Summer Vacation (A Kid’s Perspective)

Guest Author: 10 Year Old Seth

The “old man Seth” asked me to write about the beach for his blog because he wanted a kid’s perspective. I said “what the heck is a blog? It sounds like what I would call a wet, squishy log I found in the woods.” At first I said no because it sounded boring. Also, I told old man Seth to get some better hobbies than playing with squishy logs. He said he would do my homework for me. That made me says “yes.” Speaking of homework, here’s a secret… when you get to 4^th grade you have to take Penmanship so you can write good. I’m supposed to do 2 pages a nigh in my Penmanship book. I’m about to done with this school year and I haven’t even opened the book and done one page yet. I’m supposed to turn in the finished book next week. So yesterday I just threw it in the pond. I’m going to tell my teacher asks for us to turn in our handwriting books, I’m just going to sneak out to the bathroom and hope for the best. Ok. Let’s get started.

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Going to the beach is my second favorite thing in the world. Christmas is first. Duh.

I’m really hoping for….

Please God. Let me get a Talk Boy for Christmas.

Here's the reasons why I like the beach.

1) Big Waves. I get to boogie board and body surf big waves. That’s probably what I the most about the beach. Last year, my dad let me go to the sand bar all by myself. The sandbar is neat because the water is only up to your knees but the waves are ginormous. The worst part about liking big waves and the sand bar is you have to wake up at the butt crack of dawn for high tide. On vacation, it’s the worst waking up earlier than you do for school, but it’s worth it once you get to the beach.

2) Speaking of waves, I always save my morning bathroom visit so I can pee in the ocean. I don’t like peeing through my swimsuit, so I just go deep in the ocean where no one can see and pee like regular. Sometimes I get worried that a shark will bite my wiener off, but I do it anyways.

Shark Snack

3) The ocean water and the pool shower count as being cleaning, so I don’t have to take a shower or bath. I know the ocean is full of fish pee (and my pee) but I still feel so clean after swimming in it. I love the feeling with all of the ocean water dries on your skin and you stretch and it feels like you are ripping off a layer of exoskeleton or something.

4) Cable. We don’t have cable tv at our house. It’s neat to have it at the beach. My favorite show is the incredible hulk from a long time ago. But, having cable is kind of bad too. I am convinced my dad calls the tv station to get the date of “Shark Week” and books our beach vacation the same week just to freak us out. I promise every time I look at the tv, I see some video of a shark ripping some guys arm. That’s exactly what I like to see immediately before jumping in the ocean.

Dad – “Look at that monster. It just ripped that surfer guy in half. Ok, have fun in the ocean!”

5) Food. I get to eat sandwiches and chocolate milk like every day for lunch. Plus, my mom always does a big seafood night. I eat some many shrimp my fingers start to cramp from unshelling them. Also, my mom makes cakes sometimes. Last year she made my favorite cake. The next day, I walked in the kitchen and she was making another one! I was about to eat it, but she said it was for our friends that we go on vacation with. Their condo was next door. She asked me to take it to them, so I put the cake on a nice plate and walked out the front door. But right when I got out, I snuck into that little storage room that’s always outside of condos (to keep boogie boards, sand toys, and stuff in). You know the one with all of the cobwebs in it.

Oh hello spiders, don’t mind me. I’m just enjoying some cake.

I shut the door and sat in there and ate the entire cake except for one slice. I used a pool towel to clean off the plate and took it to our friends. I handed it to my friends’ mom and said “My mom made a cake and wanted you to have some.” She said, “Well, isn’t that so sweet. Thank you for bringing it over!” Hahahahahahaha!!!! The world will never know. PS. Old Seth said this would be on the internet, so I should be careful what I say. But I’ve never even heard of the” internet”, so I think he’s just being a big doofus. Seriously, someone tell me when I grow up to get a hobby or something.

6) The car ride. My brothers and sister hate the car ride, but I like it. I’m smart and get in the car WAY early and get the best seat in the van. Me and my brother play the wave game and alphabet game. I like the wave game the most. Here’s how you play that game.

