Everytime I see this picture vivid images pop up in my mind!! You see it's always been about travel and going places for our family - even when we had no money. This picture captures our creativity or desperation some of you might say!! We were going on our summer vacation with our 3 children ages 4, 6 & 7 to Tawas, Michigan to stay at the FREE family cottage for a week of beach, sun, fun and of course bike riding! Did I say we had no money??? Doesn't matter though you can see how creative we were!!!I can't tell you how ecstatic Mike & I were that we got everything into the car that we might need for the week we would be gone!! Let me give you a few of the details! First off this is a GLC Mazda Station Wagon. When you hear station wagon you probably think of the "good ole days" of huge a car and lots of space for packing. As you can see from the picture - no space, still lots of stuff packed in there! Let me give you a list: In the back of the wagon were all of our suitcases and clothes for 5 people for being gone a week plus bed linens, towels, beach towels, bike helmets, toys & games (in case it rains), pots & pans (did all the cooking there), paper towels, toilet paper - well you get the idea and that is just the back of the wagon. Let's take a little look at what was attached to the outside of the car! First on top we have the car top carrier with all of our food (guess we didn't think they would have grocery stores up there), on top of the carrier we have (look closely) 2 beach chairs - one for each parent. Didn't I say we were going to bike ride? Well as you can see we have 2 bikes on top of the car, 2 adult bike behind the car on a bike carrier and then the third bike is attached to the front grill!! Now pack inside a family of 5!! We were on our way and everyone was giddy with anticipation of a great time! Mike pulled the car carefully out of our subdivision and onto the main street and that is where the laughter began!! I'm not talking about our family (though we were already having fun) but the people on the road that saw our car! Wives were poking husbands in the drivers seat pointing to our humble vacation travels laughing and laughing hysterically! That was just the beginning of our 5 hour road trip to the cottage. We brought alot of people laughter all the way to Tawas and all the way home!
I think though that our family had the last laugh! We still have great memories of our trips there with lots of family photos! This past year we were in Tawas again and now our grandchildren are able to visit those same places!
Don't pass up opportunities to travel with your family, when the kids are gone and have families of their own, they will still remember!!
Mike, Me, Matt (son), Seth(son-in-law), Jarod (son), Ethan (grandson), Mom, Jessica (daughter), Aiden (on lap granson)
