Vacation. What a wonderful thing. Family. What a blessing. Vacationing with family? It should be wonderful blessing. It’s a time to relax with your loves ones. So why am I suddenly thinking I don’t want to vacation with them? 

I’m usually pretty gung-ho about vacationing with your family. I’ve even written a series of articles on how to survive traveling, vacationing, and staycation-ing with them, but sometimes my survival instincts tell me I need to not vacation with them if I’m going to survive. 

Love my family, but some moments I really don’t want to vacation with you. Moments like….

When They Disrupt Your Sleep

One middle-of-the-night, I woke up unable to move my body because something was weighing me down. Turned out it was my cousin. Sleeping diagonally across me. And yet her torso and head were perpendicular to me. Ignoring what would surely be a morning of back pain for her, I couldn’t fathom that anyone could be such a bed hog when they’re supposed to share the bed! No matter how many times I pushed her feet off me, they still found their way to me like a magnet.   

When They Ruin Your Style

During a cousin ‘recreation’ picture, my cousin made it clear pink was not his color. He refused to wear the color assigned to his family, and threatened to cancel our photo. We couldn’t do the photo without him, despite him not being boring before the original – but it’s not our fault our parents never gathered us again for a studio portrait since the first time. I should mention the shirt was also snug. And his girl cousin’s. To make him feel better, another cousin rocked a skin-tight polo that made him feel like he was wearing a corset, even though it ruined his style, too.

When They Hurt You

Where my family vacations together is made up of boulderous rocks along the shoreline that tower over the water. Depending on the rock, they’re great for running, laying out on, jumping off, and even exploring. The way rocks lean against each other makes caves, several of which have become underwater caves with the increasing water levels of Lake Huron. One time as we’re exploring these underwater caves, we had one person swim through and help pull the others through. My cousin apparently didn’t get the memo and stopped me too late. I popped up with a black eye. A rock gave me a black eye, because my cousin let me swim into it. 

When they steal your toilet

No, I’m not talking about someone rushing into the bathroom before you or someone hogging it for 20 minutes (though let’s be real, that sucks too). I’m talking about when someone [accidently] turns off all the water to the house so you can’t use the toilet – or any other form of water. We had to dig a little hole –nicknamed ‘the billy’– in the yard to use while we waited to figure out what caused our drought. It was a water switch that looked like a light switch, if it weren’t for the fact it was barely visible from behind the refrigerator. 

Ah, who am I kidding? I still want to vacation with them and experience every weird thing that happens to us. 

Brianna Krueger is the Chief Editor for Wandering Educators

All photos courtesy and copyright Brianna Krueger