Traveling with a Tribe

Road tripping with four kids isn’t always the easiest thing to do, heck, getting everyone in the car to head anywhere can be a challenge at times. Even though our trip to Michigan this year was short, there were things that I learned last summer that set my mind at ease when traveling. From a father’s perspective, this one thing is vitally important. Packing.  

Let me take you back to the summer of 2015. With mountains and marriage on our minds, we plotted a course west. We booked hotels in each area with the requirement of 3 beds in one room or in a suite if possible. Expedia made it easy to select all that criteria, or at least we thought. More on that later.

Packing for six people for two weeks, including wedding attire, can be a challenge, but we came up with a plan. Personally I think the key when driving over 3,000 miles, is comfort. I wanted to make sure everyone had enough space to stretch and keep their hands off each other!  I had a roof carrier bag, but putting that on a Ford Expedition, even for a tall person, is a pain in the butt.  So, I decided to go with a hitch cargo carrier and a rain resistant cargo bag. All of this needed to be lightweight because I knew I would be doing most of the work, and with eight stops, I didn’t want this to wear on me.

The hitch cargo carrier system gave us the ability to keep the car free of luggage with the exception of a cooler, snacks, wedding clothes and bathroom essentials. The kids could also bring their bag of entertainment, a pillow, and blanket. One problem was that standard luggage is too bulky to fit into the cargo bag and, let’s be honest, one piece of luggage for each person with 5 to 7 days of clothing isn’t going to happen. Plus if it rains, even though the cargo bag is supposed to be rain resistant, we may have wet clothes.

Ziploc Big Bags became the solution. These things are great! At around $10 for 3 bags these are a no-brainer. Each person gets their own big bag, which they can stuff with their clothes. It’s waterproof because of the purple ziploc. And most importantly, it’s squishy, so I can stuff these Big Bags into the cargo hitch bag without feeling like I’m playing a daily game of tetris. In that two week road trip, we only had one zipper fail on a bag. It worked out beautifully. We kept a few garbage bags for dirty laundry, which again was easily stuffed into the hitch bag.

As simple as it sounds, taking the stress out of the packing process is important; almost as important as confirming your hotel room arrangements in advance. Unfortunately, after 13 hours of driving to our first stop in Nebraska, our hotel informed us the room I had booked could only handle 5 occupants. Luckily we found another hotel nearby. That was the last time I was going to make that mistake, and fortunately, all the other places we booked had it right.

All-in-all we had a fantastic trip! Fortunately, all of our kids were pretty darn good. They knew the plan: see nature, get married, and visit family. We only suffered one meltdown, but after order was reestablished, everyone knew where we stood.

Our cargo hitch Ziploc luggage system allowed me to pack quickly, efficiently, and without much thought. This was really important to me and to the whole family. I wanted to be free of those Griswold moments, so I could drive with a clear head and be present in the moments that really mattered. Like this...

-Andy

Six Minus Four Equals Two

School starts this week...sigh. We’ve recently returned from a quick family vacation in northern Michigan (fun video soon to follow), and I will officially have two high schoolers and two fourth graders. Truthfully, I'm looking forward to getting back some of that structure we've missed over the past few months of summer break. I love my children with all of my heart. I know that so much of who I am centers around being a mother and a stepmother. I sometimes tell myself that having an eldest child with special needs set the standard for the entrenched mommy lifestyle, but if I’m being honest, that’s probably who I would have been all along, regardless. I desperately want to be a good steward of the children that I have been blessed with. Some days I feel like I’m knocking the mom thing out of the park, some days I’m “ok” at that job, and some days are, well, some days.

Generally speaking, all is right in the universe when we have a house full of the laughter, boisterous play, and sometimes even fighting that comes with having four kiddos. Andy and I spend a lot of energy around raising our sons and daughter, managing day to day comings and goings, and all of the other shenanigans life tends to throw our way. So much, that we recently had quite the reality check when we happened to have a rare 5-day stretch without kiddos. Our teenagers are at home with us most of the time. With the exception of a couple of weekend days a month spent with their dad, we see Lora and Parker every day. This month Lora and Parker were gone on a weeklong vacation with their father. With Will and JJ at their mother’s during her parenting time, it was just the two of us for five days. Alone. Together. As a couple.

You would think, “Woohoo, no kids! Time to ourselves! Let’s do everything adult thing we can think of!” Right?! Yep...nope. I’m pretty sure Andy was seeing this as an opportunity for some quality husband and wife time (*wink* *wink*). I was fantasizing about an entirely different activity involving our bed, afternoon naps. While Andy was elbows deep in nurturing the beginnings of his new company, I was doing what any mother with an iPhone would do while her teenagers were on a Disney World vacation with their father, stalking them via friend finder (thank you, Apple, for making stalking your children’s GPS location socially acceptable), as well as grumbling to myself, and Andy, about how my children weren’t texting me with every exciting vacation detail. Well, maybe I wasn’t expecting a play by play, but I was so excited that they were able to take such a big trip with their father, I wanted to be able to experience just a piece of it with them. Early on in Lora’s diagnosis with autism, Disney was often our way of connecting with her. Much of her early verbal skills were imitations of lines from Disney movies or songs. Even at 16-years-old, I wanted so badly to see the expressions on my sweet girl’s face as she experienced Disney World for the first time.

I had my small, bedroom breakdown about midweek while they were gone, briefly shed my tears behind closed doors, dusted myself off, and let go. Because at the end of the day, they were having an incredible vacation with their father, something they all deserved. I did not need to insert myself into their memories. We have plenty of our own memories, and plenty of opportunity to make more. I relished my one phone call from each of them while they were gone, and I let them be. I let go only to realize that Andy I had some work to do as a couple.

We are a great team when we are busy. If we have a project to accomplish together, a big idea to discuss, parenting, management and organization…we are good. We are a well-oiled machine. These are the areas where our relationship truly shines. What we haven’t turned our energy toward is learning how to play as a couple, how to be lighthearted together. We need to rediscover what genuine joy between the two of us looks like. Creating a playful space that breathes freely between the two of us, allows the soul of who we are as a couple to grow in a gentler, sweeter way. When we came into this relationship, we were already all business. Navigating parenting, daily to do lists, paying bills, divorces…our noses were to the grind, and we knew how to do serious (darn that baggage). It’s funny, playing with our children comes so much easier. Even the teenagers aren’t nearly as self-conscious as we are. I don’t think there’s a textbook answer for what being playful with your spouse looks like. We clearly really have no clue. We know it’s an area we need to work on, and for us, I think the first step is recognizing that childlike spirit within one another. We are going to have learn how to drop the ego, the judgement for ourselves and one another, the expectation, and just be. And to laugh. And smile. And breathe.

Maybe the next five day stretch we’ll have it all figured out. Maybe?

~Stephanie