Shoeless

Ahh. Vacation. I love it so much. I was born to vacation. I love getting away. I love exploring new places. I love squishing the whole family into a van. Except when one of us is covered in poop. Then the togetherness just looses it's appeal.

It wasn't really Drake's fault. The poor kid gets carsick. VERY carsick. One time he threw up all over a complete stranger even though he was comatose due to dramamine and jet lag. Since this vacation included driving though the mountains, I gave him a nice dose of dramamine. After the unfortunate sleep/hurl incident, throwing up has been banned on all vacations. I've made that clear.

Dramamine has a way of making a person completely unconscious. So the poor guy was tired. He managed to rouse himself from his sleep long enough to mumble something about "need" and "bathroom," but then he fell back asleep. We continued driving. The second time he woke up he was much more insistent. The kid had to go to the bathroom, and waiting was not an option. Since it was dark and we were a long way from civilized toilets, we had the brilliant idea to pull to the side of the road and let Drake find a spot in the weeds to claim as his own.

"Hey, guys," Drake called from the weeds. "This whole hill is muddy."
"Can you step around it?" Mike suggested.
"No. Literally, the WHOLE place is muddy."
"Well, I guess you'll just have to do the best you can."
"But the mud is super deep. My shoes are sinking."
"Just finish up and then we'll stick your shoes in a plastic sack."

Drake sat on the side of the van to remove his sandals and place them into a plastic sack we found under mounds of pillows and blankets, and we knew immediately that we had a problem. The smell from the sandals nearly caused us all to break the ban on throwing up.

"Drake!" Josiah yelled. "That's not mud. You stepped in poop!"
"GROSSGROSSGROSS!"

We made it down the road almost a mile before the smell was too much and we had to abandon Drake's shoes.

"Dad, did you just throw away my shoes?"
"Sorry, Buddy. You'll have to wear your tennis shoes for the rest of the trip."
"Remember how my tennis shoes fell apart in Utah and we left them in the motel room?"
"Oh. Yeah."

And that is why Drake spent the rest of vacation shoeless.

Poor kid.