Making everybody/nobody happy

We were going to go to Canada last weekend and go to Harrison Hot Springs and rest our weary bones in some hot water.  It sounded lovely.

The bad news was, our kids' passports had expired.

The good news was, we discovered it before we were at the border.

We batted around ideas of alternative activities.  We kind of came up empty.  Emma said, "Whatever we do, let's not do a staycation.  I hate staycations."

I am unaware of traumatic staycation experiences in her past but then, I don't know everything.

Adam seized on it as a fine idea.  He said there were a lot of things we could do around here.  Emma groaned.

(Poor Emma.  She has such a hard life.)

We decided that we'd each pick one activity (approximately two hours long) for the family to do.

We started well.  Adam's idea was to go out to breakfast.  You can't be uncheered by going out to breakfast.  Restaurant hashbrowns = good stuff.

This is what happens to Emma when she has to have a staycation:

This is what happens to Braeden:

Then we lost a little momentum on the fun scale when we ran errands.  (Among the errands, passport photos at Costco.  I will not give up on that hot water dream.)

Back at home, we did Emma's activity.  It was that each family member would pick a couple of songs to play for the whole family.  For Emma it meant having us listen to One Direction songs.  For Mark it meant playing on the piano.

For Adam it meant falsely accusing me of not having good music on my computer and then finding what he was looking for after all.  (I forgave him for the slander.)  We lay on the floor with our heads together to listen to music.  Self portraits ensued.

I'm not sure what prompts this compulsion of ours.

Braeden's activity was next.  It was to play the game Diplomacy which I've decided is like Chutes and Ladders for teenagers.  It there anything worse than Chutes and Ladders?  Yes.  Diplomacy.  Unlike Chutes and Ladders, there are lots of complicated rules.  There's a lot of strategy involved.  There's negotiating and allies and deceit.  Like Chutes and Ladders, it takes forever.

I don't think I'm cut out for board games.

My activity was to go to Snohomish and browse through some antique shops.  Braeden felt about that sort of how I felt about Diplomacy but I made him do it anyway.  Emma and I decided we will go back sometime soon, sans boys.

In the evening we watched Rango, Mark's choice.  It was OK but Adam and I ended up sitting in the living room by the end, chatting.  It didn't really hold our attention.

So I guess the moral of this story is, we don't all love the same things but we had a pretty good day anyway.  Also, we shouldn't have let the passports expire.