The Unvacation
For those of you who don't know, we have written humorous vacation articles (well, we tried to be humorous) about two previous family vacation experiences. These articles laid the foundation of our philosophy of vacationing with a large family (eight children at the time) and no money. At that time we had a fifteen passenger three-tone van (blue, primer gray, and rust) with a big dent, state of the art open-the-windows-when-the-car-is-moving air conditioning, silent ride (no radio), and convenient interior (rubber floors and vinyl seats). That van has taken us a lot of places across the country (mainly relatives' residences). I

t's amazing the things we've learned about traveling that we never thought about when we were just a little family. Perhaps the greatest traveling lesson we have learned is the need to stop at rest areas instead of gas stations. With five daughters at the time (seven now) making good time requires multiple-toilet bathrooms. We've had times when we traveled for an hour and pulled off at a gas station that took us 45 minutes to get everyone taken care of. Of course, to make good time (and to save a lot of money) eating in the car is a must. However, certain foods are no good for large families driving in a van. Cereal is a major problem. Passing bowls with milk in them over four rows of seats to a number of small children will surely result in milk-stained clothes (compliments the sweat), and a puddle of sugary milk and soggy goop on the floor. Having a rubber floor is nice because you can't ruin your carpet and the milk is easy to clean, but if you go up a hill before you clean it up, all of your luggage may get wet (great for attracting bees!). Chocolate is also bad because when your air conditioning vents also serve as windows, chocolate melts fast. We took a two-hour trip once to Philadelphia and brought chocolate covered pretzels. It was such a mess we decided not to do that again. On a later trip, however, we bought trail mix with M&Ms. Incredibly, the M&Ms coated the entire trail mix with a tasty chocolate liquid that our little ones got on their hands, their clothes, and their car seats. From there, the chocolate spread to our entire family. By the time we got to the rest area, we looked like we had just been through an explosion at the Hershey chocolate factory. Now we eat bagels.

Since heat and bathroom stops have become such a problem, we have taken to leaving our house about midnight. It sure makes our air conditioner (the windows) work better, and we've gone up to four hours without having to stop. This is exciting because we get to our vacation spot (our relative's house) sooner. Relatives' houses are really terrific places to vacation. They always give us free food (it sure beats a continental breakfast - old coffee and stale Twinkies), and they also let us stay overnight for free. Try to get a deal like that at a Holiday Inn! As you know, overnight travel requires suitcases and suitcases are a major inconvenience in a car filled with people. As you can imagine, we were thrilled when my brother gave us a luggage rack for our van. Unfortunately, we didn't lock it up correctly on our first long trip and the top flew off in a cornfield near my sister's house. At this point we bought bungee cords and a tarp and we were still able to use our beloved luggage rack. That seemed to work after we fixed it so the eye of the tarp stopped beating on the top of the van, but we had a problem on our way home from my mom's when we ran into a bad thunderstorm in South Carolina. All of the luggage (and the clothes inside them) got wet. We could hardly see in front of us, so we pulled off at the first exit (a gas station - not a rest area), and I got on the roof of the van and threw all our wet suitcases into the van. To be efficient we used the bathrooms there and it took half an hour and everyone got saturated with water running from the car to the bathroom and back (the restroom was on the side of the building).After another incident when we lost a suitcase with two children's vacation clothes in Ohio, we decided we'd have to save up for another luggage carrier.

With all this knowledge behind us, we thought we would be able to apply it to this year's vacation and write you a glowing report. Unfortunately, through circumstances beyond our control, our vacation (that is, our trip to visit relatives) fell through. Since we already had vacation days approved, we decided to take an unvacation - meaning we stayed home. On our first unvacation day we went to the park and had a family baseball game. I had been feeling tired all week, and I was wondering if that is what it is like to be old. I had my seven-year-old daughter run the bases for me when I batted. I caught every ground ball I didn't have to bend over for. I'm sure my energy and exuberance made a memorable day for my kids. Some of my older girls are starting to lose interest in baseball anyway. One of my daughters sits in the outfield and stares at the sky while the game progresses. This isn't a big deal until a ball is hit toward her. Usually she realizes where the ball is when it is past her by about thirty feet. This endears her to her competitive brothers.

