Thirty-One Feet

My family can't get along in 4,000 sq ft, so why would be want to condense down into living in merely 31 condensed ft of roaming mandatory family fun?  Who's plan was this anyhow?  To drive our family of 6 through New Mexico for 8 days.  Sincerely, what were we thinking?

We packed it with games and Costco sized boxes of food.  I thought I was being ridiculous and over packing.  I thought about stopping at the library with the kids to get books for the trip and then I thought better of it.  They'd only use the books as weapons, like paddles to whack each other with.  I thought this might be the worst trip ever.  I was wrong.

Not that it was the best trip ever.

Because it wasn't.

It was actually the best and the worst trip rolled into one.  Because living on top of one another brought out the worst and the best in each one of us.  And eating the best Mexican food of your life and then going to sleep with 5 other people with a confined, contaminated air supply produces some of the worst smells of your life.  You can either take my word for it or you can road test it for yourself.  Disgusting.  

 And so, we laughed.

Not that we didn't fight and yell.  And feel like we had children who hate each other and that we were to blame because of our poor parenting.  Because we did.  Or stay illegally on someone's beautiful private property in a cow pasture (see above photo).  Again, morally corrupting our kids with our poor parenting skills.  Playing head games with each other during the day and playing board, dice and card games at night.

And laughing.

At each other.

Because that's what family is all about.

(p.s. The 1972 Indian Winnebago we purchased on-line and is in Montana sucking the kids college funds to get it drivable is 24 feet worth of head games.  What were we thinking?)