Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers - Picasso Museum, April Fools Sandcastle, & Muddy Mountain Mischief: Listener Episode #22

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Seth and Josh are back with the monthly listener episode and it's a fun one! With stories from one listener recalling visiting Barcelona’s Pablo Picasso Museum with her mom and the one mistake they kept making, a Hilton Head spring break April Fools prank, another listener from Poland remembers a rainy mountain camping trip with 12 kids, and finally they get one suggestion from a listener: the “Soofy Award.” Want to submit your family trips story for our next listener episode? Or send a question in to Seth and Josh? Submit your voicemail to ⁠https://speakpipe.com/familytripspod! ShiptDownload the app or order now at https://shipt.com FitbodLevel up your workout. Join Fitbod today to get your personalized workout plan. Get 25% off your subscription or try the app FREE for seven days at https://Fitbod.me/TRIP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Family Chips Brothers Hi, Bashi. Hi, Zuvie. It's that time again. I know you missed the last listener episode. Well, bravo, though, to you and Mama. Yeah, she really stepped in there. By the way, I don't call her mama, but my kids call Alexi Mama.

So I do want to amend that and say, Mommy did a great job. Yeah. We're a mama family, and we grew up in a Mommy family. But you're not a Papa, are you? No. Yeah. They don't really address. What are you, Seth?

Him. That one? But not in that way of like he, him, the way like they do in sports. It's more like, what's he him, he him. My pronouns are who dat. Yeah. Yeah, but it's. Dad, I'm just dad.

Daddy, dad, daddy. Okay. That's all right. Yeah. But we do love these listener episodes. So I hope you're a little jelly that you missed the last one. I am jelly that I missed it. But I like being able to listen to you and mom do your thing.

Yeah. And Sam has once again cultivated our finest listener stories. And we're going to queue up the first one, Sam. All right. Hi, my name is Jana. And I wanted to share a story about when I was actually living abroad in Paris. I'm originally from Springfield, Illinois, and my mom had never left the country other than to go to Mexico for a weekend until I moved to Paris in my early 20s. My mom really wanted to go on some different weekend trips while I was in France, and one of the places that she decided she wanted to go was Barcelona.

So she booked us a trip for the two of us and looked at all of these fun museums and different things in Barcelona that she wanted to try. And one of them that we thought would be fun was the Pablo Picasso Museum. So we book our tickets, we go to the museum. And I at the time wasn't fully fluent in French and my mom only speaks English. So we are these two bigger-bodied American women, very clearly American. as I've been told just by us having blonde hair. And we were at the Pablo Picasso Museum. And we keep looking at all of these different paintings.

And we keep seeing at the bottom, DeNacio Pablo Picasso. And in our heads, we're thinking, oh, my goodness, this must be a family member that just had a bunch of Pablo Picasso's paintings. How nice of him that he gave them to the museum. So we go through probably six or seven rooms of the Pablo Picasso Museum, continually seeing DeNacio Pablo Picasso. And multiple times my mom and I are going, I really wonder what family member this is. We should look it up. So we finally get to one room, and it was pottery that was donated by his wife. And it very clearly says, this pottery was all donated by Pablo Picasso's wife.

And I can't remember her first name, but I know that we finally saw a tag that said like, Donacio, Mary Picasso, or whatever her name is. And we started laughing so hard at our just American ignorance, our lack of Spanish fluency. And the fact that we spent the entire time at a Spanish museum as teachers not realizing that the word denasio just donated in Spanish. and that they had all been donated by Pablo Picasso himself. Big fan of the pod. Thanks so much, you guys. And Seth, Quaid Army for life. Oh, righteous kill.

I really enjoy that. And Donacio, I mean, it's a funny name to give your kid. Yeah. I mean, we just had Vincent Denazio. Oh, yeah. Vincent Donasio was fantastic. That is great. I love Janice's enthusiasm all around.

Yeah. It was a good vibe. all around for sure. Yeah. I hope that people in that museum appreciated having somebody like her and her mom walking around. Probably bringing better vibes than are usually in the old Picasso Museum. Yeah. I bet they're big laughers too.

