One of my favorite things about children is their innocent excitement over everything.
Over the holiday weekend we visited family in Oklahoma and needed to spend the night in a somewhat smallish town. If you know anything about somewhat smallish towns, then you know that overnight accommodation selections can be a bit, um… limited.
*** Not our motel. But, still…***
As we unloaded the van, turned on the lights, and observed our humble surroundings, the kids put things into perspective – again.
“This is so much fun!”
“Thank you, mom and dad, for letting us stay at this cool place!”
“Look! Drawers! We can put our stuff in here!”
“There’s a tv!”
“It’s so big! There are two beds!”
“This is the best hotel ever!”
They didn’t notice the cracked counter top. They didn’t notice the hair {gag} in the bathtub. They didn’t notice that {eek} the vacuum had lost its efficiency. They didn’t notice. They didn’t know!
What did they know? We were together. The whole family, on an adventure. We got to watch tv in bed and all sleep in the same room. For our children, it just doesn’t get more exciting than that!
Oh, that my heart might rejoice in the things that excite my children.
Reminds me of my kids
) So excited just to be together and in the same room… regardless of what town we are in, why we are there, or how long it took to get there!
And we don’t have TV at home, so a TV in the hotel room is always a BIG plus, lol ;o) Though I must say that all hotels seem to have TVs now…
Amy, we experienced something similar a couple years ago. We were disappointed in our room we received on a family vacation. The kids however didn’t care! They were excited over the same things: sleeping in the same room as mom and dad, watching tv in bed and a huge bathtub they could swim in in the bathroom.
Isn’t it crazy how they put things into perspective for us?
Glad you had a nice trip.
Our kids are the exact same way. We changed rooms one time because of the same hair and vaccum issues and our kids thought we were so rude in asking to be moved. They kept saying-Its no big deal mom let it go its just like our house! hehehe..yep-they didn’t know.
I am curious though-how did you sleep KNOWING?
My kids say the same things – no matter what sort of hotel we are staying in. It makes me wonder why we try so hard to plan fun-filled (and more often than not given today’s prices, expensive) family vacations. We could just pick a hotel somewhere (something with a pool) and spend a few days there swimming, playing games, and watching TV – they’d be SO HAPPY! I’m going to have to keep that in mind the next time we start talking about a “Family Vacation.”
My daughter didn’t realize that we stayed in a flea motel during our trip either…thank goodness:-)
When our son was little, all he needed for “vacation” was a motel with cable tv (we live in the country and used to get 3 or channels, if we were lucky and the weather was good!), a pool to swim in, and to eat some meals “out”. And maybe a trip to a mall. He was happy, it didn’t matter if it was fancy or not, or if we did anything “vacation-y”.
LOVE the minds of children… my nephew recently told me how they had the greatest view EVER from their hotel room on the way home from South Carolina. What did it overlook? A busy highway. Bliss for a little boy who loves cars.
We once researched this hotel on line that billed itself as a family oriented hotel complete with indoor amusement park. It looked so fun for a road trip pit stop. When we got there it was rather run down and sorely in need of an update. The hubby and I began to really worry about staying here. The kids reaction? You truly would have thought we took them to Disneyland (helped by the fact they had not yet been to Disneyland
We sucked up our desire to stay in a place without shag carpeting and polyester bedspreads and had a blast.
I’m thinking we can put Disney on hold for another few years and just let the kids pick a spot from the road. They’ll be happy… we’ll save money… vacation score!
Thank you for sharing this lovely story! It made me smile and laugh out loud. I’m bedridden recovering from surgery so that was greatly appreciated.
PS – I remember being delighted by drawers as a child. They’re still exciting
This is one of the things I love about my kids too. Yesterday we got a new (to us) bookshelf for our living/dining room. You would have thought we got the kids a giant flat-screen tv and a Wii to go with it.
I am a firm believer in keeping your kids’ expectations low because it really does help them enjoy the sweet little things in life.
How fun! My kids are 17 and 14 and we’ve traveled so much, they don’t have quite the same reaction
. Enjoyed reading your post and am hoping to meet you at the Savvy Blogging Summit.
At least you didn’t end up with the room we did at a place we reserved on Hotwire.com. (You’d think it would have been better, but no.) It smelled like an outhouse and I’m pretty sure it had been used as one too. I’m sure if we’d had kids they probably would have been grossed out as we were. Anyways, I’m glad your kids could overlook some of those things and look on the happy side!
Ooo, ick!
I LOVE that! “Look! Drawers!” Hilarious.
Thanks for this great reminder that life isn’t so serious. I can revel in the small, ‘finer things’ if I just try it.
I love this. Makes me realize how much my perspective needs to change….drawers!!
This is so precious it actually brought tears to my eyes. What our children teach us. Wow.