Travel Whirlwind

A few weeks ago, I took a trip with my 7 year old daughter E and 5 year old son C to visit my parents. They needed some extra help and also haven’t seen my kids in a while, so we hopped on a plane to make the trip out there. I was expecting things to be slightly easier since they are older now and in some ways it was. In other ways, it was not.

What was easier was the actual travel itself. E and C have been on tons of flights, so they are used to the routine at this point. Gone are the tantrums when the tablets go through security and they are alert when needed. It’s also great that they are not as glued to their tablets as before since I can get it out of their hands when we land. That way they can actually walk and pay attention to what is around them while getting off the plane.

What was hard was I didn’t expect the amount of fighting they would do on the trip. I thought they could play together and enjoy a new setting at their grandparents, but there were tons of fighting all the time. It was almost every hour and it was driving me nuts the first few days. I was also running on fumes the first few days and didn’t sleep well since me and the kids were all crammed in the same room, so that did not make things easier. Adding on top that they were getting sick and I actually got sick on the second day of the trip was awesome.

What I did enjoy was some of the meals out. We went to a sushi place with a robot and they loved it. They ate lots of sushi and I got to drink some warm matcha, which helped me a lot. We also went to a great Vietnamese restaurant that I usually go to and they loved that as well. I also enjoyed watching the Winter Olympics with my parents and they were really engaged with the programming, especially the women’s figure skating session. My kids ended up watching as well and we got a home cooked meal on the last day to wrap up the trip.

As we were heading back, I was happy that we survived the trip in one piece. Even though the trip wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked, I’m glad my parents got to see their grandkids as well. I think the trip took a lot out of me because I had a bad rolling cold for about two weeks after that, but now that it’s past me and I can look back on the trip, I’m glad we got to do it.