Dream and an Attempt at Lucidity

I come on here, most importantly, to report snippets of quite interesting dreams that I've been experiencing the past three nights or so. Since I haven't gotten a chance to write in a while, a lot of the subtler points of the dreams will be forgotten, which frustrates me. Oh well - I shall have to do the best that I can.
Three nights ago, I can recall that (in the dream) my father and I were on vacation, staying in the house of some friends of ours. I'm fairly certain that we were somewhere in the south, perhaps in Florida, because all of the houses in the vicinity were painted in the characteristic pastels and variations of white. Palm trees also rocked in warm breezes along the sidewalks. I can barely remember this family that we were staying with, except for the fact that we don't know them in real life and that there were a lot of them squeezed into this quaint little house along with my father and me. I felt a certain amount of unease among the members of the family, and I spent a lot of time alone in the dark bedroom given to me which had one window looking out on a small, grassy meadow in the backyard. The yard was bordered on all sides by trees or other houses. In the room, I had a twin bed against the wall, my suitcase at the foot of the bed, and a piano by the window, positioned so that one might play and watch what was going on outside simultaneously. This proved to be good entertainment, for there was almost always someone outside the window, either my dad playing his guitar or members of the family throwing frisbees or balls back and forth. The contrast of the (almost-eerie) brightness and cheerfulness of the world outside of the window compared with the darkness and drabness of the room that I occupied was stark, like a comparison of a living, breathing man to a dead one.
I remember the mother of the house - she was an austere woman in her mid-forties, with a square jaw, beady eyes, and curly, graying-brown hair. She was short and plump, and walked around the house with a certain amount of authority, rapping on everyone's door to call them to the kitchen for breakfast, bustling around with her broom to clean up after the younger children who had knocked glass vases to the ground, and other motherly duties which would, under normal circumstances, put her in the same category as the typical stay-at-home mom. But this woman was different; though I cannot explain it, having not remembered one of the more crucial points of the dream, this woman had a touch of something sinister in her character - which probably explained my decision to spend the majority of our vacation in the darkness of my room (besides the fact that there was a piano in there).
At some point in the dream, I can recall trying to convince my father of this sinister quality in the woman. Of course, my father didn't believe me, and I was chastised for my rudeness. Though I had staged this conversation purposefully just beyond the boundary of trees in the backyard, I assume that we were overheard, because over breakfast the next morning, I had some sort of confrontation with the Frau of the house herself. This is the crucial point of the dream which I cannot quite remember - all I can say for certain is that all of the other people had already left the table and I was called to stay behind, supposedly to help clean up. After this confrontation, I locked myself in the bedroom and would not be called out of it. I must have stayed in there for hours, because at one point when I sat down at the piano to play, I could see that the purplish glow of evening had lit upon the grass outside. The sun had nearly set, and yet, the room that I was in was still somehow darker and gloomier. A barbecue grill had materialized in the middle of the lawn, along with another beautiful grand piano, at which my dad sat. The smell of roasting hot dogs drifted over to me as I paused in my playing to listen - my father was alone (he generally never plays the piano when anyone is around), which was surprising enough in itself because of the sheer number of people in the house who liked to dawdle outdoors at this time of night. His eyes were closed and he began to play the piece that I associate with him, the "Adagio Cantabile" of Beethoven's "Pathetique Sonata." It was here, at this random point in the dream, that I woke up.
The next night, I had another dream in which there seemed to be no resolution. Oddly enough, my father and I were also vacationing in this dream, though I remember that this time we were visiting the coast of North Carolina. We were walking along the beach one night, with the exhaling rush of the waves on our left side, when we encountered three people who greeted us with pleased surprise. One of these was a single mother a little younger (and very different) from the Frau in the previous dream. She was a dark, slender woman, with olive-colored skin and long, straight, black hair which fell to her shoulders. Her eyes were almond-shaped and wide, and she had a loud, joyful voice. Walking on either side of her and clutching each of her hands were her two children, a boy of my age with her dark straight hair and a kind smile, and a young girl with reddish curls and a shy, little-kiddish way of holding herself. She hid behind her mother's leg as the three of them approached us.