I bet when they realize the error of their ways, I bet it was a pretty good scene over there. Yeah. Also, like, good on her mom for getting out of the country for the first time. Yes. Aside from that weekend in Mexico and being like, hey, I want to do you. I want to take advantage of this. Like, if I'm going to go. I like that when somebody, the reason they weren't traveling wasn't that they weren't going to be a good one.

Yeah. When they actually got a chance. I also, I love it when you can laugh at yourself. Yeah. When you know there's a joke that you didn't know was a joke and then you find it out and there's not really. It seems like there was more joy than embarrassment. I think if that was our family, Denazia, would forever be just a name we would call each other.

Yeah. It may be, yeah. I mean, I would say maybe you would name a dog, Donacio, but who am I kidding? They name all the dogs, Albert. Yeah, all their dogs, Albert. Yeah. I play Albert now with Addy because she likes Albert so much, and that just means I get on top of her and won't stop kissing her neck.

Yeah, that was a different game as a child, but I don't know where a bull, A bulldog came from like Looney Tunes, I want to say. To bulldog someone was just to go lay on them with all your weight. Yeah. Like full dead weight. Yeah. Yeah. So, and yeah, mom would not care for a bulldog.

Yeah. She would care one, yeah, depending who was giving it to her. Yeah. But it was also that thing of like when a kid's like, don't tickle me, don't tickle me, but they want to be tickled. Yeah. Yeah. So she'd sort of no bulldogs. Yeah.

Thanks for that great story. Thank you, Jana. A good tip for any Americans who are heading over to the museum not to loudly say, well, this DeNacio Picasso's generous of heart. Yeah. I wonder if there was a moment when they worried that they were not in the Pablo Picasso Museum, that it was like... They were in the DeNacio Picasso Museum.

Yeah, which is like a lesser-known artist. It was just cashing in on his parents. No wonder these tickets are so cheap. Hey, we're going to take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors. Support comes from shipped. Hey, Bashi. Hey, Sufi. You know, there's a lot of grocery services that'll, you know, you can go online and tell them what you need. But what I like about shipped is their personal shoppers are, they're not ordinary shoppers.

If you're specific about the kind of tomato you need, maybe to make your grandmother's Sunday sauce, the good people that shipped are going to go out of their way to make sure they meet your specifications. Yeah, they're good like that. Yeah. They could even check in while they're, they're going to do. there and say like, hey, they don't have this, but I could get, you know, they don't have X, but I could get Y or Z. And you're like, oh, get me Z. Yeah. It's that kind of attention to detail that you're going to get from a shipped shopper that you might not get otherwise. And with shipped, it's never just a delivery order. It's shopped the same day in the same way

you would. Use code podcast to get a year of shipped for only $49, half off the regular $99 price at shipped.com slash offer. That's S-H-I-P-T. dot com slash offer terms apply at medcan we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health from the big milestones to the quiet winds that's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your health today and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer the healthier you means more moments to cherish take control of your well-being and book an assessment today med can live live well for life.

Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s,

one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Hey guys. Mary and I'm from Minneapolis. I love your podcast and especially like the listener episodes. So I thought I

would share a story from my own childhood that still makes me laugh. I was lucky enough to be able to go on family trips at least once a year that my grandparents would also accompany us on. These vacations were usually over spring break and often included the beach. I should also point out that our spring break trips often took place during the week that includes April 1st. That's an important detail for this story because my mom, although she's a pretty unassuming, mild-mannered Midwestern mom, loves a good April Fool's Day prank. Nothing too dramatic, just something to mark the day. A quarter super glued to the sidewalk, a fake dog turd made of Plato left on the floor. You get the idea. One of our favorite destinations was Hilton Head, South Carolina. I loved going there

because of the days we would spend playing in the sand, building elaborate sand castles for hours on end. So on this particular trip, since we had already started the morning off with a silly April Fool's Day prank, we figured my mom had gotten her fix. It was a perfect beach day, and the sand was just right. My grandma and grandpa had surprised me with new sand toys, and we had everything we would need to create something amazing. We built for hours and hours and enjoyed every minute. Our creation was stunning, probably one of our best ever. And then it happened. A lifeguard from the beach approached us. We thought he was just stopping over to say hello and tell us how amazing our sand artistry was, but his demeanor and tone were clearly very serious as he just started to speak. He told us that

