Family Trip, Not a Vacation

I stumbled across a link to the blog post "A Vacation or Trip: A Helpful Guide for Parents" on another blog I read that talks about the au pair program.  The commenter thought the post would be helpful for those of us host families taking au pairs on vacation with us.  How timely given that we'll be traveling with our new au pair first to the North Shore for a wedding and then to North Dakota for an all-American family vacation.

Even though I laughed out loud at the post, I should probably have cried, because you guessed it, according to the guide, our family vacation in August is definitely a trip.  We will be four young children, a new au pair we first met two weeks prior and two stressed out parents packed in a minivan for what Google Maps assures me is only an eight-hour-and-nine-minute drive, one way.  Even before we set out on our trip, I will have packed for at least four other people before I have a chance to pack for myself, cooked and frozen hotdishes so I have less to cook on my "vacation" (who are we kidding, even on vacation I will be responsible for making sure seven people are fed three square meals a day), and gotten everything ready for Oliver's first day of kindergarten, which occurs two days after we get home from said trip.

So why do we do this to ourselves?  The reality is we don't have much choice at this stage in our lives.  Chris and I do like to travel, but with four young children, the only way we can make a trip happen is if we bring them with us on a kid-friendly trip.  Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota may sound like an odd vacation destination for those outside the Upper Midwest, but it was a strategic pick.  It's somewhere at least one of us hasn't been (Chris), is less than a day's drive (so no extra expense and hassle of unloading four children into a hotel room for the night), we could rent a place with multiple bedrooms and a kitchen (since eating out with a family of seven is expensive) and the national park is beautiful and appeals to all ages.  We won't be able to do extensive hiking (or maybe even minimal hiking) with young children and we'll probably end up at the local pool on at least one occasion because that will carry more appeal to our children than the petrified forest a nature-loving friend raved about, but such is life for us now.

My hope is that despite how much not a vacation this trip will be for Chris and me, that our kids will grow up to love travel and our new au pair will appreciate seeing a part of the United States she never would have otherwise seen.  And of course, after we've put in our time in a minivan criss-crossing the country on our own little version of National Lampoon's Vacation, Chris and I still hope we will take a real vacation.