I haven't any "expensive" stories
I can, however, recount a cheap weekend that may be familiar to some:

It's Saturday morning. You're ten, and the sun is shining. Despite this, you want to spend your weekend hiding like a groundhog from Murray and playing Resident Evil with your siblings (but not letting them get the controller, you may be ten but you're not a complete fucking moron...) Just as you've settled down with your bag of penny sweets on the most comfortable cushion in the house, your parents/grandparents/whoever burst in with their idea: we're going to go out and enjoy the sunshine!

With many a cry of "You'll enjoy it once you get there!" and "The computer will still be here when you get back," you're crammed into the car in between your older brother (who is carsick) and your cousin (who ALWAYS falls asleep, keels over and drools like Niagara Falls into your lap.) This journey is interminable. The drivers WILL get lost at least once, you can't have the windows open because your grandma is prone to chills, and Abba are on the radio on repeat.

You may try to enliven your cheap weekend with conversation. A few select ideas:

"Where are we going?" "Wait and see/You'll find out when we get there!"
"Are we there yet?" "Not yet."

Eventually you'll get to some patch of land which has some trees, or a lake. Since it's a sunny Saturday, EVERYONE is there. There's no room on the fun things, like swings, so you end up trekking around the park carrying a bag of picnic that, for some reason, couldn't be left in the car.

This picnic will nearly always include a bottle of squash so watered down it could be used as a homoeopathic remedy, and a questionably old bit of cheese that made its way in because it "needed eating". However, there won't be anywhere to sit to eat it. You will end up choosing from an ant hill, near-the-bin or in-the-car.

By this point, your head will be aching from the sun, and you'll be bursting for the toilet. The choices are simple: hold it in, or go behind a bush. Your grandmother still clings to this old adage, despite the fact that the only bushes around are prickly, spiky, or more naked than a page 3 girl. Around this time, you will invariably step in something a bear has left in the woods, and be lectured on looking where you're going.

And so begins the trek BACK to the car... this time getting tired, carting smelly picnic remains back, and looking in despair at the darkening sky. Another few lifetimes crammed into the car, and you're home. And, at the end of this delightful day, just when you've regained the cushion and controller:

"Right, bath and bed you guys."
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Thu 13 May 2010, 23:53, 4 replies)

haha
excellently written and too true! Remind me not to put my future kids through this!
(Miggyman, Fri 14 May 2010, 15:45, closed)

I intend to put my kids through it
I have a suspicion that it's been a petty act of vengeance between the generations for centuries.
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Fri 14 May 2010, 19:23, closed)

Are you one of my kids?

(Kip, Fri 14 May 2010, 17:29, closed)

Noooooooooo!
I'm getting hideous flashes of my childhood, like some kind of pre-pubescent 'Nam flashback!
(Draco Rattus ate all the pies on, Sat 15 May 2010, 8:07, closed)