Happy Monday everyone! This week, we’re continuing with our series of Table Talk conversation cards. If you missed the previous cards and want to go back and print them out so you can use them at your family table, or with your book club, or at your next meeting or holiday party, you can get them here:
— Conversation Card 1 click here
— Conversation Card 2 click here
— Conversation Card 3 click here
— Conversation Card 4 click here
— Conversation Card 5 click here
— Conversation Card 6 click here
— Conversation Card 7 click here
On the porch today, we’re moving on the Card # 8, which comes from Marybeth Whalen’s book, The Mailbox:
We have so many favorite vacation spots, it’s hard to pick just one. I don’t know about you, but we are the sort of family who tend to return to the same places over, and over, and over. We like it that way. If you go to the same vacation spot enough times, the restaurants, and gas stations, and mini-marts along the way become treasured family landmarks. When I think of any of our favorite vacation spots, I also think the road trips that brought us there. Never do I pass our favorite stopoffs on the way that I don’t wax nostalgic about the days of explaining why we couldn’t buy the overpriced toy trucks, and puzzle books, and movies in tourist traps, or trying to convince hungry little boys that the dollar store food in our snack bag is, indeed, just as good as the stuff that costs three times as much at the truck stop.
Here are a few favorite places those mini-mart visits and countless miles on the road led us to:
The mountains in Colorado and New Mexico. I don’t know why, as a family of people with limited coordination, we still love to strap slippery boards on our feet and slide down tall mountains, but we do. Some of the best family memories have been made in cabins surrounded tall pines, and Aspen, and snow. There’s nothing quite like the quiet of the mountains, and no time between parent and child quite like that spent in a mountain hot spring watching the steam of our conversations rise into the velvety black carpet of a sky filled with stars.
White Sands New Mexico. White Sands is one of those places where you can’t help but look around and be in awe of God’s magnificent creativity and power. Who would have thought of tossing down a giant white beach at the foot of the mountains, with no large body of water nearby? Years ago, my husband and I rode our horses on White Sands as a young couple. It was a joy to go back there as a family, introduce the boys to the fun of sand golf, and sliding down the dunes on the sand saucers. White Sands is such a fascinating place to spend a day.
Galveston. This is one of those bittersweet memories. We’ve spent some great times at the beach over the years. After hurricane Ike, the family beach houses, where gaggles of sandy-footed cousins came and went, are no longer. But Galveston remains, and I hope that the group of babies who spent hours and hours building sand castles, catching hermit crabs, and collecting shells, will return to the beach as adults and remember the bonds formed there. Maybe they will bring a new generation to experience the family ties of sand, salt, and fun.
There are so many places we have loved, but as I think about the places, I realize it isn’t really the places you travel to that matter most, but those you travel with. The beauty of a vacation isn’t in the sights you see, but ultimately in the memories you make ;o)
New On Shelves — The Latest Moses Lake Book
Click here to read the first Chapter!
