As I type this, I am prepping for my summer vacation. Laundry is laundering, suitcases are filling, the car is gassed, and I can't wait to escape with my husband for a week of blissful beaches, umbrella drinks and zero responsibility. Sounds perfect, right? In reality, every family vacation has a Griswold moment or two that imprint your memories. What are your favorite vacation moments?

One of my first holiday memories was a trip to Scotland with my grandmother, mother, brother, aunt and two cousins. We rented a big white van and drove from one side of the country to the other, even getting the token flat tire in the Highland Hills with no help in sight. A fashionista even at age 6, I had to stop at all the kilt shops to look for the Gordon or Lindsay tartans and could tell all their variations by sight. In between kilt shops, castle ruins and heather fields, my cousin and I belted "The Rainbow Connection" on repeat from the last row of the conversion van with the steering wheel on the wrong side. My other cousin, unfortunately, got the chicken pox on the trip and was quarantined to the hotel rooms at night. One night, in particular, my grandmother ordered room service and unbeknownst to her, under one of the plate warmers was a dish made of cow's tongue. My already sick cousin started gagging and panicking while my grandmother, not knowing how to fix the hysterical situation, flushed the tongue down the toilet to calm the scene. After that drama, I ended up wandering downstairs, and through the bar, in my homemade flannel nighty trying to find my family who had just returned from a bagpipe concert. Some things never change, though now I don't wear flannel nightgowns to bars.

The last "family" vacation before my brother went to college was a camping trip to Bar Harbor, Maine. It was the "we are all going to get along come hell or high water" trip with two teenagers that made a sport out of scratching each other's eyes out. We drove from Virginia all the way to Maine with no more than 36 words spoken the entire time. My parents slept in the tent, I am not sure where my brother slept, but I slept in the back seat of the jeep with headphones on and arms folded in true teen angst fashion. I wish I could re-live that trip now through different eyes.

In between 8th and 9th grades, I went on a school trip to Nice to study French. It was an incredible opportunity in paradise. Being 13 going on 30, my classmates and I decided to see if we could buy beer as we figured we "looked" the legal drinking age. When I look at photos of that trip and see that I still had teeth that hadn't come in, I wonder what the clerk was thinking selling a four-pack of Heineken to children, but it was one of the most deviant and liberating moments of my youth. The funny thing was we all hated it and poured it down the sink when we took turns in the bathroom because, you know, beer makes you have to pee. We played drunk as not to let the others think we were uncool and giggled the night away.

Wherever you go this summer, cherish and enjoy every second. They really are memories to last a lifetime. Bon Voyage!