Category Archives: Travel with kids

A Darker Shade of Pale

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Aloha!  It feels like I haven’t written forever, but that’s because I was on vacation in Maui!  We flew in on the red eye last night, and so I’m feeling a little red-eyed.  Pardon the incoherence.  Despite sleeping only about five hours last night, the boys are shockingly energetic and pleasant, which indicates that a ball must be about to drop.  I am also about to drop but wanted to give an update on my lovely, lovely vacation.  As my friend Marilyn mentioned recently, it’s easy to get verklempt about the passage of time and formerly chubby cheeks and adorable mispronunciations, but when it comes to travel, older kids are the bomb.  There was a family – and I mean, parents, plus grandparents, plus two uncles – with one small child at the condominium pool, and all the adults were chasing and doting on and pacifying said small child.  Someone was always following closely, making sure she didn’t tumble into the pool, or slip on the cement, or drown in the hot tub, or eat a plant.  It reminded me of how busy that age was and how un-relaxing a vacation could be.  It also reminded me that I don’t remember anything that happened from 2005-2007, since that little girl was 17 months, and Jake was born when Mark was 17 1/2 months.  I was chatting with the mother and mentioned this, and she said emphatically “Well, she sure has put our plans to have other children on hold indefinitely!”, which seemed somewhat extreme.  In any case, between that family and another mother with three small children – who said to me “I’m still cooking dinner, doing dishes, and folding laundry.  How is this a vacation?” – I was feeling pretty excellent about my children who could be in the pool with only marginal supervision and who weren’t about to eat sand. 

Look at them hanging out at the hot tub like little old men.

It was a fabulous vacation, complete with marginally supervising the children:


Where are the children?  I don’t actually know.  A lot of time was spent at the beach


where I got to ogle all the sexy men:

Is it horrible to post a picture of this guy?  Because he reminded me of Saturday Night Fever.  You can’t tell in this picture but he had a ginormous gold chain on, plus hair like a silver John Travolta, plus – PLUS – his swimsuit was fluorescent animal patterned on the front only.  But you know what?  I give him points for confidence.  Rock it!

We watched the sunset, and also were entertained by the kite flying and pick up volleyball games:

It wasn’t all warmth and sunshine though.  My husband wanted to drive to the top of Halekala volcano, where it was over 10,000 feet of elevation, 36 degrees Fahrenheit, wet, and windy:

I also re-discovered a universal truth: one cannot eat and or drink whatever one wants whenever one wants without consequences.  Related: drinking three beers while barbequing every night, plus wine, plus umbrella drinks, may be excessive.

That photo was for my girlfriend – she knows who she is – who wasn’t there to help me drink those giant bottles.  I had to do it myself.

Finally, we had fun exploring new places and spending massive amounts of time together with a minimum of discord.


Shorts without pockets?  Is this an inside joke?  Or does it just mean no shorts without pockets?  I DON’T GET IT.  Also, since this refers to guys only, does that mean the ladies can party in bikinis after 9 pm?  I’m guessing yes. 

No, honey, I will not murder you when you cease to be a fast driver.

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Happy Thanksgiving, all my Canadian friends.  Although I’ve always thought that Thanksgiving is among the lamer of the holidays, given that I have never been interested in pie, turkey, or any of the usual turkey-trimmings-pie-fanfare.  And yet, it’s always a good idea to be thankful for what one has.  Right now I’m mostly thankful that I’m not in the car anymore.

We drove out to my in-laws’ house for the holiday, and came back today.  It’s a long drive, and I spent most of it staring out the window, listening to Jedi commentary and Star Wars trivia, queries about how much longer the drive would be, childrens’ voices singing along to vastly inappropriate popular music – “I’ve had a shit day!  You’ve had a shit day!” – and a startling amount of swearing at other drivers on the road, notably those who were driving RV’s, pulling trailers, elderly, and/or driving slow on undivided stretches of highway and speeding up whilst in the passing lanes, making it difficult to pass.  “If I ever get old and start driving like these assholes,” my husband said as he passed an elderly man driving an RV, “Just put a fucking bullet in my brain.”  Sorry babe.  I am never going to put a bullet in your brain.  Possibly you need someone else to carry out that living will of yours, mmm-kay?

I am also thankful for the three Macintosh apples I JUST ate in rapid succession.  One of the best things about visiting the in-laws in October is the fresh produce.  A friend of mine tried to convince me that yes, I could eat a varied diet as a locavore, but I say one hundred miles is not enough.  Fuck the 100-mile diet I say!  And those apples made the drive worthwhile, as well as the twenty pounds of Concord grapes my mother-in-law sent me home with. 