Wave game rules: You wave people in other cars. If they wave back, you get a point. A person can only be counted as one point and they can’t be used again (even by another person). If they are two lanes away, you get 2 points. Here’s where it gets fun. If someone waves to you before you wave at them, you get double points. Normally, I just stare at grownups in other cars on the interstate. I used to make funny faces but that never got a wave, they just laughed.

So now I just make this face at everyone in other cars...

 I'm guessing it normally goes like this in the other car. 

“There’s a kid in the van next us being super weird.”

“Just acknowledge you see him and maybe he’ll stop.”

“How should I do that?”

“I don’t know. Just wave or something”

BOOM!!! Double Points!

7) The Sauna. It’s supposed to be for grown-ups, but we go in anyways. Mostly, me and best friend Luke go together (His family goes on vacation the same time as us every year. They are the people who I ate their cake). Anyways, he’s really good at staying in there for a long time. There are these rocks you pour hot water on and it makes steam.  I get so hot and feel like I’m about to faint, but we just keep making it hotter and hotter. Finally, when we can’t take anymore, we sprint out of the sauna and jump into the ice cold pool. It feels so amazing! Plus, there’s this old guy that just lives in the condo place we go to. We talk to him every year. He’s super-duper old. I think his name Frank. He says that he never gets sick because he just “sweats all out in the hot box”. When I’m old, I’m just going to live at the beach and sit in the “hot box” instead of going to the doctor. I don’t really like the doctor anymore. I’m too old for the doctor to let me pick out of the treasure box. But I still ask if I can. They have these cool parachute army guys in there that I like to launch out of my window. Whenever I ask for the treasure box, the doctor looks at me the way adults look at teenagers who show up on their doorstep for trick or treat.

"Typically, I don’t hand out my candy to people with Learner’s Permits.”

So I can just skip all of those doctor appointments if I live somewhere with a sauna. I mean Frank is old as crap and he’s still alive. He must be onto something.

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So that’s why I like the beach. Old man Seth is here to do my math homework. PS. He also told me how to get out of my penmanship book situation. He said the teacher won’t even care that about my penmanship book being at the bottom of the pond if I play my cards right. All I need to do is write her a funny poem (in really good cursive) and tape it to a carton of fresh eggs that I need to sneak out of the house. He said it worked for him. So I’ll probably give it a try.

Fun Fact - If you fart in a jar and seal it up quick, it will stay for smelly for a while. But it’s funner to go outside and light your farts on fire with a match.

Signed,
Robert Seth Megow, Age 10

Surviving Long Distance Car Trips with Children

I see so many of my friends talk about their awesome road trip/holiday travel plans. Let’s just get this out there… The Megows don’t plan to have a stress free trip with organic healthy snacks and educational activities. Our goal is to more or less simply survive long trips in the car. I love this quote by Jim Gaffigan.

"Traveling with 3- and 4-year-old boys is like transferring serial killers from a prison. 

You have to be constantly aware."

Now to be clear, this post isn’t about a fun sightseeing trip with fun stops and little surprises along the way. This is about a “Point A to Point B” trip. The “Ok kids, we have 8 hours in this car together. Please no biting. If you feel the urge to bite, just chomp on your own finger. That will curb that desire quickly.” I’m actually pretty laid back and low stress about being locked in a metal box for an entire day with my kids. I think I’m just kind of a realist on this matter. It’s not going to be the best day in the world; however, if I go ahead and structure my thoughts and expectations, it might be kinda fun.

1.  The first thing I have learned is to expect my car will end up an absolute wreck. I love how everyone posts the car selfie of the family loaded up and headed out towards their destination. I’m guilty of this too. But I would love for people to do a before and after shot of their car on a long ride in the car with kids. Actually, let’s break down a photo I posted recently of a somewhat long drive in the car.

