The Million-Year Picnic by Ray Bradbury

A sci-fi story about a family vacationing on Mars. Eventually the father reveals that they are not just vacationing, but there to colonize Mars because earth is war-torn and uncivilized. The children ask all day to see the Martians, so finally, at the end of the story, the father takes them to see. The family walks down to the canal and looks at their reflections in the water.

Imaginative and touching. Smart, yet piercing in its implications.