Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

The Cox family is on the countdown to our first official family vacation.  In the six years we’ve had children we’ve been on numerous trips to visit family and friends, but this trip is different.  Webster’s defines vacation as “a period of suspension of work, study, or other mandatory activity, usually used for rest or recreation.”  I personally equate vacation with traveling to a destination we’ve never been to pursue new adventures and spend quality time with my immediate family.   So, guess what, we’re going to Disneyland!  I’m not sure it will meet the criteria of being restful, but there is sure to be a good deal of quality time and recreation. Discover some of the most relaxing Scottsdale resorts for travelers.

The anticipation and excitement of our upcoming adventure got me thinking about my childhood family vacations.  Like many working class families, I don’t think we took a vacation every year but a few travels stand out in my memory.  It is when I think about the funny, stressful or otherwise memorable experiences we shared through the years that I truly appreciate the unmatched bond of family. Wondering Where is Hot in March? Uncover trending destinations, sun-soaked beaches, luxurious resorts, and captivating cultures across the globe. Vacationers are spoiled for choice with the incredible Scottsdale resorts available year-round.

There’s the time we took an RV and horse trailer across the country to Cheyenne, WY to watch my dad compete in a rodeo.  If you had any doubt about my “Red Dirt” roots, they can be put to rest, as I grew up turning calves out of the chute as my dad practiced his roping skills.  We traveled to many rodeos throughout my childhood, but the Wyoming trip carries special memories.  We parked the RV amidst many others and spent what seemed like weeks, although I’m sure it was just a few days, living in a temporary community of rodeo families.  Someone set up a dummy calf (bale of hay with a fake head on it) for the kids to practice their roping, and my daddy was so proud of my skills that he bought me my very own rope…..a huge deal to my six year old self.

We borrowed some cowboy’s Cadillac (funny in and of itself, right?!) to drive into town to go swimming at an indoor pool where I experienced my first truly embarrassing moment when I chickened out on the high dive and forced a bunch of kids to climb back down the ladder so I wouldn’t have to take the plunge. And, I think this trip was the beginning of our family tradition of spending hours on the road coming up with new verses to the ever popular “Diarrhea” song.  Once that got old, we could always count on dad to blast his favorite Platters album and sing at the top of his lungs.  Yes, I know all the words to “The Great Pretender” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”  In later years, I started singing the harmony just to change it up a bit.

In stark contrast, my parents took all six of us to Hawaii the summer before my junior year in high school.  This was long after my dad had abandoned the rodeo circuit due to the requirement that he enter senior rodeo and his subsequent refusal to recognize himself as a senior.  He decided golf was a wonderful substitute and began wearing shorts and tennis shoes, instead of boots and jeans, for the first time in his life.  The best place he could imagine to wear said clothing was Hawaii. Flip flops quickly became part of the mix too, adding that easygoing island comfort perfect for Hawaii’s laid-back vibe.

My parents had been to Hawaii several times and, knowing that our family wouldn’t all be together for too much longer given my age (I’m the oldest), they bit the bullet and used my college money (not bitter) to take us on a magnificent trip.  The great thing about this trip is that we have so many collective memories and continue to bond over them even now.  When Jason and I were dating, we’d always joke that every trip to my parent’s house would inevitably include at least one sentence that began with, “Remember in Hawaii when…?”

We still make this joke and have refined it to assert that the only certainties in life are death, taxes and repeated conversations about Hawaii.  We’ll talk about going parasailing, snorkeling and the undersea Nautilus tour.  We’ll laugh about eating at the super fancy restaurant where my brother Cooper looked at the menu full of things we couldn’t pronounce and subsequently ordered a cheeseburger (blank stare from the not-so-amused waiter).  This moment was followed by my brother Conner spitting out whatever fancy thing he ordered and my mom trying to discreetly clean the chewed lump off the floor before anyone noticed.  News alert: they noticed.  My dad will reminisce about driving to the top of the volcano on a one-lane road with no guard rails to prevent us from plummeting to our death, and that I was so convinced we were going to die that I curled up in the floorboard of the back seat and alternated between crying and praying.  We’ll sing a chorus of “Tiny Bubbles” at the top of our lungs like some gregarious drunk guy did at the luau we attended.  We’ll talk about the horrible one-way roads in Honolulu and how we were lost for hours in the middle of the night upon our initial arrival to the city.  And we’ll all agree that the Pizza Hut delivery we ate on the floor of our hotel room after we finally made it was hands down the best we’d ever had.

