Petty Family Vacation

So,

The folks just got back from a road trip vacay they took down to the States. Never ones to be accused of originality the trip is pretty much the same trip that they have taken once or twice a year for goodness knows how long. It typically involves driving all the way along the west coast to some warm southern state to attend either a motorcycle rally, a gold panning show or a woodworking convention. Clearly, there is nothing of interest there for my Mother, but as these events usually take place in a state where gambling is legal, she’s always up for it. Of course, they do other things as well and are always up for exploring new little places they happen to stumble across along the way.

This year’s trip was the first one since my Father acquired a digital camera, which he got at Christmas… a gift from my Mom, as were the ones that both my brother and I received… what can I say, when she gets an idea in her head there’s no stopping her. Although it seemed like a good idea at the time, my Father, God bless him, is unfortunately of the age where learning new things, especially things where technology is involved is just not in the cards. After several months, he finally got the hang of downloading his pictures onto the computer. Please note that my parents have a brand new computer… Windows XP etc… so all you do is literally plug the camera into the computer and it downloads itself. Now if he could only actually get the hang of taking pictures.

After walking him through the process of how to e-mail the pictures which was truly a combination of pulling teeth, banging one’s head against the wall repeatedly and wanting to drink a bottle of cyanide (Oh, you mean a paper clip in the e-mail screen. I was wondering how an actual paper clip was going to help me e-mail these to you…), I finally got some pictures. Granted, I got the same one about 8 times, but whatever… beggars can’t be choosers. But then I opened the image below and could not stop laughing… and then opened the ones that followed which were all very similar. And still could not stop laughing. It was as if my Dad was doing his best to not have any record that my Mom was on the trip at all. Or that despite my Dad’s best efforts to not take a picture of her, my Mom stepped into the frame at the last minute… my parents crack me up!