So, How Was Your Vacation?

Sometimes, I find myself in a quandary about what to write about in my blog.  I'd like to share the details about my vacation, but given the fact that it's clear that at least some of my blog stalkers are back, I'm not sure I should share much in the way of details.  Even if I didn't have concerns about revealing too much identifying information, I think some of my critics would think that I was bragging or showing off, and accuse me of further abusing my child by doing the things I wanted to do on vacation, instead of booking airline tickets, renting a car, and spending a week at the nearest Disney theme park.

So without going into too many specifics, I'm going to share a few bits about our vacation:

• We went camping at a somewhat local campground.
  
  
• The weather was not as nice as we would have liked, but a bad day camping is better than a good day doing almost anything else.  Everything we have came home unusually filthy.
  
  
• To our surprise, the kid behaved better than she has on any other camping trip.  It's unclear why, though I'm hoping that interventions with the crisis counselor may be helping.  Her worst behavior appeared after one of her friends arrived to spend a few days with us.
  
  
• The friend ended up going home a day early, not because of our kid's behavior, but because she wasn't having fun (choosing to go camping when one is sick is generally a bad idea) and called home begging for a ride.  The adult who came to pick her up was not pleased.
  
  
• It turned out that the friend's departure was a blessing in disguise, because an emergency popped up a few hours later that resulted in a mad dash to the nearest hospital. (The emergency didn't involve anyone in our family, and everyone who was involved is now fine.)

Some things I learned this trip:

• My big truck can go scary fast.
  
  
• I am mean because I won't allow a pair of teenagers to spend the entire day inside my RV, especially when we have a perfectly good enclosed and heated screen room outside.
  
  
• I am extra-special mean because I insist all teenagers who are not helping with meal preparation go outside when I'm trying to use my tiny galley (kitchen) to make dinner.
  
  
• I am extra-special, double-trouble, quadruple-whammy mean because I do not allow non-helping teenagers to sleep in when other adults in our group are waiting for breakfast, especially when I need the dinette table, which the kids were sleeping on, for a meal-preparation area because there is no counter space in our RV*.
  
  
• Jumbo marshmallows, in my opinion, are not as good as the regular-sized ones.
  
  
• I can tow and back up a 30' trailer without wrecking it.
  
  
• Sleeping in a car, parked at a gas station, in the middle of the night, with a friend, because you are too tired to drive another mile, is just as fun as it used to be.
  
  
• Even the most boring of vacations can turn into an interesting adventure.

I had a great time.

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* Said teenagers had the option of sleeping in a tent, where they wouldn't have been disturbed by our need to do something as trivial as meal preparation.