How “Phantom Luggage” Brought Happiness, Joy, and Silliness to My Family | VictorSchueller.com

By Dr. Victor Schueller | Uncategorized

This past Friday my family packed up to take a little mini-vacation weekend in Wisconsin Dells.  We always love hitting up our favorite waterpark resort there, because you don’t have to go outside once you’re in (a definite plus in the winter), and you have plenty of activities available to keep everyone entertained and busy. To start off our getaway, my older daughter and I went to the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory, where they have over 170 interactive science-type activities for families.  Brianna and I enjoy science and science concepts, so we had a blast.  During our time there we we served up Brianna’s head on a platter (see the picture above), and we also lifted a 5,000 pound truck off of the ground just by pulling on a rope!

At the same time my wife, Shelly, and my younger daughter, Ava, hit the outlet mall and did some shopping.  After they were finished they picked us up, and then we headed over to Moosejaw Pizza for an early dinner.  After stuffing ourselves silly we headed over to the resort, checked in, and then started unpacking.

As I brought in all of our luggage, the girls were anxious to go swimming.  Shelly had asked where the girls’ luggage was.  I surveyed the items I brought in and just smiled.  I realized that I hadn’t seen the girls’ luggage in the back of the car, which could only mean one thing:  I had forgotten to pack along the girls’ luggage!  It was still sitting at home!

“Oh well,” we thought.  There’s not much we can do at this point, but we’re going to have to get some clothes for the girls so they have something to wear over the next couple of days.  So, we jumped back into the car, and we once again headed over to the outlet mall so that we could get some clothes for the girls.  Shelly found some great deals, and in no time we took care of the problem.  The girls were equipped with their clothes for the rest of the weekend, and all was fine in the Schueller household.

We stayed at the resort and had a blast all of Saturday, and then packed up our things on Sunday morning in preparation for our departure.  We piled all of our luggage onto the luggage cart and brought it all out to the car to get packed.  As I slid in our luggage, I grabbed two large blankets to move them out of the way for the other items I needed to load.  Under the blankets was — you guessed it — the girls’ “phantom” luggage.  It was sitting in the car the whole time, but I just didn’t see it because the blankets were covering it.

I looked at the luggage and said, “No way…No way,” and I just smiled at Shelly.

Shelly said, “What?” and then she glanced over my shoulder and saw the girls’ luggage sitting there.

She smiled, handed me the bag she was holding, and said, “You can load the rest of the luggage into the car,” and walked away.

As I finished loading the items and walked the luggage cart back to the building, all I could do was heartily laugh out loud.  What else could I do?  It was funny.

“What a great opportunity for happiness and joy,” I thought.  “If you take life too seriously, you’ll miss all the joy and silliness in being able to laugh at yourself from time to time.”  In that whole ordeal of dealing with the luggage crisis, we all found a golden treasure — the treasure of happiness that comes with laughter and joy.

We had a great time on our vacation, and being able to laugh about such a silly thing as “phantom luggage” in the end was the cherry on top.  Not only did our trip provide respite from the relentless winter, we also found something that filled our hearts with happiness, joy, and silliness.  Not a bad way to spend a vacation at all!

What opportunities do you have to add laughter, joy, and happiness to your life?  Do you take advantage of the opportunities to laugh at yourself when they present themselves?  Let me know!  I’d love to hear from you!

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