There is never a dull moment when you vacation with a two-year-old. And there are always such wonderfully fun lessons to be learned, as well.  For instance, we allocated the first day of our family vacation to the zoo. God allocated that same day to watering his plants. OK, so it was not quite rain. I mean, it was hardly worth the embarrassment of losing another fruitless struggle with that rusty old umbrella.

But it was more than just a mist. Bit by bit, it overtook me. My sneakers cried out "Squish! Squish! Squish!" as I walked and something around my toes was definitely fermenting.  Miss Princess (aka our toddler) was on Cloud Nine. This was finally her chance to take out her brand new umbrella. Her umbrella was her newest, most favorite toy that her way-too-picky father would not let her play with in the house. But today, she could play with it all day in the rainy mist or misty rain or whatever the big people want to call it.

Vacation Adventure Lesson #1

Find the silver lining. And if you can't, get yourself an umbrella.

A few days later, we headed to a lookout in a mountain park. Along the paths, we found ourselves trying to dodge speeding cyclists who thought "maximum 15 miles per hour" meant "Yee-haw, we've reached warp speed!"
Seemingly lost, we stopped to ask directions. The young lad we approached pointed straight up. "It's a half an hour back the way you came, or you can take these stairs," he advised.

I doubted whether either my pregnant wife or Little Lady could handle the stairs, but they both wanted to try. (Seventh Heaven might be an umbrella, but a toddler's first six heavens apparently involve climbing anything in sight – and a mountain was just as good as anything else, I suppose.)

At the top of the first flight, we saw that the next set of stairs was even higher. A lady behind us said, "Try counting them to pass the time. There are 205 steps." Was that meant to be encouraging?

Amazingly, Little Lady climbed 180 steps, and my pregnant wife was able to keep up at Little Lady's conveniently slow pace. I had to carry one of them up the remaining 25 steps (no, not my wife!), where I dumped the stroller and picnic basket so we all could catch our breath.