This year’s family vacation was slightly different. Not different in an adventureous kind of way like staying anywhere new (it’s always at PoPo’s house, we wouldn’t have it any other way), or going to new restaurants or shops or beach breaks. That would be ’stepping out of the box’. We don’t want any surprises when we order our In & Out Burger, we want consistency, we’re on vacation! What was different was the amount of people we were in charge of.
Five.
Kids.
Plus Mike and I, and occasionally PoPo.
We had the usual Romano siblings:
Joey,
Johnny,
and the always cheeky Sophia… 
Of course Anne–she’s good at running interference for us. Always helpful on vacation.
Then about a month before our vacation, as I was coming off a weekend bender, a thought crossed my mind, “Why stop at four kids? Let’s add one more…”. Kind of like Angelina Jolie does. So I went to the mean streets of Galveston and found Heath:
All kidding aside, both ‘extras’ we would take with us again in a heartbeat. They were great with the kids and they always kept Mike and I in stitches. I will warn you now if you don’t have teenagers, they smell. Badly. Each time we piled in the van we all tried to figured out where (or who) the smell was emanating from. If you plan any trips with teenagers (including Joey) in your future, I just have three words for you: BEANO and FOOT SPRAY. Trust me on this one. Okay, one time it really was a bottle of vinegar that broke open and not Anne taking off her flip-flops (sorry girl!) — but I refuse to leave the vinegar at home — it’s a must-have to battle nasty jelly stings!
Once we were convinced who the culprit of the offensive odor was, everyone ripped into them for about 10 minutes, the laughter and ribbing would die down and you would hear the REAL culprit (usually Joey) speak up and say, in a low I’m-so-ashamed-and-I’m-going-to-get-it-next voice, “oops. sorry. it was me”. Then it would start all over again.
The hardest part of the trip was trying to explain to everyone our connection to Anne and Heath. I thought it would be funny to tell people they were “unpaid interns”, or that Mike and I were running “an outreach program”. The first few times I said it Heath and Anne thought it was kind of funny (I thought I was down right CLEVER!). As each moment presented itself for me to do my one woman comedy show, Heath and Anne could sense my preplanned one-liners coming on and they would politely sigh and walk away from me. ouch! I still think it’s funny.
So, I decided to mix it up a bit and go trendy when people asked if all FIVE kids were ours. “No. One is our Nanny and the other one is our Manny (male nanny)…”, or “I decided to ‘outsource’ the whole mommy thing so I could have a real vacation”. Then I started to mail-it-in and go the easy route, “We’re Italian. We’re fertile people.”, and finally, I just gave into the entire idea. When someone would say “your son (Heath)…”, I would just go with it, and knowingly nod.
One early morning we were at McDonald’s (don’t all great family memories start at the Golden Arches? — TIP: this is where the Beano comes in handy), the kids were at one table and Mike and I were far enough away to still be legally responsible for them, but not too close as to have any meaningful conversations with them, Mike said, “What a good looking bunch of kids. I’d claim all of them”. Yeah, me too. Heath even tried to teach my boys manners! Really. I’m not kidding. By the end of the trip I was calling Heath ‘Babe’, just like the others (Anne’s milestone was last year).
Even after two smelly weeks with everyone, I would proudly say that every kid was mine.
More later…