Vacation Goal: Don’t Yell During the Family Photo

My main goal for vacation this year was simple: get a family photo. Not a perfect photo—just one where no one had to yell to make it happen.

With Natalie living in California, Jacqueline preparing to leave for France as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant, and James on the verge of launching into his next chapter, we don’t know when we’ll all be in the same place again. I wanted to capture a moment together, not just in a picture, but in memory.

We got the photo—without any yelling. And more importantly, we got the little moments during our vacation at the cottage in Door County, Wisconsin: morning coffee on the porch with my sisters (okay, a can of white Monster for me), endless games of Sequence, lakeside reading, and conversations that didn’t involve calendars or group texts.

For me, vacation isn’t just about changing scenery. It’s about changing pace. When I slow down enough to be truly present, the memories become the real souvenirs.

My goal after this vacation is to capture more of these moments in real life. This is going to mean leaving my phone in the bedroom in the evenings when I’m having dinner with my family, taking more walks after dinner, and remembering to just sit and talk—to just…be.