Remember the Disney cruise we went on? You know that multi thousand dollar vacation we paid for by refinancing the house a few years back? It was great wasn’t it? It truly was. I could probably bore everyone beyond the immediate family with stories from the trip for days on end. And the neat thing is my stories would be different from every other family members stories. That’s what makes it so fun to get to reminiscing sometimes like at family gatherings. The sort of reminiscing that is a favorite part of family life for me personally. Everyone has their own little piece to contribute. Right from the four hour delay on the flight out through the space shuttle take off we witnessed as we waited for the plane ride home, it was fantastic. Now an indelible slice or our family life pie.

Making memories through doing things and going places is something we learned some years back so we have quite a few of them. One particular favorite of mine is taking family vacations instead of doing the Christmas present extravaganza. We didn’t do it every year but I fondly remember the times we did. If you ask me, we could have done even more than we have. The vacation memories last long after the presents are discarded and forgotten.

But here’s the thing: Vacations and memory making episodes don’t have to be mega-dollar extravanganzas like that Disney vacation was. If you can afford those and even more expensive ones, more power to you. But you know what? Even the simple family fishing or camping trip, or trip to the city or to the country or to the beach or to the mountains or ballgame or whatever it is your family enjoys does equally well.

We live a few hours drive from the Black Hills area of South Dakota. When the kids were still little, we discovered a silly, kitschy little campground there called “Flintstone Village” with flat painted Flintstone figures, tiny train ride, and worn out putt putt golf holes. (Not a full course mind you, just a couple of holes.) Our kids loved it and therefore so did we. And it was cheap for us! Not something we had to go into hock to afford. We just packed up our crappy camping stuff, drove a couple hundred miles, and paid a few dollars entrance.

Did I ever tell you the story of taking the kids to the midget car races while we were staying at Flintstone Village in South Dakota. Well, you see…

I had a great time this weekend helping our youngest daughter, Abi with a recording project. Not only did I get to play engineer, but I even got to contribute a bass line. My oldest son, Isaac, pitched in by contributing the djembe line. Almost like old times when we had a family band called “The Screaming Gringos.”

One thing I think helps families stay close is shared interests. Yet I think even having common interests aren’t enough because they can become either a competitive thing or a source of separation: In our case, my musical taste/interest is so different than your that we can’t possibly reach a common ground.

My mother-in-law, Janet had it right one time when she commented, “There is always some kind of music going on in your house.” It was true then even more so than it is today. One of Gale and my earliest activities was being in a band together. As I already said, later we had a family band that included all the kids as well.

Now Rachael, our oldest, is a professional entertainer currently with Disney Cruise lines. Her primary interest is in musical theater. However, she also sings Jimmy Hendrix or Patsy Cline or Natalie Merchant. Isaac and Abi are both in college as music majors with numerous serious side projects. Isaac is big time into the alt/indie genre. Abi centers more on jazz/blues/old school R&B. Only Ben is not currently active in music but in his scant 16 years he’s played drums and bass and shown interest in guitar and keyboards. His tastes tend more towards electronic/techno kinds of musi. Gale has her tastes in music and I have mine. Each of our tastes overlap each others and our kids, but go off in their own directions too.

So what’s the point? The point is we can use our common passion for music to draw our family life together or to separate us. Wouldn’t it be better to use it as something that makes us stronger as a family rather than pulls us apart?

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