Vacation Books

So, I am going on my first vacation in ten years and without kids. Yay!

Life gets busy with three kids in the mix. It seems like whenever a Parents Only vacation pops into mind so do a lot of other things like: The kids are still young, we should take a family vacation, we should visit all the grandparents from Utah to Hawaii this year, we should save our money, we can't find a grandparent that will take all three kids for three to five days, work; can't forget the times when work was in the way of a vacation.

See how ten years flies on by? Ever since my oldest started the public school system a few years ago, it hasn't been as easy to just take off or plan random vacations. So, my husband took it upon himself to arrange the babysitting and the vacation. I guess I perhaps figured retirement would be the next opportunity to have a vacation without kids and family, good thing my husband thought differently.

I thought I would be jumping for joy at the chance to go on vacation without the kids, but I'm not. Seriously, I should be jumping for joy; I've never been out of the country and my passport is new for this upcoming trip.

I suppose my lack of enthusiasm is because I've been so busy with the onset of summer. I volunteered, for the third year in a row, to do the class DVD and open house slide show for my daughter's class. That was long before I started writing my first book. Even though I felt rushed at the end, I managed to make the videos and burn 23 of them for the class, after having written 2 books, started a third book and delved full force into the query process. Then my middle child formally graduated from preschool (cap and gown) so we threw a homemade carnival for both him and my niece in our yard; 20 kids, 7 booths, 40 bags of popcorn and cotton candy, candy leis, prizes galore...the details went on and on.

The school year is over, the carnival was a success, and I'm one day away from the start of my vacation and I don't have an ounce of energy left for the excitement I should have.

I decided to get out of the crowded house by myself to get a few travel games and a couple of books for the trip. I had limited time for this task and figured I could probably get everything I needed at Target. I got everything I need, but now I regret not going over to Barnes & Noble and spending quality time finding new and intriguing books to read on the plane.

The travel games pepped me up and got me a little excited for my vacation. I got Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble Slam, and UNO (waterproof, the perfect game for sitting by the pool or at the swim up bar with).

After I stopped daydreaming about my waterproof UNO cards, I practically waltzed over to the book section. Target is not the best place to find a great YA book but I can usually find something decent to read. I spent a lot of last year and the beginning of this year reading vampire series books, but then I got burned out on them and have been looking for other great YA books, this is where Target is failing, or maybe where the publishing industry is failing, it's hard to tell (I should have gone to B&N just for a fair comparison).

Since the majority of the YA shelves are stuffed with vampire stories it's hard to get a good selection of books I know I won't put down. I ended up with Evermore by Alyson Noel. Not to mention, I've been saving The Short Second Life of Bree Tannner by Stephanie Meyer just for this trip. Vampires it is for the trip. HELP ME! I CAN'T GET AWAY FROM VAMPIRES (I'm so ashamed).

So, at the end of the day I'm more excited about waterproof UNO cards than I am about the books I'm taking on the plane.

And I think once the grandparents drive off with my kids snug in their car, I am going to be bouncing off the walls for this vacation, let's hope so anyway.

Had I reached out to the blogging world, I wonder what books each of you would have recommended I take on a five-hour flight for a five-day vacation?