Vacation Days (TBT)

I know, I know. ThrowBack Thursday is such a lazy way of filling a blog post that all the cool kids have stopped doing it. But hey, because I am lazy and un-cool, here we are again.

I love this picture, which was taken on vacation...somewhere. I'm guessing this was our trip to New Mexico when the Boys were 10, 8, 6, and 4, but my meticulous record-keeping (hahahaha!) has not helped me out on pinpointing the exact moment it was snapped.

It is, however, a fairly good representation of how the Ragtag Family (that would be us) looked when we were on vacation: happy but not exactly fashion forward. I mean, who dressed those kids?

This came to mind yesterday as I was catching up on my blog reading and came across a post by another vacationing mother. She took her three small children to Mackinac Island, and after seeing her gorgeous photography and the activities they did, I was feeling pretty bad about my own shortcomings as a mom. I mean, this was the caption to one of the photos:

"The lawn in front of Fort Mackinac–great for cartwheels, Frisbee, dancing, playing tag, people watching. My kids made friends with so many dogs there too."

Sigh. If I'd written a caption to the photo above, it probably would have said "Successful day. Everyone still alive after nine hours in the car. Found mechanic open when the Suburban blew a tire."

And we won't talk about how the children in the other blog are dressed like fashion models, and also sat quietly during their ride in the horse-drawn carriage. Did those kids pick out their own clothes? I don't think so, because if they had they undoubtedly would have chosen an Albert Einstein t-shirt and the striped shorts that I used to buy in multiple sizes and colors at WalMart. ($4 a pair, folks. Can't argue with that.) Phooey to those other children in their perfect rompers and long white skirts.

But I have the trump card: These Boys are now charming grown-up adults who arrange their own vacations and do the driving when we're traveling together. They also dress themselves quite nicely, all by themselves.

My work here is done.