Dec 1: What was your best trip in 2009?

I'm already way behind on this, but I still want to write about each topic. So here it goes.




What was your best trip in 2009?

I was lucky enough to do a fair amount of traveling this year. There were the weddings of two of my girls to attend, one in Kansas City, one in Salt Lake, both of which were wonderful trips. There was a quick trip to Chicago. There were work trips to San Antonio and San Francisco. But hands down my best trip of 2009 was the week cruise I took with my family in February. The cruise as meant as a celebration of my father being done with chemo and cancer-free. Now we know that was unfortunately a short-lived diagnosis but that doesn't mean the trip was any less fun in hindsight.

My entire life, the Ramseys have taken family vacations. Every summer, most spring breaks, sometimes at Christmas. Yes, most of these were to Disney World, but by the time I was 20, I had been to every part of the country with my family. Often we'd drive because my dad loved to be in control of the car and that way he could make us listen to Rush Limbaugh, Gary Puckett and any other offensive music/talk he could find in hopes of "broadening our minds." Since we've grown up, these trips have become less frequent but still happen occasionally. This time, we took a cruise that left from Miami and went to a private island in Hati, Jamaica, Mexico and was supposed to stop in Grand Caymen, but couldn't because of bad weather. My mom had made a promise that this was the trip we would go all out. Anything we wanted to do, we could. So we went para sailing and zip lining. We climbed a waterfall. We ate and drank whatever we wanted.

One of the best things I remember though were the times when we weren't doing things that were too cruise-y. When we couldn't stop in Grand Caymen, we were bummed but it gave us the opportunity to just be with each other. We played Phase 10 for about three hours, my Dad beating us almost every time. It's so rare that we were all together for so long anymore. When I'm home, my sister is always jetting off to be with friends so this was the first time in a long time it had just bee the four of us. Had I known it was going to be one of the last, I would have savored it more. Obviously reflecting on the trip brings it more significance now then it did then since I recently lost my dad. I know for a fact that I'll never have a trip like it again. But looking at the photos from that trip now are good for me. It's good to see him healthy and happy. John and his girls, having the time of their lives.