We are just back from two back to back trips and as we were driving home from the beach yesterday, I couldn't help but think of how much I have learned about travel with kids and how we used to pack compared with how we pack now. How at ages 6 and 8, J and E are so much easier to travel with, both from a sheer volume of stuff, but also just in general how easy they are. I've got to play around with all the new blogger features to see about what I can do in a post, but I want to make one that is all about travel with kids....coming soon.
In the meantime, we had 2 great trips. Wisc to visit those grandparents was over the July 4th week. The weather was amazing. Mid to upper 70s, no humidity and it was very relaxing. Sadly a dear friend of the family died after a long illness as we were coming home. I didn't know him nearly as well as D did, but I'd gotten to know him over 15 years of visits to Wisc. and he was the type of person to always have a smile and a laugh when you saw him. He always took us out for pontoon boat rides and Den and I enjoyed hanging out at their lake house with them and their youngest daughter and her family. RIP.
While we were in Wisconsin, the kids got great time with the grandparents and our usual host of shopping and activities. The kids used their first sprinklers and saw at home fireworks. Everything, including sparklers is illegal where we live, so it was pretty funny to see their reactions.
While we were traveling home, there was a delay in our flight and we thought for sure that we wouldn't arrive home until the following day. When we got home as scheduled on Friday night, we decided that rather than wait until Sunday to drive to the beach, we'd set off the next day. Otherwise, we'd have 24+ hours of 'undoing' the house and then have to be ready to be gone again, and it just made sense to not use dishes and just get on the road. All was on schedule until around noon time when Den was starting to pack the car and noticed the tire of my car was flat. Fast forward 2.5 hours and we had a patch for a hole that came from a nail. We first tried going to NTB, but that worker refused to wait on us, so we went to Jack Taylor who took great care of us and instead of the quoted 1.5 hours, had it ready in 30 minutes. We still got to the beach late, but missed a ton of traffic.
E is calling incessantly for me to come hang with him....