Another thing to be thankful for: it will be another year until we do our family pictures, so I won’t have to put up with the usual family-picture angst from the children about how the clothes I have chosen for them make them look like dorks.  Honestly.  It’s not like I was dressing them up in bow ties or that we were all wearing matching clothes.  My bar is pretty low: I want them in jeans with intact knees, and clean shirts that are not emblazoned with Angry Birds, Lego Star Wars, or similar.  And yet the drama that follows is worthy of an after-school special about a mean mommy who deep down really does love her children.  I have yet to upload the photos, but have a good mind to get our Christmas cards printed with ones that have a good photo of me and husband, while children block out their own faces by pretending to use the force and/or are making faces like Scooby Doo when faced with a large sandwich.  I’m sure I will have lots to choose from.  Merry Christmas!  We don’t know what happened to the children.

Here’s something neat to be thankful for – a yoga friend of mine, who also happens to be a mad talented at making videos, made this video from filming a typical morning practice at the studio.  It’s pretty amazing, I think, and if you’ve ever wondered what Mysore-style Ashtanga is like, well, here it is!  Take a look, you won’t be disappointed.  Fun fact: I am wearing the world’s brightest pink pants. 

Since getting home three hours ago, I’ve baked banana loaf, unpacked everything (well, my husband helped – is he trying to get lucky?  If so, it’s totally working.  Usually I unpack everything alone.), made and ate dinner along with my three apples, cleaned up, and have written this post!  Not bad!  I’m thankful for Wifi, my own foresight in stocking the fridge with long-lifed items before I left, and for my husband, who I will definitely not shoot in the head, if only to show my gratitude for his help in unpacking the luggage.

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Canadians, and for my dear American readers – happy Columbus Day!  Is that a holiday? 

Well, hello there, stranger!

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How have you been?  I’ve been away.  I just spent a week with my in-laws, and I ONLY have nice things to say.  We had fabulous weather, we had lots of fun, and I discovered something about myself: I am naturally a rigid and rule-oriented person (this is not part of my self-discovery; I knew that already) but with effort, I can be very easy-going.  I KNOW.  I also realized that by only reacting agreeably to anything that I may have, in the past, taken in a hurtful or negative way, not only diminishes the effect of hurtful and/or negative comments, but it also diminishes the frequency of such comments!  Do you see what I’m saying here?  It’s a miracle of epic proportions!  You know that saying that no one can hurt your feelings without your permission?  Well, I actually think that saying is bullshit.  I mean, take it from the flip side – does that mean we all have license to act like total assholes, and if someone is hurt by our actions, we can simply say that they allowed themselves to be hurt?  I don’t fucking think so.  But I’m here to tell you, in a modified way, that we really, truly, cannot control what others do but we can control our own reactions and behaviour. 

You know what else makes a person calm and easy-going?  Booze and saturated fat.  Just try it; right now, drink three beers in rapid succession, eat half a bag of potato chips, and just see how relaxed you become.  Easy like Sunday morning, I’m telling you.  You will not be bothered by endless conjectures concerning who, exactly, your children take after, or why, exactly, you still get blemishes at age 37.  Who cares!  Another beer?  Yes please!

The kids were astonished by my new persona, who they dubbed Vacation Mom.  Vacation Mom buys potato chips at the grocery store, Vacation Mom allows them to eat Aero bars at 9:30 in the morning, Vacation Mom even went down the waterslides and got her hair all wet at the water park.  Vacation Mom is a lot of fun, but sadly, she’s dead now.  Regular Mom is back.  Regular Mom is also very tired and somewhat brain dead.

This is how my day has been: up at 4:45 to pack up the car, on the road at 5:45.  Drive for seven hours and fifteen minutes, which includes two short stops.  We made “great time”.  Do you have a spouse, or are you yourself someone who loves to make “good time”?  Before we left, my husband and I were talking to a friend who had just made a similar road trip to us, and she mentioned all the places on the way she liked to stop with her kids to break up the drive.  My husband and I both looked at her nonplussed.  We never want to break up the drive.  We always want to just get there already, dammit.  Clearly we are not those “the journey is half the fun” people.  We’re all about the destination.  This surely is some kind of metaphor about our lives but I’m too tired to make the metaphoric leap.

