We went to Canada

We went to Canada as a family, in the family minivan. We hadn't taken a real family vacation in a couple of years because of my pregnancy and then the twins being tiny babies last summer. A love of traveling is one of the things Charlie and I have in common and it's one of the things we do much less of now that we have little ones. I knew the trip would be a tough one because I remembered the vacations of my youth. We went on one every summer and, because we were always broke and/or my dad was cheap, we always slept in sleeping bags, on the ground, in a tent. My dad claimed it had something to do with us learning to love the outdoors or some crap. We had a hard time believing that since we lived in the Ozarks, on a farm. We camped and fished near our home every summer, spent nearly all our time at home outdoors, and if we didn't love sleeping in a 105 degree tent, covered in mosquito bites and sand by the time we were old enough to say, "Look Dad! There's a hotel near this national park!" we probably weren't going to. Looking back I may have been too hard on my parents. It turns out that traveling with kids is not that different from traveling with a pack of wild boars. I found that if you load 4 kids and two adults into a minivan for a 13 hour drive, it is NOT about the journey, it is about the destination-because the journey sucks. By hour 6, the van smelled funny, the big kids were annoyed with each other, us and the babies, the babies were pissed at their car seats and we were pissed at the big kids, and each other. There was some disagreement about the route we were taking and it may or may not have resulted in Charlie and I yelling at each other in the car and then having a, "What I hear you saying is...." conversation in a Burger King in Michigan while the kids ate Whoppers and chicken fries and watched, riveted. They never see us fight and said it was both stressful and interesting. I was afraid to ask them to elaborate. We stayed in hotels on the way there, and then at the home of friends who are really sweet people and are obviously totally insane. Who, in their right mind invites a crew like ours to stay at their home for 3 nights in a row? To top it off, they have a beautiful home that they have obviously invested time, love and money into decorating. Unfortunately, we hit their house like a tornado of toddlers. The babies wrecked rooms, tossed toys about, lost 4 pacifiers, and broke one nice, shiny statue. That little gem of an incident resulted in me aplologizing profusely and blinking back tears of dismay while our gracious host insisted the statue was a very inexpensive item, and not to be worried about. It was 105 degrees outside, but we really wanted to see Toronto- and it was worth it. Toronto is a beautiful city and everywhere we went people were polite. Of coures, when our hosts were kind enough to guide some sightseeing and we all decided on a boat ride, the babies sweated, cried and fussed, causing Charlie and I to come very very close to totally flipping out and ruining the trip not just for us, but for all the other nice people who had travel vast distances to see Toronto from the water. The water tour was followed by a beer at a nice micro brewery....followed by a cautious laugh about what a horror show the boat ride was. The older kids were a treat to watch, and really made any road misery worthwhile. They felt like very sophisticated jetsetters because of the international travel. They visited the grocery store and shopping mall, and talked about school with some REAL, LIVE, Canadian teenagers! We visited the CN tower in Toronto, and had a nice dinner there, at the 360 restaurant. It was fancier than the kids were used to, and way more expensive. I explained this to them before we arrived and told them that if they had any questions about the food on the menu, to just ask and not be intimidated. E assured me that she would be fine because she, "went to the Cheesecake Factory, once", which is the kind of comment that makes you want to squeeze them so tight and protect them, so that kind of innocence and sweetness stay put. On the way home, I lost my keys...maybe at a rest area in Indiana, I don't know. I do know that I was very glad to see our home and put the babies in their own beds. I'm sure it's something the kids will always remember and at the end of the day, I think it's an important experience. Adversity and discomfort breeds...something healthy...I think.