When Are We Going To Get There?

Any trip, any length, it doesn't matter if you are going to the neighborhood store for some milk, you know the question is coming. "When are we going to get there?" is inevitable. After having four boys, you would think that I would have a good answer, but I don't. "We'll get there, when we get there" seems to be the typical response these days, but that is not satisfying. When I am low on patience, I might respond with, "if you ask me one more time, I'm going to turn the car around and go home," but that doesn't work either.

I obviously lack a proper response or suggestion on this one. My only observation is that all of my boys, the ones old enough to talk, of course, asks this most classic of travel questions. Giving them an estimate of the time of arrival only satisfies them for about 5 minutes. I don't want to get them a handheld video game, just to keep them quiet. My wife and I feel that children should be able to find entertainment in conversation, the view out the window, reading, magnetic chess or some other thing that requires their mind other than a video game. We're old fashioned that way.

I would have to confess, that sometimes when I am alone driving one of the boys, I do give them my cellphone so they can play the one video game on it and keep entertained.

Freaks on Vacation

My wife and I just returned from a 5 day vacation in Seattle and Vancouver, BC. We travelled with our 4 boys (yes, 4 boys!) by flying up to Seattle and driving the rest of the way to Vancouver. It was one of the first times that we traveled with all 4 boys (ages 9, 7, 5 and 1 year). Imagine the look on people's faces as we got on the plane at Southwest Airlines. No one wanted to make eye contact with us in fear that we would sit our 4 boys next to them on the flight.

I came from a family of 4 children, but growing up in the 60's and 70's, I never felt that people were starring at us whenever we went out. That was certainly not the case this week. My wife and I felt like freaks with two heads, the way everyone starred at us as we walked through airports, restaurants, hotel lobbies... Can it be true that having 1 or 2 children is cute, but having 4 or more is outrageous in these modern times?

It is good to be home in the old neighborhood, where the novelty of us having 4 boys has long worn off and we can just go about our ways (two-heads and all) without hardly a notice.