20

Saturday When we woke up in the morning, I figured we were in for a long day. Our flight wasn't until 8:00 p.m, and there was nothing to do at the airport. But at breakfast, Mom and Dad surprised us. They said we were gonna go BACK to the resort for the day. Mom and Dad had talked it over the night before, and neither one of them liked the way things had ended. They decided they wanted to have a "do over" and leave on a high note. Mom said the most important thing was that we get that family picture. She said she knew the PERFECT spot on the beach, and as soon as we got to the resort we were gonna head straight there.

I thought the whole thing was a crazy idea, because I didn't see how we were even gonna get past the front desk. But Dad said he had a plan, and he'd tell us what it was when we got there. We took the free shuttle back to the resort, and we watched that video again. I realized the reason everything looked so FUN was because they never showed any actual FAMILIES. When we got off the bus, Dad told us his master plan to sneak onto the property. And I gotta say, it wasn't really that impressive.

But it actually WORKED. Once we got past the lobby, we went to the pool area. There wasn't anyone swimming, because they were still filling it. We quickly found out where everyone ELSE was— down at the beach. But it was so crowded, no one looked like they were having any FUN.

Mom wanted to get the family picture, but she didn't want other people in the shot. So we went to the sand dunes, where nobody else would be in the background. But that's where we ran into Rodrick's girlfriend. I felt kind of BAD for Rodrick, ESPECIALLY after Mom asked the girl to take our picture with her camera.

I'm not sure we're gonna be able to use the photo as our Christmas card anyway, since Mom usually likes everyone to be SMILING in those. After the family picture was out of the way, we went back down to the beach. Rodrick was sulking, but the rest of us had FUN.

We worked up an appetite, and we were ready to eat. The problem was, the security guard had taken our roomkeys when he kicked us out of the resort. So we couldn't actually PAY for anything. A family in one of the cabanas had some leftover pizza and fries. So we used what we learned from the birds and helped ourselves to some food. After that, Dad said we needed to start heading back. Mom wanted to get a few more pictures at the sand dunes before we left, so we went there.