Are you anticipating a vacation and all the fun that goes along with it? What about if the baby gets sick, the flight gets missed or you have three flat tires? Is it still going to be a fun vacation?
Having traveled lots in the last 25 years has made me realize that even when things go wrong you can still rejoice and have a good time. Having a positive attitude when things don’t go smoothly really helps and keeps everyone else happy too. When the baby was sick, he slept most of the 13 hour train ride. When the flight was missed and we had to sit all day, we caught up on reading all those blogs we never have time for. When we had lots of flat tires we got good at changing them.
Right now we have been sitting in a boring little airport for the last 10 hours and if we can’t get on the next flight we will be here until tomorrow. But hey, we are on vacation so we will enjoy it!
We can look back at all the enjoyable times we had in the last week. We were in Montana to visit my sister and her family. It was disappointing to get there and see no Montana blue sky due to the wild fires. But we were still able to enjoy our stay even with the smoke smell and haze.
As you can see, the sky was hazy and at times the mountains were not even visible. But the sunsets were still very beautiful.
The river was still lovely and we enjoyed several walks to the water’s edge or over the bridge in town.
Sunday was rainy and it washed away the smoke and haze. Monday we woke up to beautiful Montana skies and it got more lovely as the day went on.
So as we sit here and wait for our flight tomorrow we are trying very hard to be positive. We wish we were home but we could be somewhere much worse so we are thanking God for His blessings to us.
So what are your joys (or trials) on your vacations?
The vacations that don’t go as planned probably stand out more in our memories. Time eventually erases the hardest parts and we look back and fondly remember the good parts. The summer of our 5th anniversary we went camping with friends. We had 2 children under 2 and tenting really was a big ordeal. To top it off the 5 month old got a horrible case of chicken pox. We certainly can tell quite the stories of that ‘vacation’. The sweetest part of that whole weekend was when our friends babysat our children and sent the two of us out on a romantic supper date. At that point dates were pretty far and few between. It was a great vacation!