As soon as Gillian realized the “stuff” was gone she came after me. She always come after me first. I’m the one she spends the most time with so I’m her safety person.  She was all up in my face asking where her stuff was.  My heart was racing and my breathing was short.  “I don’t know how I am going to deal with this”.  Howie came into the room and pulled her out and War World 5 started.  The kids and I stayed in the bedroom and shut the door while Howie worked on defusing the bomb, I mean Gillian, in the other room.  It was a tense stand-off that lasted almost 20 minutes.  Once we could safely leave the room we gathered up our bags and headed to the car and took off for the beach. The whole way there all we heard from Gillian was “where’s my blanket. Where’s my pillow. Where’s my Santa picture. Where’s my lipstick. Where’s my purse. Where’s my umbrella. Where’s my phone.” Over and over and over and over and over again.  She was a broken record.  There was also spitting and stomping going on in the back seat.  We made sure the doors were locked and the window locks were in place because you never know with her.

     We got to the beach and got all of our chairs and the blanket set out. Gillian sat in the chair next me, Emma sat on the blanket and the boys went for a walk down the beach. I exhaled. This was nice and I just knew Gillian was going to be happy because she loves the beach.   We could finally all relax and enjoy our time together as a family.  “Gillian don’t throw the sand”. “Gillian stop spitting”. Dang it, I exhaled to soon!   Next thing I know she has taken the two largest handfuls of sand known to man and thrown them all over Emma.  Then she gets up and throws her chair across the beach.   Fortunately, the boys were close enough for me to call them back to help out. We got Gillian calmed down again and then helped Emma get the sand out of her hair, off her back, shoulders and neck and out of her purse.  We decided to have a bit of a laugh over this one because my motto is “you either laugh or cry” and at this point in our trip we had done way too much crying. So we laughed. 

    I felt so bad for Emma and  I decided that she and I needed to take a stroll down the beach by ourselves.  Off we went. This was nice. This was calm. This was quiet. I love spending one on one time with this child of mine. I think we walked about 30 feet before I heard Gillian screaming at me from behind. “Wait!  Wait!  Come back!  Stop right now!”  Then I hear Howie, “You have a stalker. You’d better run!”  I looked at Emma, we both smiled and I said “run!”. So Emma and I took off running down the beach cracking up laughing with Gillian running behind trying to catch up.  We didn’t get very far because it’s really hard to run fast when you are laughing hysterically. Gillian got so mad that she walked into the water and got all wet and almost lost her shoes.  “Reality discipline” is what my friend called it!  We had a good laugh over Gillian’s tantrum this time. I think that’s what we all needed.  

      We ended up walking the beach together as a family and enjoying ourselves.  We were able to go have lunch without any craziness and decided it would be best to skip the park and head home early after all the Wars we had fought.  The ride home was peaceful and full of great music and singing. We came exhausted but we came home as a family that continues to walk the journey together relying on Christ to get us through each crazy moment of every crazy day. 

      This, my friends, was the Real Vacation. The behind the scenes of all those happy vacation pictures.  The moments between the smiles for the camera. Isn’t it funny how we all do that?  (It actually isn’t funny at all. It’s sad) It’s like wmhen you are yelling at your kids and then the phones rings and you answer it sounding like mother Theresa.  “Hello.  Oh hi!  How are you?  I’m doing great. Life is wonderful. Thanks for asking”. You hang up the phone and the exorcist comes back out at your kids.  The next time you look at someone’s happy social media photos just remember that you only have to smile for a split second to get that photo.  

-My sweet daughter Emma and I with a photobomb by Nolan-