For Christmas this year, we drove to Florida. Florida is nothing new for us for the holidays, but the driving part is. Let me say, I'm pretty damned proud. Out of about 38 hours total drive time, my kids played on electronic devices for about 3 hours, total....and that was because Husband and I needed a break from their playing and talking! Not one movie was watched in the van. Plus, the only games they had were educational ones for their Leapsters. Anyway....off of that proud note and on to another. Sunshine only had trouble sleeping on the way down in the hotel and the first night we at the house, the rest of the time, she slept like a champ! The girl doesn't sleep, which is why we are so very proud of her on this trip. Other than those two big things, there were so many other wonderful parts of this trip! We swam everyday. We went to the beach every day. We had true quality time together and with Grandpa. The trip was awesome! Husband put together a slide show of highlights. Hope everyone had as merry of a Christmas as we did! ***As a side note, Weebly has been down on my computer for some reason and Husband just got it back up and working by rerouting it through a different server, so that's why this took so long to get up.
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Husband and I are very different, yet we do share a love for exploring new places. We love to drive around and just look at new things. When we were in college, we would drive around Southern Ohio for hours just taking it all in. I feel like I've gained this love from my father. When I was young, my dad would drag me out on a Saturday or Sunday and take me and show me stuff. Honestly, at my young age, I didn't care. I find it all that exciting to drive around and look at stuff. I wanted to be DOING stuff. It wasn't until I was in my later teen years that I realized driving around and exploring WAS doing stuff. After Monster was born, Husband and I stopped exploring. It was just too much with a baby. Then came Sunshine and it was too much with a toddler and infant. Now that the kids are older, we really want to start this again, but there is now such limited time with everyone's activities.
Exploration and travel is one part of parenthood that I truly miss. It costs much more to take a family of 4 someplace overnight than just two people. There's a lot more whining and fighting with two kids in the backseat. But, I remember my dad "torturing" me with it and I'm better for it. Travel is always something I loved. I really liked living out of a suitcase. There was a thrill to it. I want my kids to experience that thrill. A couple weeks ago I posted about our spontaneous weekend. The kids hated it at first, but then loved exploring the new places. This weekend, we went to Target in the other town since ours is being remodelled and they seem to be out of everything. We took the long, scenic way there and there was actually no whining! (and, just an FYI, W's Target is also being remodelled, so theirs is the in the same state as M's) I wish we could just freeze time and travel. Unfortunately, time is not on our side with this one. Our weekends are filled with soccer, karate, swimming, church and tutoring, not to mention the every day stuff. That doesn't leave much time for exploration. Husband and I also never get to explore on our own anymore. On the rare occasion we get a sitter, we only have 4 hours to eat and then do something. Not quite enough time to really get out and discover. We're hoping that we can start doing more and more now that the kids are older. We keep trying to get out and show the kids a little at a time. Hopefully, one day, they will look at those hours of "torture" and be thankful we instilled a love of travel and exploration in them. Legoland. It was an experience. We happened to go on the busiest day since they opened. The park actually had to close it's gates right after lunch because they were at capacity. Even super crowded, it was great. The kids are at the perfect ages for this. There were rides they could both go on. There were things for both of them to do. The lines did make it so we couldn't get on every ride they wanted, but we did the majority of the ones they were interested in. Monster and I stood in line for The Dragon for 30 minutes until he decided he really didn't want to do it, which was fine because the wait was still an hour from where we were in line. It was a long, long, tiring day, but totally worth it because the kids had a blast.
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