#and then she started throwing ears of corn into the dunegrass because “she thought he said *chuck* the corn”

[livwritesstuff]

Oh!! Follow up to the last one, what’s the most memorable vacation story for each of the family members? Or do they all collectively share one? Also hi! It’s been a min!! You’re doing great!!!

<3 <3 <3

I feel like Eddie’s favorite memories from vacations are from when the girls are little – like, babies little.

He remembers the first time they brought Moe to the beach. She had just passed the ten-month mark, and planning their trip to Maine was one of the first things they’d done when her adoption was finalized a few weeks earlier.

Their first morning in Maine, they woke up early and made the trek down to the little beach nearby. The sky was still hazy, the sand smooth and unmarred from the night’s high tide. Eddie remembers that Moe was dressed in an adorable yellow swimsuit and Steve had valiantly stuck a pink sunhat on her head even though she was pretty much guaranteed to yank it off as soon as the opportunity presented itself, and he remembers that Steve had walked with Moe down to the water, pointing out the seagulls and the shells and the lighthouse all the way down the coastline barely visible through the early morning ocean mist.

Steve put her down right at the edge of the tide, and she’s not quite walking yet so Steve’s still got his hands under her arms as he crouched down to watch Moe's reactions to the waves rolling in. She tried to pick her little feet up above the water at first, but after a moment or two she was squishing her toes in the sand and looking out onto the water with her face looking all inquisitive.

After a couple moments, Steve looked up at Eddie with a soft smile on his face and Eddie’s heart gave a panging throb in the best way because, fuck, his entire world rests within these two people, and he's so damn grateful that he gets to spend his life with Steve, watching their daughter explore the world.

He has that same kind of moment only a few years later with Robbie (who had goddamn hated the beach and there's a special delight in that kind of baby-indignation, as Eddie now knows) and again a few years after that with Hazel.

For Steve, his favorite vacation moments are the opposite – from the later years, when the girls are older, because he’d loved raising babies but the most exciting part of parenthood to him was watching the people his daughters were becoming.

They were hiking a fairly easy trail in Yosemite (because neither Steve nor Eddie’s knees could handle the tougher ones anymore, and even if they wanted to try, Robbie and Hazel’s whining would make it not worth the effort). The girls are a good few paces ahead of them, Hazel and Moe walking hand-in-hand while Robbie argues with them over what kind of bird they’d heard calling a few hundred yards behind them. They’re wearing swimsuits and shorts because Moe swears they’re gonna pass a lake at some point during their hike, and Robbie's got her old Converse on despite the entire family telling her she’d regret it immediately (and Steve’s pretty sure she does regret it at this point, even if she’s not letting on).

Steve didn’t know it, but he was having the same revelation that Eddie’d had seventeen years earlier – disbelief, in a way, at how wonderful his life is and how the vague notion of family that he'd had in his brain at eighteen years old is the life he's actually living now.