Once we got home we discovered we had an ANT INFESTATION – it was less of an infestation, really, and more of a “the ants have found their way in through a teeny crack in the foundation” but yet I had a slight ant-related meltdown.  Fortunately my husband is very, very good at dealing with such matters, and we seem to have things under control.  I have seen nary an ant over the past two hours.  I unpacked, cleaned things frantically, did a mountain of laundry – despite doing laundry every single day on vacation – purchased groceries not of the potato chip variety, and then, in a stunning climax to this weird day, stabbed myself in the foot with my nail scissors.  I mean, I really stabbed myself.  I am wearing a Hello Kitty bandage as we speak.

This, too, feels somewhat like a metaphor, but I’m TIRED.  I have much to say about vacation, and about the lovely bloggy award that my dear, dear friend Hannah gave me – my bloggy bestie – and about how my dog now has the whitest teeth after consuming approximately, and not exaggeratedly, one hundred Milk Bones over the past seven days.  But I’m exhausted, and I need a shower, and I sure hope said shower gets that creepy-crawly ant-infestation feeling. 

So tell me, lovies, how was your week? xo

Whale Tail!

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At first I was going to do a “Wordless Wednesday” post – does anyone still do that?  I’m so hip to the scene – but then I realized that it’s Thursday, which is great, really, but probably means that “Wordless Wednesday” isn’t exactly relevant.  Nonetheless, I was going to entitle it Whale Tail and then show you this:

Cool, right?  We went on a whale watching tour and saw 30-40 whales, which I thought was incredible, until I spoke with my girlfriend who had gone with her family on a whale watching tour on the same afternoon and saw a) a group of males competing for female attention, and b) a baby whale breech right in front of them.  Still, it was very fun although I think that my kids were just slightly too young to really appreciate whale watching.  They enjoyed it, for the most part, but for kids that age if you have seen one whale, you’ve seen them all.

Note the guy next to me in his festive Hawaiian shirt.  It’s obvious, but Hawaiian shirts are de rigeur in Maui, but they really do look silly elsewhere, unless worn ironically, I guess.

It is starting to snow right now, which makes me think of Triumph, the insult comedy dog.  This clip is QUITE hilarious, if you like that kind of humour, which I do (note: clip is not family friendly).  “Oooh, clouds!  It’s Armageddon for Hawaii!”

Something about being on vacation has made me completely incompetent when it comes to meal planning and grocery shopping.  I depleted our cupboards and fridge in anticipation of our trip, with the tragic exception of the milk I forgot to empty and hence came home to two 3/4 empty cartons, complete with chunks.  Ew!  Gross!  In any case, because of this depletion I have found myself grocery shopping every single day since our return.  EVERY DAY.  Today I realized that I needed – NEEDED – to go to Costco, and so there I went this afternoon.  I found that my faith in humanity – as usually happens when I shop at Costco – has been shattered.  Is it so hard to return a cart?  Is it?  Presumably, the non-cart-returner has already pushed the heavy, gigantic, unwieldy cart through the vast expanses of Costco and the parking lot.  Is that, then, it?  Is that all the non-cart-returner can give?  Is that the extent of their ability to exert themselves physically?  Is walking an extra thirty seconds with a depleted, much lighter cart just too much?  Apparently it is. 

It makes me all stabby.  Fortunately, I think that my grocery levels are now back to par, although unfortunately I went through the mental process I seem to go through every time I’m at Costco, which is to “just pick up an enormous family-sized package of soap and/or toothpaste, since I’m here anyway.”  I do this EVERY TRIP and now I have hoarder-levels of toothpaste and soap.  I’m going to have to hide some in the downstairs bathroom, else my husband may have me committed. 

Speaking of committed, my kids made up a game this morning that involved writing “prizes” on scraps of paper, putting them in a hat, and making me draw the said “prizes”.  I kept “winning” the following: ninja attacks on my person, bad luck, a football, and, finally, the grand prize of a golden marmot.  These prizes are all theoretical, of course, but I’m still a little disturbed by the many impending ninja attacks I have won.

Flying through the air with the greatest of ease.

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Before we left on our trip, a friend of mine told me that her favourite part about any holiday is being on the plane, heading towards the destination, because at that point the trip is just beginning and all the fun is ahead of you.  I agreed with the sentiment, but I can’t say the flight is my favourite part.  Even though flying requires almost no effort on my part, I always board the aircraft looking fresh, with lipgloss and brushed hair, and exit the aircraft looking like I’ve been on a bender: raccoon eyes, unkempt and partially flattened hair, sweaty, crazed expression on face.  Why is that?

