A Trip to Remember

Well, summer is nearly to that point where it goes into hyper-speed. We've just returned from our family vacation, and I think it's time for another rambling post to record all of those wonderful and (more frequently) humiliating moments.

Eric and I took a weekend trip to New York at the beginning of the month and had a great time. We saw Philip Seymour Hoffman play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman--he was fantastic, as was the rest of the cast. And we had a long night out at the W hotel with Alex, Eric's friend from college.

When we got back we had some time to work in our garden, play with the neighborhood kids, and pack up for our next trip, the Hill family vacation. We spent a couple nights with my family on the way to Gatlinburg, where we stayed in a huge three-story vacation house in the Smoky Mountains. Some highlights were the hikes we went on. We saw three different waterfalls; Auden splashed around naked in a freezing stream; we saw tons of salamanders, even three different varieties of them. Logan rode his first go-cart solo in Pigeon Forge. He was a surprisingly cautious driver, even when the ride attendant tried to mix things up by racing him. Auden's two-year molars are coming in, so he's been rather moody and hasn't slept well; fortunately, we had a king-size bed where all four of us slept for a couple of nights.

It was fun to see that our kids and Jackie's Isabel are starting to play together really well. When we asked Logan what his favorite part of the trip was, he said, "Playing with Isabel."

We just hadn't had enough vacation yet, though, so we saddled up and headed to Cavern City, KY, to see Mammoth Caves. Boy, was that a mammoth surprise. We went on a two-hour evening tour. It was an easy walk, but Auden was in a full-on screech mode and Logan was whining about being tired and his belly hurting. Eric and I carried the boys the whole way, and we held our breaths and tried to appease screeching Auden with suckers when the tour guide, who really liked to hear himself talk, gave his spiel about the history of the caverns. We hung back at the back of the group with the back-up tour guide and asked if we could turn around. Things really weren't working out. Besides, the head tour guide had said Giant's coffin was the last place we could turn back. "No," said the back-up guide. "We're a little more than halfway through. Sorry." Great.

On we went, trudging our children along down a dark, damp stairway when Logan starts to complain that he thinks he feels sick. Great. We're in a cave, for chrissake. But at the foot of the staircase were rows of benches, a more formal location for the chatty tour guide to do his thing. Everyone was seated, waiting for him to begin, and here's Logan, feeling sick. Back-up tour guide raced with Eric to a trash can, which was tantalizingly close, just past the stage area. But, alas, they were too late. With about 20 feet to go, Logan threw up right in front of our seated tour group. There's nothing like hearing your kid's vomit splatter on a cave floor, then an awkward silence, then hearing chatty tour guide at a complete loss for words finally say, "Well, that was...Uh, let's just move along to the next site."

I've been toying around with six-word memoirs lately. I have a new one to add to my collection: My kid befouled a national park.

Logan felt great after the whole getting sick in fantastic fashion, and we made it out of there alive. The next day we stayed in a really nice cabin in Shawnee National Park in Southern Illinois. We swam in the lake there and went for a nice hike, again lugging both children along. Saw a turtle and two lizards skittering around. We were supposed to stay a second night and then stop back at my folks' but what with Logan's belly still in an uproar and Auden and us tired and cranky, we decided to head for home a little early.

The boys were great on the car ride back. They even stayed awake to see their kitties and could hardly settle down for sleep. Our garden exploded and the weeds had started to claim more territory, just as they do when we leave for vacation every year. What with it being so dry, though, we were thankful our neighbors had watered for us so that we didn't come back to crispy plants. In fact, I pulled a quarter of a gallon bag's worth of sugar snap peas (our first harvest of those this year--the rabbits have always eaten them to the ground every year before) and a couple meals worth of green beans, as well as some broccoli. Logan even ate the peas, and Auden was eating them as fast as I could pick them. "Nummy Nummy!" he said, shaking his head with a smile. I love summer.