Vacation Tales

So the family and I went on vacation last week. And, much to our surprise it was quite fun. It consisted of my family, my brother, his wife and their Monster, plus my Mom and Dad. When I say "family", I mean "FAMILY".

And, we all managed to get along until Mom went into "control freak" mode! But that wasn't until Thursday. Anyway, I'm still recovering at home and at work so this shall be more tidbits than a continuous story.

Spanish Television!
Amazingly enough, kids don't care what language a cartoon is in as long as the television is on. The will stare and drool at the screen, and it doesn't matter that they can't understand a word. Actually, it is kinda scary. We ended up watching re-runs of 'Top Cat' in Spanish and it's just as cool as watching them in English. You can become cool Dad if you can tell your kids all the names of the characters even though the show is in Spanish. Although such valuable trivia will get you a "Are you sure you didn't watch too much TV as a kid?" from your wife.

Beach Life!
Factoid #1: Obesity in not limited to Americans.
Factoid #2: Skimpy bathing suits are not always a good thing. Not by far.

Speaking of skimpy and obesity, the Wife did better in the visual department than I while at the beach. It seemed like my eyes were bleeding everytime I turned around to look at someone. It wasn't fair, Wife got speedo's with tennis balls stuffed inside to look at and I got the 60 year old with a leather upper.

- Good moment on the beach: As the two topless women walked towards me I realized they weren't pretty but at least they had "huge tracks of land!"
- Bad moment on the beach: Realizing one of the two women was actually a man.
- Worst moment on the beach: Noticing as they walked by that it looked like they had matching thongs.

Best comment by a man during the week!
In an effort to sell you things, the hotel had a photographer that wandered around. He had either some skimpily dressed models (Native attire), or a monkey, or a parrot, or whatever and would try to sell you glossy 8x10's later. Needless to say, he was always lurking about ready for the photo ambush. Anyway, one night after dinner, Wife and I were walking our kids and Brother's Monster when the club photographer ran up. As he's taking the picture of my wife and I with 4 kids, he says to me "What'sa matter buddy? You no like TV?"

Airplane Etiquette!
In case you don't fly, let me fill you in on something...just because you can put your seat back on an airplane doesn't mean that you should. Seriously, it will get you in trouble if you're not smart about it. For example, if the guy behind you is 6 foot tall, it's not cool to put your seat back. You make him quite uncomfortable. Same goes if the row behind you is full of little kids, leaning your seat back so it's that much closer to them is not a good idea. Considering I was on a four hour airplane ride, the kids did great! But it leads into the...

Best comment by a woman during the week!
The Woman in the row in front of us put her seat back which entered not only my airspace but that of Boy and Girl, too. I did my best to keep things quiet but after three hours there's only so much one can do. They weren't out of hand or bad, they were just being little people.

Finally, the Woman in seat ahead says: "Can you please control your children?"
Wife, who was doing a great job keeping the kids amused at the time: "I'm sorry. Are you traveling alone?"
Woman with a quizzical look: "Yes."
Wife: "It's obvious why."
The woman didn't talk to us again.

Playing to Win!
Boy has gotten ultracompetitive lately and it's fun, but at the same time it gets old. I found out that I will cheat at battleship so that Boy will not win. I also found out that Boy will cheat at Battleship so he can win. Apparently, competitiveness runs in the family.

Those are just some of the tales from vacation!