Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat

As we progressed along the Ohio turnpike with Chicagoland in our distant sites, and with one boy engrossed in "Bee Movie" on the trusted MacBook for the fourteenth time and the other babbling and transfixed by some ball or another, we reflected on what a great success our east coast sojourn had been. We even dared to contemplate doing it again next year; it had been just that good.

Sure, every adventure brings its share of trials. What was it from Garibaldi: blood, toil, tears, and sweat? Finn did bloody his knee at Dutch Wonderland. Jen and I did toil a fair bit schlepping the boys from place to place - staying in seven different places over fourteen days. Wy shed his fair share of tears, typically brought on by being over-tired or his brother swiping his toy. And given the dramatic swing in temperature - clocking in north of a hundred when we left DC and on or about that at each spot along the way home, we'd been sweating it up in the full heat of a new summer, which technically began the day we arrived home.

As we look ahead, we have some advice to ourselves to keep up the positive traveling vibes for next year.

1-Do the same right things: leaving late afternoon, having plenty of games and technology and snacks in the car, staying in suites offering cocktails and a pool, stopping along the way to see so many family and friends, just accepting the fact that our children's diet will mostly involve tubed meats and liquids tinted with manufactured food colorings with some hope that they will transition back to normal without too much fuss when we get back home, and trusting that on the very last leg of the journey, when you have a half-day of driving left, one boy will make it in his swimsuit b/c that's the only shorts you've got left that are clean and the other won't need more than two more diaper changes, because that's all that remain from the 72-mega-pack you started with.

2-No need to complain about how small our car is - it did the job and rear view mirrors are overrated anyway.

3-Set modest expectations. Someone recently told me that what keeps him
happy is low expectations for just about everything. That way, he's always pleasantly surprised! ("How's things?" "Well, my wife hasn't left me yet and the kids still speak to me. Things are great!") We paced ourselves, we got to what we could get to, and we pushed the kids (and ourselves) to their limits, but just.

With that in mind, let's say we don't expect next year to be even better. But, we do expect doing it all over again next year.