Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Road Trip to Clarity

I want to start off by saying that this is my favorite week of the year.  It’s a short work week, even though I took this week off this year.  Come Monday we start our high school basketball season and can begin practicing and it’s Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is my favorite Holiday, by far.  There isn’t even a second favorite holiday.  If there was it would be a distant second.  I can’t wait to get to my in-laws and eat up whatever my mother in-law serves up.  If she feels unappreciated at Thanksgiving, she can rest easy because her favorite son-in-law appreciates her efforts immensely.

Outside of Thanksgiving I am pretty much a bah-hum-bug when it comes to holidays.  I’m not Irish so I don’t get the St. Patrick’s Day.  Even though St. Patrick wasn’t Irish either.  I’m always coaching on Valentine’s Day, so my wife and I celebrate it our own way.  Easter is what it is.  I can’t stand Halloween and Christmas gets started way too soon and I always seem to be sick at that time, so I have never been a fan.  But I am starting to get in the spirit.

This past weekend we took a family trip to Hershey, PA.  My mother finally retired this summer and my parents sold the first house they ever owned when they came over from Italy.  They both have nice pensions and money saved.  So they decided to buy a motorhome.  My dad has always wanted one and he worked hard and deserves what he wants.  So they wanted to do a maiden voyage and asked me and my family to come with them.  Mostly so they can get comfortable with traveling it but also because they like having me, my wife and kids around.

Why Hershey?  Well, it’s pretty simple really.  Hershey was the closest enough place to go where there was attractions for both adults and children that had campgrounds open without having to go as far as South Carolina.  I had looked up things to do and it was amazing what we can do this time of year down there.  My dad is obsessed with the Amish so we made a trip to Bird-In-Hand, PA to take an Amish Country horse and buggy tour.  My dad was in heaven, he even got to ride up front with the driver who had grown up Amish but never joined the Amish church.  The tour was great and very informational and shed a lot of light on things that I did not realize about the Amish.  We even saw several of the Amish walking about and riding through town on their horse and buggy’s.

How did this trip get me slightly into the Christmas Spirit?  It was our trip to Hershey Park for Candylane, a Christmas lighting display with rides.  Watching the look on my three year olds face was worth the price of admission.   You would have thought it was Christmas morning.  My wife and I are not big on amusement parks so our daughter has never been, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to hit every ride in the park and pose for pictures with every character.  Priceless.

But it was a ten minute skyline ride with my daughter that grabbed me.  It was just me and her, and the ride took us through half of the park.  While Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” was playing throughout the park, I was listening to my daughter point out every light display at a rapid pace as if she was going to miss one.  As I looked around the park and see the rest of my waiting family and listening to my daughter it made me smile so much I was almost giddy.  Once we got off the ride my daughter ran with open arms of her grandmother and recount what she saw.  I looked at my wife and said “It’s a place like that this, that could get me into Christmas”.

In the end, I would have to say I had a fabulous time with my family this past weekend.  I am not going to go and say that I am in the Christmas spirit.  That feeling pretty much faded on the ride home.  It had to have been in the moment with my daughter and how excited she got about it that gave me that feeling.  As the weeks pass by and we get closer to Christmas I will be more in the holiday spirit as I watch my children’s excitement build.  It was great family vacation that overcame me and that is something that I will always have.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

3D
If you don’t take it from me, ask my wife.

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