Day 23

30 Days: Day 23-Favorite vacation

I have plenty of wonderful memories from vacations I've taken in my life. Some of the more prominent ones include:

• Trip to Missouri with my grandma when I met so many of my family on her side for the first time. Rode horses almost every day and fed my inner horse-lover.


• Many summer trips to my grandparents' in Oakland and visiting my mom's step-sister at the restaurant she waitressed at. She'd bring me unlimited Shirley Temple's filled with cherries.


• Driving to Utah for the wedding of my second cousin and hanging out with and playing cards with the adults instead of having to play with the kids. Staying out with my cousin and her friends until very late and having everyone tease us for being so tired the next day.


• My first trip to Colorado to see my newborn niece. I got to do the middle-of-the-night feedings and hold her as much as I wanted. It snowed and other than missing Shell like crazy, I didn't want to leave.


• Taking my kids to California for the first time and showing them off to everyone.


• Going to the Bahamas with my wife.


• Road trip to California with my mom and my kids. My sister flew in with her kids from Missouri and along with my other sister and her two girls we all descended on my grandma's house for much visiting. I left them to hang out with my best friend for a couple of days before flying home and my kids went back to the desert with my sister for a bit before coming home. It was busy and wonderful. The posts about that trip are here and here and here.


• Any time my best friend comes and I take some time off is a great way to spend a vacation, even if we don't do anything specific.

A particularly wonderful vacation in recent years happened in 2009. My sister and her family were going to spend a long weekend here and we decided to do something instead of just hang out. We decided to drive to Mount Rushmore as none of us had ever been there and it was only a 6 hour drive from here. I wrote about our long weekend here and here and here. It remains a highlight today and I'm so glad we took my dad as he had a great time too.