Before:

After:
 
Note the Hawaiian shirt.  Festive! 
Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:20 am, and so we were at the airport by six, only to find out that US Customs had changed their policy, and so instead of checking in, going through customs, and then hanging out at the other side of the airport drinking coffee and watching the kids go insane, we had to stand in a gigantic, winding-around-the-airport lineup, until the customs people called our flight number.  Then everyone on the flight would go through customs at the same time.  Why did we need to get there so early, then?  It’s anyone’s guess.  Attention US Customs: this is a very poor system.  This is a very poor system because there is zero communication between customs and the airport, it seems, and so customs had no idea – so they say – of passenger volumes.  We got through customs after 8:00.  We stood in line for over two hours, which wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was kind of irritating.  It meant our flight was an hour and a half late taking off, which, again, was not a big deal for me but I did feel sorry for the people with babies in the lineup.  I also felt profoundly annoyed with the middle-aged couple behind me who complained incessantly.  Yes, we’re in a lineup, but CONSTANT COMPLAINING IS NOT HELPING THE SITUATION.  The woman kept threatening to write strongly-worded letters to everyone from the airport staff to the president of the United States.  “This is just a total nightmare!” she moaned.  Really?  Annoying, yes.  But if my worst nightmare involves me getting on a flight to Maui within a couple of hours, I think I can take it.  This, plus the very dissatisfied babies in the lineup, led to a travel epiphany for me: I would much, much rather hear screaming babies than the sound of complaints, especially complaints from the privileged and entitled.
Instead of drinking coffee on the other side of the airport, we had a picnic of sorts in our giant lineup.  I need to give a (completely unsponsored) shout out to Tim Horton’s.  For the price of two lattes and a bottled water at Starbucks, I bought the following items at Tim Horton’s: two large coffees, two bottles of water, two cranberry-blueberry bran muffins, one chocolate chip cookie, one sprinkled doughnut, and two fruit-and-yogurt parfaits.  Amazing, right?  Hooray for Canada!
Once we got on the plane, I found myself to be profoundly drained, perhaps from all the negativity, or perhaps from saying “I’m not sure how much longer, sweetie” a million times.  The kids immediately immersed themselves in games of Angry Birds and downloaded episodes of Scooby Doo on the iPad.  I, on the other hand, stared at the seatback for three hours straight.  Getting to the airport at six meant that I woke up only slightly earlier than I would on a normal day, but still I was strangely exhausted.  I had reading material, my notebooks, crossword puzzles, and Sudoku, and yet I stared at the seatback for three hours.  I felt like Putty from Seinfeld.  Remember that episode?  Eventually I channeled that episode in my mind and nicknamed the guy across from me “Vegetable Lasagne”.  Vegetable Lasagne was a guy in his twenties who apparently subscribed to the school of thought that says if you have to be up early in the morning, the best way to do it is to stay up all night.  Poor Vegetable Lasagne.  He spent the entire flight with his blue hoodie pulled up around his head and his sunglasses on, playing little dirt-bike racing games on his phone.  When the drink cart came around he requested a beer – hair of the dog, I guess.  I kept waiting for him to barf or something, but he made it okay.
Today is the first real back-to-reality day, as the boys are back to school, my husband is back to work, and I am back to my life of meal planning, school pickups, and figuring out who is going to volunteer for the book fair next week, OMG, I have some gaps in the schedule!   It all feels a little surreal.  For two weeks, I walked around wearing things like this:
(That picture is for my grandma.  Not that she reads my blog.  At least I hope she doesn’t.)
I mean, I walked around in that outfit, a lot.  I went to the grocery store looking like that and I was not out of place!  Today I’m wearing two sweaters and my hands are all purple and sore and I AM WEARING A BRA AND NOT A BIKINI. 
Now that I think about it, my friend was right.  I wish I was on that flight again. 

Here Today…Gone To Maui

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In case you were wondering where I’ve been, I just got home from two weeks in the paradise that is Maui.  O-o-almost paradise!  We’re looking on heaven’s door.  Almost paradise!  How could we ask for more?

I’ve been to paradise but I’ve never been to meeeeee.

