Traveling was something that Steve and I always wanted to do more of with the kids … when they were a little older.

Early on, we realized that we were not good schleppers.

Dragging three kids and all their paraphernalia onto some form of transportation and then to a hotel, or worse, multiple hotels, was definitely not going to make for good family memories.

For many years, we solved this problem by going to the exact same property at the exact same beach, doing the exact same activities for a week every summer. And it was wonderful. Some of the very best memories our kids have involve those trips. I don’t regret a minute of them, and they never got boring.

Finally, we reached the sweet spot of vacationing with the kids and had just started taking long weekend trips to drivable places, and a two-week-long summer sojourn over multiple states. The kids were old enough to enjoy stopping at educational places like the Freedom Trail in Boston and still goofy enough to enjoy a day at an amusement park. They were independent enough that we could trust them to take a boat out on the lake alone, if they stayed together, and had palates developed enough to venture out to local eating establishments to sample unique cuisine.

Our final family trip to New England, with an extended stay at Moosehead Lake with friends, had given us a glimpse of what our future held. Until it didn’t.

Since then, we’ve done a lot of traveling, mostly to escape the holidays and traditions that were too painful to celebrate. This past year, having A away at school, and two kids on varsity sports schedules, we didn’t do as much traveling during the year, so we decided to try a return to the family summer vacation.

I was nervous. With A gone for most of the year, and G, and his driver’s license, and E, having friends with driver’s licenses, finding more and more independence, I felt like our family was starting to gain a distance that we were getting too comfortable with and that crashing us all back together for a week on a boat might not be the best idea.

Even as the kids packed up and worked off the chore list of things that had to be done before we left, we were all moving in separate directions. Texting timelines and packing lists wasn’t helping the situation, but I had too many other things to catch up with to sit down and fight with all of them. They’re all old enough to deal with the consequences of not packing correctly.

More unsettling still was the fact that they and their bags were all in the car at the appointed departure time and I was the one who was 3 minutes late. All three raised disapproving eyebrows and rolled their eyes at the clock as I got in the car.

And to top it all off, the next two hours, as we drove to the port, were filled with some of the best conversation that the four of us have had in years. Even though they were all talking at once, we somehow managed to carry on several conversations. Memories and laughs flowed freely, and I was starting to wonder if I’d overslept and was still dreaming.

It’s a little unnerving to have your kids morph into semi-respectable almost adults when you were pretty sure there were blood curling screams emanating from their shared bathroom only a few hours earlier, but I went with it.

As we approached our destination, reluctant as I was to curb the enthusiasm, I had to go back into mom mode. I gently reminded them that they all needed to put a little effort into keeping their staterooms clean and organized. Only, I didn’t say it that way. I used a combination of words that I swear I’ve used before, only they must have somehow taken on a new meaning because all three of my kids cracked up like I haven’t heard them laugh in years.

Not only did they agree that whatever I’d said was wildly inappropriate and hilarious, they also made a pact to trot out the phrase for the rest of our vacation, any time things started getting a little tense, or someone seemed like they were in a bad mood, or even just for no reason at all. At which time, it was guaranteed to crack all of them up again.

It’s been a long time since this family could laugh together with this ease. We used to be a family with a thousand inside jokes, but I think we’ve been afraid of them since we lost Steve.

I certainly didn’t plan it, and probably couldn’t have, if I tried, but that was the best thing that happened on our summer vacation.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News