Sometimes I wish my family was invisible.

So. I just got back from vacation.
Oh yes. Vacation.
Here’s the thing. My family loves to travel. We actually do a fair amount of traveling. But…we suck at it. I mean, we really suck at it.

If you don’t know me, here’s a quick bit of background info on my family…

My dad is tall and German. He doesn’t smile a lot, and frequently scares people by accident.

My mom is short and Irish. She has hair the color of a fire engine and a very short temper. She is ridiculously organized and enjoys yelling at people, or really anything that moves.

I have a perpetually unhappy and somewhat angsty 13-year-old sister who only listens to bad Christian rock and insists on wearing hooded sweatshirts, even in July.

My brother is 11. He thinks the word “poop” is hilarious. He likes to blast Black Sabbath on his iPod and whistle at 19-year-old girls. I blame this on Catholic school.

My littlest sister is 7. She prefers singing to talking, will only eat Lucky Charms for breakfast, and has a habit of catching pneumonia whenever we travel.

We also have two dogs. Thank God we left them at home.

So, Tuesday afternoon, I think it was, we were sitting in our hotel room when my littlest sister decided it was time for a spontaneous outfit change. Rummaging through her suitcase, she suddenly stood up and burst out, “I DIDN’T BRING ENOUGH SOCKS!”
For some reason, the delivery of this message required a lot of screaming and stomping on her part.

So, we all piled in the rental car and sped off to the nearby Target to buy the necessary articles of clothing for her. Fifteen minutes later, we were in the line to pay for them—High School Musical socks—when my mom opened her wallet and discovered that all of our vacation money—over $400—was gone. She pulled out her credit card to make the payment, all the while panicking along with my 13-year-old sister. They were paying for the socks and deciding it must have been the hotel maid when my brother came running over. “Come on,” he said, “we’re going to miss our reservation!” So we hurried out of the checkout lane.

As we were nearing the exit, I felt a tug on my sleeve. Looking down, I saw my littlest sister pointing to a box on a nearby shelf. “What does t-a-m-p-o-n spell?” she asked innocently. “It’s a kind of fish,” I said quickly, before grabbing her hand and pulling her out of the store.

Long story short, it was the maid. We didn’t get the money back.

Yesterday, we went to downtown San Antonio to visit the Alamo, of course. My 13-year-old sister is deathly afraid of birds, and for some reason the place was packed with pigeons. So, every time one came near her, she started shrieking. One woman and her husband stared at her, speaking rapid Spanish and laughing a little. “Hey,” said my little sister, “those people are talking about Maddie in Mexican!”

“They’re not speaking Mexican, stupid,” said my brother knowledgably, “they’re speaking Hispanic.”

Oh, hooray for political correctness…