Over the river and through the woods ...

Some would say a five-hour drive to my parents’ house, four children and zero husbands in tow, is no vacation. Those people have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.

This weekend I am taking the Young Carnivores for a mini-vacation at The Ranch, also known as my parents’ house. They don’t actually have any horses, but most of their neighbors do. And my dad has one of those ride-on mowers. So: The Ranch. I am totally stoked.

Unless you can afford a spa week, a real vacation doesn’t normally happen for us moms. If you can afford a spa week, well, yippy skippy for you. What the rest of us mortals normally get are those week-long trips to a less convenient version of our regular lives, with sketchy laundry facilities and no good knives in the kitchen.

The Absent-Minded Professor and I used to looooove those beach house vacations. That was back in the day before I started wearing bathing suits with skirts attached. And the full extent of packing for the trip was stopping to pick up more vodka.

Now the beach vay-cay is, as my friend Lisa pointed out, “my life … but with sand.” Sand in diapers, in your toddler-smeared water bottle, and crunching under your feet on the kitchen floor. Sand that somehow gets into the liner of your child’s bathing suit and therefore, sand in your child’s every nook and cranny. Sand that, when combined with baby sunblock and Off spray, forms a cement-like paste that will finally wash out of your child’s hair sometime next November. Sand that will absolutely, positively, never come out of the car seats, even if you pay to have them detailed.

A vacation at my parents’ house is clearly an improvement. First off, obviously, going to my parents’ is free. It’s actually better than free, because they will be stocked up on groceries when we get there. There’s also fun free stuff to do, like feed the llamas across the road and collect eggs from the neighbors’ chickens.

Another perk is that, frankly, their house is cleaner than mine. In all fairness, that’s in large part because my children, and their toys, don’t live there. It’s also because I suck at housekeeping, but I’ve come to terms with that. So it's hotel-clean, but instead of a mini-fridge with $8 Miller Lites, there's two whole refrigerators stocked with the good stuff.

More importantly, though, it’s a real vacation for me. Not only is my stepmom an amazing cook, she actually likes to cook. This in itself is enthralling. There is nothing I like more than food I didn’t have to cook, except really good food I didn’t have to cook. I sit at the counter, mesmerized and mouth agape, and watch the magic happen. My stepmom is the kind of woman who bakes cakes for no reason at all, and then lets the kids decorate the cake as a craft project. She. is. awesome.

Of course, the main reason we go there is because I love my parents and actually really like to hang out with them. So do the kids; my parents are stellar grandparents. They’re the kind of grandparents who scope out the best playgrounds before we come to visit. My dad lets my kids “help” in his garden and takes them for walks to feed the ducks. He will document the visit with professional-quality photos, provide me with prints, and email them to me later.

How can a regular “vacation” possibly compete with this?

I have no idea what this nutjob is doing, but I can tell you she is not a mother of four.