The Best Vacation Ever
I know that most of you think this will sound crazy, but I just have to tell you about the best vacation of my life.

No. We didn’t go to Disney, or Cabo, or even Gatlinburg. We went to Louisville. When you stop chuckling and read the rest of this, you will understand.

It wasn’t a long vacation, but we found that we finally had a few days off and could actually leave the confines and shackles of the business. Of course, if it weren’t for free wi-fi access at most hotels, we wouldn’t have been able to do it since the paper will not publish itself and we cannot secure paper elves to do it for us at night while we sleep.

This was the first time we have taken Wes more than 30 miles from his home since he was a tiny baby, so we were a bit worried about the trip, but he did fine. At 18 months, he has become very unpredictable and at times, volatile to say the least.

I can truly say that he had the best couple of days of his, and our lives. It is hard to explain how this is so, but I’m sure there are many of you out there that know how we feel. It was a very simple vacation where we spent lots of time in the hotel suite, the pool or even the spacious and mostly unoccupied lounge.

If you ever visit Louisville with young children, you have to check out their riverfront youth park. It was huge and full of jungle gyms, play houses, picnic tables and a wonderful mini water park. All of this was free and very well kept by the city. Wes loved it so much, we visited it every day of our stay. It is almost worth the trip just for the park.

Wes also got to see his first real fireworks display as our hotel was only a couple of blocks away from Louisville Slugger Field where the Bats capped off their Labor Day game with quite a display. He had to mimic the sounds of the booms made by the explosions and found the whole thing pretty amazing.

We also went to the zoo and had a pretty good time in some great weather. I think Wes was more impressed with the ducks in one of the ponds more than anything else... go figure. Hopefully he will appreciate things like this as he gets a little older.

I have to tell everyone about one thing that Wes did that I am still laughing about now. While in the hotel room one afternoon, someone must have mistaken our room for theirs and tried to open the door. I went to the door and peeked through the peephole to see what was going on. I also went back to look through it again a few moments later when we heard something else happening in the hallway.

Well, that’s all it took. From that moment on, anytime Wes heard anything happening in the hallway, he ran to the door and pressed his left eye against it. Of course, it was three feet lower than the peephole, but he didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he has special abilities that allow him to see through doors when he gets that close. We just thought it was hilarious.

It wasn’t any one thing that we did that made the trip wonderful. It was the whole experience that bonded us like nothing else. Wes was perfectly fine playing in the hotel suite where we had only brought a few toys. I think he was truly happy that we were all together as a family. I also think that he was aware of and appreciated the fact that we weren’t distracted with work and other things that often encompass our evenings and weekends.

The whole vacation can be summed up by one single event that happened the last evening of our stay.

Wes is very independent and we have to work hard on teaching him to hold our hands when we walk certain places. He likes to have things on his own terms (he gets that from his mom).

Our room was a good 40-50 yards from the elevator, as we exited after another day of fun, we started toward our room but Wes stopped and held his hand up to his mom to hold it. After she grabbed his left hand they walked another step and Wes stopped in his tracks again. He then held his right hand up to me so I would take it. From there we all walked, hand-in-hand to the hotel room. To me, he was saying that he was the happiest little boy in the world and that he loved us.

That’s why it was the best vacation ever.