Memories are made each and every day, but I’m ready to make some that are just ours to talk about for years to come.  With a first-time airplane ride and a trip to Disneyland in our near future, I’m pretty confident I can accomplish this goal.  And, even if we don’t have anything spectacular happen to us while we’re there, I’m eager to eat some pizza that, regardless of its quality and taste, will be the new “best I’ve ever had.”

[kendy]

Editor’s note: Visit HERE for Kendy’s post over how their family vacation held a surprise they certainly didn’t expect.

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Pint Night: From McNellie’s The Abner in Norman




So, every Monday night at McNellie’s The Abner in Norman is Pint Night. Good golly gosh, I love Pint Night.  The deal is, you go and buy the featured beer of the night, and you get to keep the glass that is made for that beer.

This first picture is of our kitchen cabinet:

The middle cabinet that is stacked and packed full of glasses is our beer glass shelf…and every single one of those glasses came from pint night.  The next picture is a high up shelf where we keep the too-tall pint glasses, or the extra fancy ones that are more fragile (like a Warsteiner Dunkel special edition Christmas glass with a hand blown glass ornament at the bottom): Continue reading Pint Night: From McNellie’s The Abner in Norman

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The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 21




#21 of 52 : FRANKIE JEAN
Imaginary Family Project - Week 21

External Photo Clues:
None

Imagine:
By the time this photo was taken of my mother she had made up her mind. I can tell because she looks almost happy.

In this photograph—I found a bunch of them in a box in the garage with a yellow dress and an old, empty bottle of French perfume—she and my daddy are looking in different directions. They always were, but I guess in the inky womb of the club where they met, they couldn’t tell that yet. At 18, Mama hadn’t yet discovered the difference between a man’s big talk and a man’s real talk. The only reason he wasn’t a foreman at the factory, Daddy told her, was cause they wouldn’t let colored people or Indians be foremen but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do it. After all, he’d spent two years in Paris during the war, hadn’t he?

She’s never told me any of this, not in words. Not out loud. All I really know is that the yellow dress is the one she used to wear to the juke joints down on Freeman Highway. It was the kind of dress with a low sweetheart neckline and slim-fitting skirt that promised that the nice girl might not be quite as nice as you thought. Continue reading The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 21

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N.U.T. #5 – I don’t raise my voice in anger.




A real man rarely raises his voice and when he does, it is never out of anger.

A real man’s influence comes from the gravity of what he has to say and the character he has built over time. He lets his words stand on their own merit without resorting to amplifying his volume and furrowing his eyebrows to get his point across.

A real man knows that to raise his voice in anger, is to lose control of his emotions. When a man loses control of his emotions, his emotions then control him, and a real man is not controlled by his emotions. A real man realizes that screaming or yelling in anger or to get a point across is the vice of the emotionally weak. He is not afraid to express his emotions, but he is not controlled by them. A real man knows that yelling, though somewhat instinctive, is reactive and a real man rarely reacts… a real man acts with intention.

A real man knows that he when he raises his voice, people often tune him out and miss his message. And yet, the opposite happens when his voice is calm, cool, and collected. He finds that other people actually begin to lean in closer to hear what he has to say. They tune into his message and (if what he’s trying to convey has merit) he is able to persuade or influence them appropriately.

A real man sees that yelling as a form of persuasion or influence simply does not work. Not only that, but he also realizes that his yelling gives everyone around him a headache and makes him feel incompetent. Continue reading N.U.T. #5 – I don’t raise my voice in anger.

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On the Horizon: A Sad Symptom




As I write, medical examiners have yet to release the official cause of death for University of Oklahoma football player Austin Box.   According to El Reno Police, a friend who lived with the 22 year-old found him unresponsive and believed he had overdosed on prescription pain pills.  In a 911 recording, the roommate said Box takes pain pills and he’s not responding to me.

If true, it’s just the latest sad incident in a troubling trend: the misuse of prescription medication, whether intentionally or accidentally.  Former OSU basketball coach Sean Sutton plead guilty last year for illegally obtaining pain pills that he began taking after a back surgery then to which he subsequently became addicted.

Box played a brutal sport that requires unusual physical and mental toughness.  The demands often require playing through pain and sometimes even injury.  I worry that in our attempts to explain such a tragic loss of life, we focus on the symptoms and not the wider disease.  Prescription medications are just as addictive as anything purchased from a seedy street corner.  According to law-enforcement, prescription painkillers rank second behind marijuana as the country’s most common illegal-drug problem.  Today we begin a multiple-part video post about a growing problem that cuts across all age groups and economic classes.

Rob

 

Prescription Addiction from Alisa Hines on Vimeo.

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