in no uncertain terms, our sandcastle creation was a safety hazard for other people who might want to just walk and enjoy the beach. He then said we had to knock it all down and return the sand to a solid flat surface immediately. He further explained that no sand building was allowed on the beach and that he would have to issue us a ticket if we didn't have it all cleaned up within 15 minutes. I mentioned that my mom is mild-mannered and my grandpa, her dad is even more so. In fact, until that day, I don't think I'd ever heard him swear, but he was furious. I believe I heard, and I quote, what the hell? What kind of a beach doesn't allow a kid to build a damn sand castle? Then my grandma started chiming in, trying to argue our case, but the lifeguard persisted and continued to quote the beach safety

rules. Then, just when the argument had reached its peak and triggered shocked looks from other beachgoers, the stern lifeguard flashes a smile, shouted April fools, gave my mom a wink and trotted away to his lifeguard stand. It took us all except my mom, who had clearly orchestrated the whole thing, a minute to figure out exactly what had happened before we burst out into laughter. If that Lifeguard is out there, thanks for playing along for my mom's silly prank and for doing it so convincingly. You gave us a great memory and a funny story we're still telling all these years later. Yeah, shout out to the lifeguard. Shout out to anyone who's like, I'm going to join in the party. Yeah. I'm going to help a family out. Yeah. It's fantastic. And also, you've got to, when an old man's

yelling at you, you gotta really have kind of nerves of steel. Yeah, especially a mild-mannered old man who might be sort of flexing the few, even like borderline curse words, hell and damn. Those are the bad, yeah. You can tell when somebody is mad and only says hell, they're not used to that. Yeah. I also am at, like, I don't know if you're a lifeguard and you're at your lifeguard stand and someone approaches you, I imagine it's typically like, oh, boy.

Yeah. But that has to be such a nice one like, hey, you want to help me? Right. You know, pull one over on my kids and parents. Be like, oh, yeah, this is fun. This is better than saving someone who's got a cramp in the ocean. Well, that's the other problem is, let's be honest, like most of the lifeguard's day is pretty slow. Yeah.

Yeah. Anything to spice it up. it's not someone drowning is a party. Yeah, as a plus. It's a real plus. Have you ever been asked to help somebody with like a prank? I'm sure I have, but nothing comes to mind at the moment. Yeah.

Sometimes it's weird. Like sometimes people will be like, will you make a video and say to my friend Diane, hey, Diane, you're not as funny as you think you are or something like that. I was like, dude, I want to help. about, but like, you know, without context here. Yeah. You know, so I'm always like a little loathe to be mean to somebody I've never met. Yeah.

Whereas I love to be like, hey, where were you? We missed you. You know, that sort of thing. As we record this, it is St. Patrick's Day at the moment. So happy St. Patrick's Day. And to you? Yeah. You know, leading up to April Fool's Day. But our friend, this sort of feels like a prank, but our friend Doug Stradley, used to always try to catch leprechauns with his daughter and they would set traps. And then there came a year where like, I feel like she put tape at the bottom of the stairs, which was like a net, and then dish soap, like both in his shoes and on the stairs. And it was like, he was like, wait, wait, this is so dangerous.

because it would be like if a leprechaun was trying to creep down the stairs it would slip on the soap and then get stuck in the tape at the bottom and at some point he was like we got we have back off what we're doing here but yeah pranks of it there was always a prank that I heard of that I've never I don't know if it's I'm sure it's been done but I think is a bad one just because of the result but but I also think it's kind of brilliant but if you lift you up a toilet seat and put, um, oh yeah. Just, uh, saran wrap over it. Yeah. And then close it and it looks like there's nothing there. And then if someone like gets up to pee and it just goes everywhere.

But yeah. Yeah. I don't, I'm not a great lover of, uh, of that kind of prank. Yeah. I feel like, um,

uh, Alexi was just, uh, telling somebody like, oh my God, Seth's family just loves to surprise each other. I like, can we really do. Yeah.

But like we surprised, not surprise you or like, boo. We like surprise you're like, surprise you're like, like our presence. Like he weren't expecting me to be like, for example, in Arizona. And now here I am.

Yeah. It's pretty fun. It's called jukeing. And I highly recommend it. Yep. Well, thank you, Mary. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Mary.