The next day, I took my wife out to hear an Irish folk singer at a nearby eating establishment. When we got there, the only table available was so close to the singer he could have hit me over the head with his guitar without taking a step. Cindy decided she would save her eardrums and her hearing for her old age, so we went to another town and another establishment that had also advertised an Irish folk singer. We parked two blocks away and walked to the restaurant. The host stood outside on the sidewalk encouraging people to go inside. They had a bar in front and a restaurant in the back. The host on the sidewalk had been so successful that it was nearly impossible to get to the restaurant because the little bar was packed with people like a can of sardines. We walked outside - taking care not to look at the host on the sidewalk - and walked down the street in order to find another restaurant. We couldn't find anything in our price range that appealed to us. So, hungry, frustrated, and tired, we went back to the Irish restaurant and fought our way through the enthusiastic bar crowd and got a seat in the dining room. The food was excellent, the service fair, and the customers interesting to look at. We never knew there were so many varieties of tattoos and hair color.

The next day I was going to make it up to my wife and children. My wife had read about a sand sculpturing competition at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, so we headed for the big city for some free big city entertainment. I got a reasonably priced parking spot a few blocks away and we walked to our destination. It's amazing how long it takes us to get our ten children to walk a few blocks, but finally we arrived at the grand sand sculpture competition. Unfortunately, there weren't many sand sculptures and the ones they had weren't very big and weren't very good. Some people have more sand in their backyard sandboxes. We studied each sculpture very carefully and stretched the joyous event as long as we could - that is, about five minutes. Now, we were stuck in Baltimore hot, tired, and frustrated, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. At this point I came up with a wonderful idea. I would splurge and we would all eat at the food court. When we got there, my wife reminded me that we had a meal in the crock-pot and suggested that we have a drink or an ice cream cone instead of a meal. I sat everyone down and I walked through the food court and realized that ice cream cones cost almost as much as a meal. Since I didn't want to spend fifty dollars on ice cream, we got up and went home. I carried the toddler the whole way back. I was able to see all the empty parking spaces I could have had that would have considerably shortened the walk. I guess the grand sand sculpture competition wasn't a big draw.

The trip to Baltimore was added to the list of trips that have made my wife legendary in our house. We have our yearly trips to Washington D.C. to see the cherry buds and cherry leaves (we see blossoms once every ten years). We also went to the FBI twice and weren't able to get in. We visited a National museum that had just been closed for renovating for about three years. And finally, we had the trip to the pick-your-own farm where the prices were significantly higher than they were in the grocery store. That was OK with me at this point, because the next day was Father's Day. We were going to visit a wonderful church in Virginia and come home to a steamed crab dinner. This day was bound to be good. Father's Day is terrific when you have ten kids at home.

As Saturday night wound down to its conclusion, my wife noticed that my neck was red. I took off my shirt and she noticed that the redness went halfway down my back as well and looked like it was spreading. My wife, who is a registered nurse, advised me to go to the emergency room. When I got there they gave me a yellow bracelet and told me to sit down and wait. We noticed that some people had red tags, some white, and others yellow like myself. I had a lot of time to think about the meaning of the tags since the wait was so long. Well, it turned out I had an infection on my skin. The reason I had been tired was because my body was fighting the infection all week. They gave me intravenous antibiotics and sent me home with a prescription.

As I was walking out to the car it was starting to get light outside. It was then that it occurred to me that the yellow band they gave me probably stood for people that weren't going to get out until it was daylight. I slept most of Father's Day, but the next day was our final day of vacation and in the summer heat we decided to do something really exciting. We went to the mall. You may think that the mall is the last place you would want to take ten children on your vacation, but it has one very big attraction: air conditioning. You see, our air conditioner expired and the cool air is a real treat for us this year. The mall lost money on us because a substantial amount of cool air escaped when all twelve of us entered and exited the mall. We would have bought drinks there, but they must have the same management as the Inner Harbor food court - $30 for sodas.

Now you have heard of our vacation and unvacation experiences. We have decided we like vacations better than unvacations. Long hot drives with a bunch of sweaty kids is adventurous, while unvacations are too similar to every day life. We haven't decided yet what relatives we will impose on next year. I don't think there are any weddings next year, but you never know. Hopefully our van will survive another winter. Maybe we'll have another baby to cart around - and maybe not. It really doesn't matter where we go next year or whether we go - as long as we're going there together. It's all in God's hands and as long as we have a lot of children and a little money, vacations will always be an adventure.