I may be a little delirious since I flew on the red-eye last night and I’m functioning on minimal sleep, people.  I’m also slightly delirious from swinging from a tropical climate to one in which my hands are already cracking, and from a lifestyle where I spent the majority of my day lounging in the sun, reading, swimming, and eating a lot to one where I discovered that I had forgotten to empty the milk before I left and came home to a festering, yet strangely empty refrigerator.  For two weeks I barely registered the day of the week and now I’m trying to come to terms with the upcoming book fair and soccer scheduling commitments.  What a buzzkill.  I’m wearing a bra for the first time in almost 16 days, for crying out loud, and I feel oddly bitter and constricted.

I feel as though I need to immediately clarify that last statement, lest you wonder who is this braless hippie who has taken over the Boyhouse?  Not to worry.  I was braless only because my upper body wardrobe was exclusively made up of bikinis and Lulu tanks, and not – absolutely not – because I decided to wander around letting it all hang out in a depressing, droopy, partially deflated water balloon kind of way.  No one needs to see that.

That settled, I love Maui.  My husband and I honeymooned – nearly ten years ago now – on the big island of Hawaii, and other than the awesome newlywedded bliss, the experience left me feeling kind of meh about Hawaiian islands. Mostly I felt uninterested except from a highly amused fashion perspective:

Do you need a closeup?
That one’s for you, Nan and Beck.  You’re welcome.
So my expectations for a Hawaiian vacation were not especially high.  HOW VERY WRONG I WAS.  From the moment I stepped off the plane, my skin plumping happily from the humidity and my purple Raynaud’s diseased hands looking and feeling like normal hands, the moment I smelled the tropical flowers blooming and felt the sun, I instantly wanted to vacation nowhere else, ever again.  Within a day, I immediately started petitioning my husband to book our vacation in Maui every year until the day I die.  I could see myself there, happily, forever, eating pineapple and doing yoga and drinking frosty beverages with little umbrellas in them. 
I was ready to trade in all my black sweaters and boots for (black) bikinis and sandals.  I even have, astonishingly enough, a suntan.  A SUNTAN, PEOPLE.  A SUNTAN.
Note: astonishing suntan may be relative.  After eleven days in the sun we went for a whale watching tour.  Prior to, I was in a long lineup for the ladies’ room, chatting with my line-mates about organizing a coup to take over the uncrowded mens’ room, when the very tanned woman behind me mentioned that perhaps I had not been in Maui very long.  After some discussion, it was discovered that we arrived on the very same day.  Well, said the very tanned woman, I have been at the beach every day.  Um, me too.  Not three hours later, we ran into my husband’s colleague and his wife, who touched my bare shoulder and asked, concerned, if I hadn’t had a chance to be out in the sun much.  I think I need to get a button that says “This IS my suntan.”
But anyway, my delirious, suntanned, bra-wearing, back-to-life-back-to-reality self now must go fold a mountain of laundry.  I have so much to tell you!  I want to know everything that happened while I was away.  Tell me everything. xoxo

Oh, HAI.

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Where, you may be wondering, have I been?  Or perhaps you were not wondering that at all.  In any case, I’m just back from a sunny vacation during which the following momentous events occurred: Jake went from a reluctant, life-jacket wearing child to one who jumped into the pool and swam across it without the assistance of floatation devices, I ate four tomatoes a day fresh from my mother-in-law’s garden, the boys and I spent many hours honing our engineering skills with respect to sand sculptures, and I got, awkwardly enough, approached by my sister-in-law’s swinging single male neighbour.  Sugar daddy!  Oh wait.  I think I already have one of those.

So it was a great vacation, and I even have a suntan.  I am also completely sapped from the drive home.  It is surprisingly energy consuming to sit in the passenger seat and hand out snacks for eight hours.  It is also energy consuming to listen with sympathy and interest to the various conversations coming at me from three different directions.  From Mark came incessant questions about the exact number of minutes until we would arrive at our destination, along with a near-constant commentary on the nature and names of the various bodies of water we were passing.  Jake alternated between playing and snacking quietly in his seat, and becoming filled with Hulk-like rage over sitting in his seat for hours.  My husband, in the tradition of the last thirteen years of our road trips together, and perhaps for even longer than that, released an irate barrage of curses on three types of drivers: the elderly, those driving motorhomes and/or trailers, and people from the prairies who drive twenty kilometers an hour below the speed limit on curvy roads, but insanely fast on straightaways and passing lanes so that passing was impossible.  God help us all if a driver happened to belong to all three catogories.  It is happy that he doesn’t have voodoo dolls; if he did, drivers all along the TransCanada would suddenly have their eyes popping out of their heads or suffer instant heart failure. 

So what did I miss while I was away?  Tell me everything. xo