The mother greeted us both by name and embraced my father. He recognized her after a few seconds and both engaged in the typical, "It's been too long!" and "How've you been?" routine. I stood awkwardly to the side, trying to remember these people in case I was asked a nostalgic question along those lines. I couldn't place them in my memory.
However, inevitably, the conversation took that nostalgic turn, and my father began reminiscing about a time when we had vacationed to this same beach when I was three, when we had become acquainted with this family (they lived, I gathered, near the beach in a little cottage of sorts). I also inferred from parts of the conversation that the father of the family had passed away or left since that meeting. Soon, the part of the conversation that I dreaded came to pass. The mother turned to me and asked, "Do you remember that, Robyn? It was back when you and Andrew here were about this tall -" she indicated with her hand a point just above her knee, "and we had the barbecue on the beach and -" Suddenly, the expression of recognition halted her in her nostalgia. Gradually at first, and then very suddenly, a vague memory of this family came back to me. I remembered a warm night similar to this one, in which my parents and Andrew's parents had conversed around a barbecue grill and Andrew and I had run in our bare feet over the sand, playing tag and chasing fireflies. We had spent the majority of that day, while the sun was out, wading in the ocean and building sand castles. I was silently amazed at the intactness of this memory which had been forgotten for so many years. I answered the mother, "I do remember that. We ran around on the sand, chasing fireflies." Andrew nodded silently and smiled beside his mother. The rest of the conversation continued in a similar way, until it became very late and we had to part ways.
However, they didn't pass out of the dream completely - after a blank period in which I cannot remember what happened, the boy Andrew returned to my subconscious. It was the day of middle school graduation, and we apparently went to the same middle school (I'm not sure where we were in this dream, if it was near the beach, in Winston-Salem, or somewhere else). We had a festive party on the grounds of the school, and the students, dressed in fine dresses and suits, walked around with glasses of punch, discussing their future high schools; teachers walked around, shaking parents' hands, and musical entertainment was provided by the seventh grade band. I found Andrew sitting near the playground equipment (I don't know why this was at a middle school) with a group of other kids, clutching his punch. I had an odd restless urge in me, and I convinced this group of kids to accompany me to the mall, which was a few blocks away.
We all walked there, and entered the blessedly-air-conditioned building. In the mall (which was five times bigger than the Winston-Salem mall), there were tons of people because it was a Friday. There were also huge floats (I think that's what you call them) that you might see in a parade. These floats were made in the shape of large animals, like lions and elephants, built with wheels beneath them, and being operated by little golf-cart automobiles which were connected to the front of each. A man in each cart drove the floats around to various points in the mall. Little children that were standing nearby gazed at the gigantic animal floats in wonder.
I had, as I said before, an odd, restless urge. I convinced my fellow students to hi-jack these floats with me and to engage in a dangerous game of "bumper cars." We all set out on this mission, running up to each float, jumping in the passenger side of the golf-carts, and knocking each driver from it onto the floor (as cruel as this sounds, none of the drivers were injured because not only were the carts close to the ground, they were also moving at a very slow pace because of the people crowding around them). Once we had entered the carts, we slammed down the accelerators of the carts and zoomed around the mall, with shrieking people running away on all sides. We, of course, weren't trying to frighten the people or hit them - we were just making sport of the parade floats. But the people fled, in any case, and soon we were being followed by little mall patrol-cars. Using a mega-phone, one of the officers addressed us. "You need to exit the floats and leave the mall," he instructed, "before we call the police." Well, being under the influence of what might be called a "power high," none of us complied with this request. Increasing our speed, we thundered around the now nearly-empty mall, banging our decorative animals recklessly against the walls as we went. It was intoxicating.
Then the police arrived; they entered the mall in speedy motorcycles and chased us down to the far end of the main hall, where I expected an exit to be. Instead, we found ourselves in a dead end, blocked not only by a large glass window, but also by a line of mall-patrol people who had been waiting for us there. I was pulled roughly from my cart by a policeman and put in red handcuffs. He led me through a door that I had not noticed which led to the parking lot outside - then, I was thrown into the back of a police car. I watched as, all around, my fellow students were similarly shoved into cars. I woke up.