 Ok. This is clearly at the beginning of the trip. Look at my beaming smile. Hahaha.  Let’s look a little deeper on how this picture would have changed if it were a “just pulled in the driveway” after picture. See the empty space between Stevie and Neela in the back, that would have been filled with a giant pile of cracker wrappers, ripped coloring book pages, a upside down and spilt bottle of chocolate milk, 2 frogs, and possibly a few drops of blood if the fight over the sticker page escalated enough before I could intervene.  Do you see Titus’s clean face? Well, that would be replaced with a delightful smearing of a variety of every type of food that he refuses to wipe off because he is “saving it for later”.  Olive would no longer have her pink Minnie Mouse toy in her hand. It would currently be wedged between her car seat and the door. Since dad probably has a hemorrhoid forming from sitting for so long and the sheer stress of dealing with this trip, he didn’t feel like stopping to get said toy, she Olive has been crying the last hour of the trip.  

2. I am about to spend a crap ton of money at gas stations. Seriously though, I do pack a TON of healthyish snacks for about every trip we go on. 

My personal favorite car food.

Especially on a holiday road trip, you know your kids are about to eat nothing but gingerbread houses and Reese’s Christmas trees for the next few days once you arrive at your location. So getting some fruits, veggies, or something somewhat healthy would be excellent right?  Well unfortunately, my children have the appetite that little hot dog eating competition dude. 

"Dad! All you packed me was a bag of pretzels, two bananas, and granola bar?!"

About 45 minutes into the trip, they have eaten the entire days’ worth of snacks. So at our first gas station fill up, I let the kids pick out their own drink and a snack to share with their little seat buddy (Stevie/Neela & Titus/Olive).  My kids are convinced gas station snacks taste better. I think they can just taste the money. Hahaha

“So let’s see… 2 milks, 2 juices, 1 coffee, and 2 bags of chips. Ok that will be $28.45”

3. I am the sole source of sanity of every human in the car. Hahaha. My kids don’t do those little activity books, watch movies, sing songs for over 3 hours. You can load up every movie in the Disney arsenal, and you’ll still be having to entertain those little guys in the back. I know it’s not my job to entertain them for that long of a trip, but if I hate it this much, I know they hate it five times worse. We’ve actually spend a lot of time of the road just me and the kids. Knowing that the kids will probably kind of go out of their mind without your guidance is a good motivator to make it fun. I like to switch it up, making up songs about farts, then telling jokes about farts, then actually farting, back to some fart songs, then maybe mix in a few stories about “The fart who lost his way.”

Fart.

 4. This is probably the biggest thing I have to come to grips with in my mind, my kids are going to climb their way over the mounds of trash looking like cast members of Survivor. With Christmas coming up, family will be so excited to see the kids when we pull in the driveway. I will give this disclaimer before I open the van sliding side door and the kids & trash kind of ooze out of the door, “Unless you want your shirts to be covered in ketchup and blue raspberry ring pop slime, you probably need to let them bathe or maybe just stick to a high five.” Seriously, I had no idea a human could get so sticky and filthy from sitting in idly in one seat for most of the day. In my mind there are four types of clothes in the hierarchy of dress:

I) Church Clothes 

“Look your tights match your dress!!”

II) School Clothes –

“You want to wear that? Your clothes don’t match... but they don’t smell bad. I guess you can wear it; however, if your teacher says something, just say your dad thought it was "Tacky Day" at school .”

III) Play Clothes – 

“No. I guess you don’t have to wear underwear.”

IV) Long Distance Car Trip Clothes – 

 “Wear whatever you don’t like because I’m just going to burn it all once we get there.”

I mean the only way I can describe lifting Olive out of a car seat after a long trip in the car is like peeling off a plastic Band-Aid after showering with it on. It’s not exactly stuck to your body, but it’s clearly adhering and is just kind of gross and goopy.  Also like a Band-Aid, dampening the general area will do wonders for the removal. Honestly, the last time we took a trip in the summer, I purposely put swimsuits under all of my kids clothes. That way right when we got to our location, they could strip down right by the car and jump into the pool; therefore cutting down on the amount of elbow grease I would need to remove the Laffy Taffy stuck to Neela’s chin.

Be Blessed,

Seth