After writing two kind of complain-y posts about our trip to a beautiful lake in a phenomenal house, I would be remiss if I didn’t say: our vacation was awesome. I love finding humor in mishaps and sleep deprivation, but those moments were honestly the exceptions. There was a lot of work, sure. We were
One afternoon I was sitting on the dock while David played in the sandy area on the bank of the lake. Thomas was draping himself over my legs, doing that three-year old thing where he readjusts every two seconds or so, trying to get just a little closer to mama. David and Caleb were both
You know you’re on vacation with a bunch of kids when getting through the day feels like you’re in the middle of some reality-TV endurance challenge. In fact, traveling with small kids SHOULD be a reality TV endurance challenge. Or better, part of the regular date line-up on The Bachelor. Going on a trip to
Whenever I pack for a trip, there’s always a period of time when I believe that it would be easier to cancel vacation than to continue packing. This vacation! That we have been looking forward to for MONTHS! It’s the peak of stress, the mid-way point of packing when you’ve been working for hours and there’s
Today is the first day of fall, and I’m celebrating by living in complete denial that summer is over. It is, after all, in the mid-80s for the next week or so; our pool is still open and I still have to water my potted plants every 12 or so hours or they start to
A few weeks ago we went on our annual summer vacation with Tom’s family. This year we went to Lake Anna for the first time. We had an awesome trip, our house was perfect for little ones — a sandy beach area, shallow water, lots of grass for playing, and even a screened-in eating area so
Every morning David asks me what we’re going to do. Is it a school day? Or a park day? Is someone coming over? Is today a church day? Then he gets down to it. “Mommy, is today a swimming day?” No, son, it’s not. That’s my usual answer. Except when we were on vacation. On vacation every day was
When we go on vacation with Tom’s family, there are six kids and six adults. That sounds like a manageable ratio, perfect for man-to-man defense, but it’s not. Somehow toddlers multiply when they’re together. Several times a day one of us would look around and say, “Are there extra kids here? It feels like there are at
We went on vacation with Tom’s family a few weeks ago and it was, um, full. Full, which is a euphemism for crazy, exhausting, hectic. Hectic. That actually nails it. Synonyms for hectic include: frantic, frenzied, feverish, manic, busy, active, fast and furious, fast-paced. But instead of hectic, I’ll get back to that euphemism. It was
The only thing we had on the agenda of our family lame-cation was a trip to the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center. We figured we’d need at least one actual activity because toddlers operate in a time warp. That’s where that saying, “the days are long but the years are short” comes from — toddlers mess with the