Thanks for the great story. And yeah, kudos to your, to your mother and to that lifeguard. Hey, we're going to take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors. Support comes from FitBod. How's it going, Poshy? Pretty well. You know what? It's very, we live in an overwhelming time where you can get sort of fitness tips.

everywhere. You can spend a lot of time on social media and once you look at one, it's just like the algorithm's like, I'm going to give you a million more and you just don't know what to do. Yeah, it's tough out there, Sufi. FitBod makes working out so much easier, Suf. It's like having a personal trainer in your pocket because they will track your workouts. They will suggest what you should do for your next workout. So you're working out different muscles. You're moving things around. You're not plateauing. And they've got videos on the app that show you how to do moves that you might be unfamiliar with. You tell them what equipment that you have, and they design a full workout program for you. It's a snap.

Level up your workout. Join FitBod today to get your personalized workout plan. Get 25% off your subscription or try the app free for seven days at FitBod. Dot me slash trip. That's FIT. BOD.m.m. slash trip. You don't need AI agents, which may sound weird coming from service now, the leader in AI agents. The truth is, AI agents need. You. Sure, they'll process, predict, even get work done autonomously. But they don't dream, read a room, rally a team, and they certainly don't have shower thoughts, pivotal hallway chats, or big ideas. People do. And people, when given the best AI platform, they're freed up to do

the fulfilling work they want to do. To see how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Where is Daredeaf? Am I? Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's DearDen. I'm going to be liberated. We're to take this city back. In an all new season now streaming only on Disney Plus. They're hunting us.

It's time we started hunting them. I can work with that. This should be tons of fun. Marvel television's Daredevil and Born Again, now streaming only on Disney Plus. Hi Seth, hi Josh. I'm Yistina, calling in from Poland all the way across the pond. pond. I love the podcast, even though I have to say you're the reason my neighbors think I've lost

my mind. Every time I walk my dog and listen to you guys, I end up laughing out loud on the street, so thanks for that. My story takes place in Poland sometime in the 90s. My family has always been super outdoorsy. We love the mountains, hiking, camping, all of it. Every summer, my parents would take us to this campsite way up in the mountains. Now, to help you picture it, It was definitely a place Josh Woodloff. Seth, maybe you'd last have an hour there. You had to hike up a mountain for about an hour. And then right in the middle of the forest, there was this open meadow with three big tents,

some spots for smaller ones, and a super basic kitchen, just a wooden table and a woodburning stove. And here is the key detail. The only source of water was a stream running through the meadow. So if you wanted to brush your teeth or wash dishes, you had to fill up a bucket with freezing stream water, warm it up on the stove and go from there. There was even an outdoor shower rigged up in the forest. Same deal. Cold stream water, maybe warmed up if you were lucky. That year, we were there for two weeks. Me, my parents, my two younger brothers and a couple of family friends with kids. In total, 12 kids, all between 3 and 10 years old.

And then it rained the entire first week. So picture 12 muddy hyper children stuck in tents while parents slowly lost their minds. Finally, when the sun came out, the parents basically pushed us out of the tents and said, Go, play. Don't come back until dinner. So we run into the forest. And someone suggested we play hide and seek. Then my brother, genius that he is, had an even better idea, camouflage.

We looked around and found mud. Then we found cold ashes from the campfire. We mixed them into a paste and proceeded to smear it everywhere. Faces, arms, legs, hair, herbs. We reapplied it multiple times just to stay invisible. for longer. It was amazing. We had the best time. And then we came back. Now, remember the drastic hygiene setup I mentioned? Imagine our parents' faces when they saw us. Twelve kids, five of us girls with long hair, head to toe in mud and ash. The sun was going down. It was getting cold.

and we didn't exactly have backup outfits. Pretty sure I still had mud in my hair a week later when I finally got a hot bath back at home. That is, well, you guys were terrible children. You seem like a lovely adult. What terrible children. I love you, finally got out and finally got freedom and then immediately misused it.

But, I mean, there's so many kids between such young ages, 12 kids between 3 and 10. It's like, yeah, to just, and I guess being stuck in tents with them for so long means that you'll be like, whatever they do, it'll be fine. I just don't want to be around them for a minute. Just full, you guys immediately Lord of the Flies did. Lords of the Fly did. Yeah. That's fantastic.

