Home, Sweet Home

Does anyone really enjoy a vacation with young kids? Really – please send me your secrets if you have found the key to truly enjoying a vacation with young kids. We just returned from a week-long trip to California, and while I have loads of memories, I will have to work to ensure that the memories I remember are the happy ones. Truly, it was a lot of work.

But one blessing in disguise about vacationing with young ones is that it helped me to appreciate the comfort of home a bit more.

Generally I am the type to feel anxious if not on the go. I feel overwhelmed by clutter, not energized enough to cut the clutter, and begin to feel stir crazy when we are stuck in the house for too long.

But this morning, our first morning waking up back in our own beds, I realized the comfort of home. Home is where you can spill milk without worrying about staining a chair or attracting ants in someone else’s home. Home is where you can run around in your superhero costumes without worrying about waking the vacationer beside, below, or above. Home is where you rediscover toys you forgot about, and laugh and holler and cry without being shushed. Home is where you can hop in the car or transit and run a simple trip without getting out the phone for directions; where you can spend 30 minutes at a park and not feel like you’re “missing out on the chance of a lifetime” for heading home so soon. Home is enjoying your own car, even if two of four windows are broken; enjoying your own car glittered with your own crumbs & clutter. Home is comfort.

Home, sweet home.