“I had a lot of fun when I went to the beach last month,” says Mae, 12. “All of my dad’s family went. We had a special kids day, where all of the cousins got to pick out what we were doing that day.”

Sierra, 10, remembers: “Last fall we drove cross-country to New Mexico. We live in New England, so it's far! We spent a week there and did all sorts of things. I have a MILLION souvenirs, I swear!”

“The best vacation my family took was when we went to South Lake Tahoe,” Patzy, 11, told us. “What made it great was that we forgot about money and concentrated on only having fun!”

There’s no doubt about it: vacations can be totally terrific. They’re a chance to get closer to the people you love and make lifelong memories. But they can also be very strange times when emotions and expectations run high, and little disappointments can lead to big fights.

A vacation is like a magnifying glass on your family that makes everything about your life together -- the good stuff, the bad stuff, and all the stuff in between -- seem a hundred times bigger.