It is that thing when your kids decide to like put, like, just make themselves dirty on purpose because they like don't, they get dirty all the time without trying. And so when they like go out of their way to do it, it is just stunning. Yeah.

It reminds me of like McKenzie and her friend Julia when they were little, they did it to like two different bathrooms, but they were in like one of the bathrooms in one of their houses. And they were like, hey, let's put two, on everything, like the walls, the sink, like just let's cover everything with toothpaste.

And then it just seems like a good idea in the moment because you're not thinking of the cleanup. And then when the parents saw it, and the notion that they then went to the other house, I feel like, you know, shortly thereafter, probably not the same day. But we're like, oh, yeah, let's do that again. That's so good. I will say having to, having your only source of water be a freezing cold stream is, you know, that would give me pause, even going. I love being outside, but a cold shower is your only option can be tough. I have less of a hesitation about that, but why is that? I don't know, because your body's just a callous.

I wasn't going to ever take a shower. No matter what. To me, it was like, ooh, refreshing water to drink. And by the way, the whole time she was saying, I'm like, this is awesome. What's wrong with that? I was like, oh, right, some people shower. Yeah. Yeah, that's a goody.

Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. And I think Sam was very cagey about the next thing we had. It's not a story. It's a suggestion. But it's also not a question. It's a suggestion, which we didn't ask for. You know what I mean? We ask for questions or stories.

Well, I mean, we are sort of prejudging this. So let's see. Maybe it's a great suggestion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Maybe the suggestion is to not be so negative before you hear what something is. But TBD, Sam, let's hear it. Hi, this is Laurie Ray, and I'm from North Carolina. And I just heard the listener episode with Hurry and Pashi. and I think the idea of awarding the best Pashi song with something, some recognition would be really awesome.

And as equal time is so important these days, I would like to propose a Sufi award for the guests that spends the least amount of time talking about travel to our family trips. So, just an idea. Well, guess what? I really enjoy listening to the brothers chat and all of the great travel stories. Well, you know what? I think I was right in saying that this is not a podcast where we take suggestion. Yeah. There is, you know, there's an award in our fantasy football league that was previously named the Golden Sufi.

Yeah. which is now called the golden pair for a reason. It's very unfair. I won the first three years of our fantasy football league. And, you know, Vince Lombardi won the first two Super Bowl. So it's called the Lombardi Trophy, and it should have been called the gold Sufi forever. And then our friend Jake basically called a shot and said if I win it this year, he'd never won it. If I won it this year, we're going to call it the golden pair.

Yeah. And he won it that year. So what could I do? Like a guy calls his shot, I'm not going to stand in the way of it. Also, I was kind of hoping somebody else in the league would be like, no. we're not changing it. And also, you know, another tip of my cap to that group of dudes and to the songwriting that ties in.

These songs are born of your college friends, friends of mine as well, but your friends writing songs for weekends where you got together. And he didn't just call his shot saying, like, hey, if I win, we're going to call it the golden pair. He wrote a song to play. to play at the draft and it was all about how he was going to win and he was going to change the name of this trophy.

So he really did all the legwork and so he didn't change the name of the trophy. And it's true, even to this day, and one of the reasons that I suggested slash forced Josh to write a song at the end of every episode is that Josh started with the aforementioned Doug Stradley doing the yearly song, and it's really the highlight of our weekend.

Yeah, it's a good little moment. The whole weekend builds to a moment where you're all in very high spirits and then we all quiet down and listen to a song. Yeah. In the same way that, you know, Josh's songs here reference the interview you've just heard. They're often about, I mean,

they're always about the 12 guys sitting around the fire. Yeah. Very nice. Very nice. Good suggestion, Lori. Thank you for that. Kind of a shorter episode this week. Yeah, it's kind of shorty.

You know what? It's a bonus episode. And this is coming out on a Thursday, I feel like, is usually the play. And you know what you guys have more of right now? So you have more of your lives to go live. Yeah. Thank you for spending a little bit of it with us. We really appreciate it.

And we will talk to you all very soon. Thanks again for sending your stuff in. Thanks, everybody.