Growing up, my family referred to ourselves as the Griswolds when it came to family vacations. Like the movie family, we were (and still are) a goofy, loving bunch who set out on vacations with the best intentions but often met with some hilariously disastrous events along the way. We even drove around in a sweet station wagon that we nicknamed the Family Truckster. We’ve gotten lost in a state park and on a bridge. We’ve left the tailgate down on the truck with all of our luggage in the truck bed, running over a suitcase and scattering fishing poles along the highway before realizing our mistake. We’ve stayed in a house infested with bats and (possibly) ghosts, which my uncle still swears weren’t there before we arrived. While staying in that same house, my little brother had a fall in the bathroom that resulted in a fairly serious dental injury and my other uncle ended up in the ER for a whole bunch of stitches after cutting his wrist open. Needless to say, we weren’t invited back there for a few years.

Now that I’ve long ago moved out of my parents’ house and no longer take vacations with the whole family, I was pretty certain I had left the vacation bloopers behind me. Ah, but doesn’t life tend to surprise us? As I found out this Christmas, I still have a little bit of Griswold left in me: About half way through the four-hour drive to my parents’ house on Christmas morning I had a sudden thought that I wasn’t sure if I had remembered to put my overnight bag in the car when I was loading up the trunk. As it turns out, I had remembered to pack absolutely everything except for my bag. It was way too late to turn around at that point, so I spent our two-and-a-half day trip wearing my Christmas outfit and borrowing whatever else I needed from my mom and my sister-in-law. Oh, the fun never ends! (more…)