My Mom Took a Skull on an Airplane

In April our family took a trip to Denver to see Sami and Austin where they moved this past August. It was the first time we've all been on a trip together since Myrtle Beach in 2009! Sami planned out our entire trip and made sure we saw all the best parts of Denver, and also took us outside the city to Rocky Mountain National Park, Boulder, and Golden. We had perfect weather the entire trip and we ran our butts off. While the parks and restaurants and sites were all glorious and unforgettable, perhaps more memorable were some of the things that happened just in our Air B&B or in the rented minivan that we all 7 rode around in for the long weekend. (Shout out to Dad who drove the entire time and endured the opinions of 6 backseat drivers!)

First of all, on Day 1 of the trip, we were exploring the Red Rocks Amphitheatre when my mom got a news alert on her phone. "Prince died!" she told us. We were shocked! You see, the last time we were all on vacation together in the summer of 2009, Michael Jackson died. Our entire beach trip became unintentionally Michael Jackson themed as every radio station played his songs, stores put up tributes to him, TV stations played his videos and movies about him... Well, sure enough, our Denver trip quickly became Prince themed. The minivan bumped "Kiss" and "Party Like it's 1999" that week more times than I want to remember. Now we are worried to go on another vacation all together because it seems every time we do, a pop star dies. And we can't lose Justin Timberlake!

Another memorable event was on Day 1 when we noticed that the spice cabinet in our Air B&B was meticulously organized, labeled and ALPHABETIZED. The owner of the Air B&B was a 30-40 something year old single male. We became convinced we had a Dexter situation on our hands. Who else is that anal and organized besides a trained, skilled serial killer?

And speaking of creepy things, I should tell you about the skull. You see, Sami is in Denver to get her Masters in Anthropology. She is an archaeology nerd, so naturally we often buy her things like Laura's most recent Christmas gift, a skull painted with chalkboard paint that is also a piggy bank! When Sami flew back to Denver after Christmas, she didn't have room to take all of her gifts, so my mom made sure to pack the skull with her to bring to Denver. But instead of packing it in her suitcase like most people do when they travel with skulls, she brought it in her carry-on. Imagine the look on the TSA guy's face when he saw this thing go through the scanner at the airport.

Because Denver is spread out and we visited places outside the city, we spent a LOT of time in the car together. (We flew to Denver, just FYI. That would have been a serious road trip to drive from Louisville.) The time in the car gave lots of great conversations. We learned about how Laura's friends supposedly led "an uprising" against her in the 4th grade and she's still not over it. We discussed Sami's fear of boats and Mom scared her by saying she thinks her fear of water comes from when she was "submerged in ice water as a baby" before her heart surgery, which led Sami to believe she was killed and brought back to life until Dad chimed in with the important detail that just her body was put in the ice water, not her head/face. On the last day, I had an outburst in the backseat when my sisters were trying to convince my dad to stop for restrooms 20 minutes from home. I was arguing that we should not stop so close to home and when they kept trying to overrule me I shouted "I NEVER GOT SWIM LESSONS AS A KID AND YOU TWO DID!" I have no idea how stopping for the bathroom and swim lessons are related, but for some reason I had a middle child moment and needed to know why I was never taught to swim and only taught to float. And now that I'm thinking about it, like Sami I should probably ALSO have a fear of boats because if one I'm on ever sinks, everyone else will swim to safety and I'll just have to float until someone rescues me.

Austin and Chuck are brave men.

Besides sight-seeing and riding in the van, we did a lot of other things too. We played a lot of games in bars. (Side note: if you have never played the card game "Exploding Kittens," do yourself a favor and order it on Amazon NOW and play it ASAP.) We walked a LOT and Austin lied to us constantly about how close certain destinations were to keep us from getting discouraged. We ate a ton of good food. We toured a whiskey distillery (because, duh). We climbed a mountain, sort of. We looked for Peyton Manning. We debated the origin of elk (are they a mix between donkey and deer?). We went from place to place with a schedule but also with no real agenda at the same time.

Of course the mountains were breathtaking and the elk everywhere in the park were amazing and the food was great and getting to see Sami and Austin's new 'hood was fun... but the best thing about the vacation was knowing that our family could go literally anywhere in the world together and have a good time.

But, unfortunately we'll never get that chance, you know- because of the whole pop star thing.