Since becoming a mother, I have had an overwhelming need to recreate the most wonderful memories of my childhood with my children, husband and parents. A beach trip to Bethany at the top of the list. My memories there as a child mostly include a blue beach blanket with white and yellow daisies and sun dried frogs all over the pavement, but I fondly look through albums of picture perfect family fun.

This year I booked early and started planning. I chose a little three bedroom, pet friendly condo steps from a private beach. Just enough room for our family of two and four legged. There was even a spare bedroom to invite friends to join. It was the perfect vacation in the making.

After securing the perfect place, I immediately started Amazon diving for the efficient, color coordinated beach shanty. Tent, sand proof blanket, microfiber-easy dry towels, wagons, chairs, coolers, speaker, games and tons of toys rounded out my wish list which I chipped away with every paycheck until my mental beach Pinterest board was complete. If I remembered the daisy beach blanket, I wanted my children to remember the billowing turquoise and blue tent, colorful striped towels in the same hues and mommy's efficiency and preparedness.

I started packing about a week out. Every activity for a week away tucked in its own eco-friendly, also color coordinated, lightweight bag. Healthy snacks and beverages were purchased and a daily itinerary of fun, food, naps and family time outlined to perfection. We set out early Saturday morning to beat traffic with an audiobook for the grown ups, dvds for the littles, my parents in the following car with the two geriatric dogs who were super grateful that they were included with the luggage in the packing extravaganza. For the first time in well over a decade, we all left the farm at the same time.

The first thing of note upon our Bethany arrival was that the place looked MUCH bigger in the pictures. There were four levels and a slight smell of must which never left. The house was dirty. Dirty and tiny. And not baby proofed which was a detail I totally missed when the first things my two year old son found were the knife drawer and the thermostat on the refrigerator which he turned so low the ice was soft. Oh how this was foreshadowing…

In a sandy nutshell, no one could get on the same eating schedule so every mealtime was chaotic, the itinerary was negated the first day, the children were afraid of the ocean, the beach tent was a cheap POS that routinely fell in, the dogs sh!t on the floor daily, so.much.sand, a bug went through the tiny, dirty house and fevers spiked, mommy did all the chores, we didn't have game night and we never made it to Funland.

My family said they had a fun time but all of my vision down the tubes and I returned more tired than when I left. I now know why you vacation in 10 bedroom beach houses with 3 families, private pools and fenced back yards. You need to take a gang of children to entertain each other, enough adults to split the duties and have some personal peace and quiet and door to let fido out as routine to do their business.

I will be getting sand out of my house until Christmas.