I love being in my own space. I sleep best in my own bed! But traveling is definitely still a priority for me. That’s true even though traveling with kids, particularly little ones, is not easy. Years ago, when I had three kids ages 4 and under, I told myself it was OK if I wasn’t traveling all that much because they would all be out of the house by the time I was 50. I could spend my 50s traveling like a young person, only I wouldn’t have to stay in hostels!

Then, of course, I proceeded to have two more babies, pushing that everyone-out-of-the-house moment close to 60. My husband will be 70! So yes, we’re beholden to the school schedule for a while. And while we both travel for work and have traveled some together, most likely a lot of our trips will involve young people. But while travel with kids may not be easy, it’s still doable. I realized that I don’t need to wait until they’re gone, nor do I particularly want to, since my oldest kids shouldn’t miss out on experiences just because they have a baby brother. And so I’ve been devising some ambitious travel plans for the next few years. Possibly Europe, Hawaii, another national park or two…

Alas, so has everyone else in this summer of “revenge travel.” Some of the places I’m looking for 2023 travel are already starting to book up! I’m a fan of planning ahead, but I’m not sure I like that everyone else is planning ahead if they have the same travel desires as me…

Anyway, I’m reminded of a quote from the first year of Best of Both Worlds, when travel expert Henley Vazquez talked about adventurous family travel. I asked if there was a way to make traveling with toddlers more pleasant and she basically said “I wish there was!” And yet she’s traveled with kids over and over again. The point is that it is going to be rough at times but it is worth it to see the world, and have your kids see the world.

To be sure, they won’t necessarily remember the world if they’re really little, which is one reason I have traveled with just the big kids to Paris, Yellowstone in the fall (and Disney! Which is honestly best for big kids, whatever impression people might have). But as my little guy crosses three this winter he might start to remember these adventures. And given that my oldest three will indeed all be gone by the time I’m 50, we don’t actually have that much more time to enjoy adventures with them. And hey, my husband has racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles that need to get used at some point…

What’s on your family travel bucket list?

In the not-travel category: We’ve been having fun watching the fireflies in our new yard. For some reason they seem far more numerous here than in the old yard!

I finally bought a new MacBook Pro. This one I’m typing on now made it six years, which I think is reasonable for heavy daily use. I wrote several books on this laptop — Off the Clock, Juliet’s School of Possibilities, Tranquility by Tuesday. I’m curious what I’ll write on the next one! I put this off for a long time. I’m cheap and I have a strong tendency to just make do. But a few of my frequent-use programs could no longer update on my current Mac and my machine didn’t have the capacity for upgrading to the current Mac operating systems (I mean, maybe with a lot of add-on memory? But that seems really inefficient). The good news is that since I bought a new machine this time BEFORE my current one died I will be able to slowly make the transition.

I have been making progress on another Summer Fun List item: morning runs. During much of the year my during-the-week runs happen in early-to-mid afternoon. In winter it’s warmer then. I tend to need a break, and we have childcare. Morning seems cold or dark and if we have to be moving at 6:30 a.m., it’s harder to get out and do anything. But! Summer changes all that. The camp schedule doesn’t require anyone to be up until 7:45 or so, and we’re definitely up by then anyway. On the days my husband is around I can set the alarm for 6:40, run from 6:55-7:35 or so. It’s a nice way to start the day. I don’t do it every day by any means, but I have been doing two weekdays per week and I’d like to get to three. Though my eldest has decreed that when he gets home from camp he wants to start running with me three times a week and he is not going to want to do it in the morning. So maybe I will be both a morning and an evening runner. We shall see…

I have two Medium columns up since the last time I posted about them. One is “Jealous of your kids’ camps? Make your own this summer” and then yesterday I posted “The best way to kick your screen time habit.”

Friend-of-the-blog Lori Mihalich-Levin, who was a guest on Best of Both Worlds a few years ago, recently released two new guided meditations that are designed to be used while pumping: short version and long version. If that sounds like you, please check them out!

Longtime readers (and podcast listeners) know that my husband planned this trip. I planned the summer camp schedule; he planned the summer vacation. This came together fairly last minute (in May). We chatted with the kids and learned that they wanted to do a resort. I said it needed to be a direct flight, and my preference was to not travel internationally, given all the Covid testing rigamarole for international travel — though that was dropped in early June. All this is ironic since it turned out the U.S. Virgin Islands still had a testing protocol for everyone until early June as well, including US visitors, so choosing a “domestic” destination didn’t matter on that front (though fortunately that was dropped by the time we went), AND we turned out to sort of need our passports (you go through customs at the St. Thomas airport on the return flight to the mainland — apparently you don’t absolutely need a passport but it goes fastest with something showing citizenship, and how often do you travel with your children’s birth certificates?).

My husband searched the usual spots. We’d had the Westin St. John on our radar for a while but it was always booked up. But then, lo and behold, when he searched in early May, there was a 3-bedroom villa available for our dates. So we took it. The price was actually reasonable vs. many of the other resorts and there was a direct flight from Newark to St. Thomas with seats for 8 people (our nanny came with us, which was good since it turned out the kids club was mostly closed). Ferry service from St. Thomas to St. John is fairly frequent.

Anyway, we had a good time. There were some rough moments. Flying with a toddler is painful. I wound up nursing him for reasonable chunks of both flights, and he would then sleep while half-nursing. Perhaps the AAP should have included this in their recent guidelines about breastfeeding for two years — forget the nutrition, it’s about making plane flights bearable for your fellow passengers…He also slept in a crib in the room with my husband and me and the close quarters didn’t make for great sleep, though it was better than last summer during our resort trip when the longest stretch of sleep I got for the entire week was 3 hours. No kids got sick, which is great, but my husband got an ear infection from diving and wound up experiencing the finest of St. John’s urgent care facilities. We all got sunburned (except the toddler) despite our best efforts.

My goal (from the Summer Fun List) was to have at a few enjoyable moments, and that definitely happened. We did some great snorkeling — I liked Trunk Bay in particular (we rented a Jeep and my husband braved island driving — on the left side — to bring us to a few cool beaches). We rented a sail boat for a day. My husband and I went on a sunset cruise and saw a double rainbow over St. John. The certified divers in our group did several dives. I went on a night kayak trip with my oldest kid and we saw tons of tarpons under our clear-bottom boat. My husband and I ate dinner at Zozo’s, which is a cool beach front restaurant in the remains of a resort that was mostly destroyed in the double hurricanes a few years ago. That was an experience — parking, and having the shuttle take you through the ruins, which are crawling with deer. I enjoyed the Westin’s frozen margaritas and my kids really got into their smoothies sipped pool side. I read for 30 minutes on the beach hammock one afternoon. I developed a taste for the resort deli’s curry chicken salad sandwiches.

The trip home was long, but we made it, getting back to the house at 12:10 a.m. early Sunday morning. Then my husband and oldest kid left at 9 a.m. to go to the airport to get a flight to camp. Fortunately, we’d packed one duffle full of the dorm stuff before we left on vacation, and did the 15-year-old’s laundry in our villa, so we just had to add a few more cooler-weather items and he was ready to go. He seems to be enjoying himself. I was on a flight to Las Vegas that evening. Flying business class, solo, is a very different experience than flying in economy with a toddler!

In other news: Speaking of vacation, my Medium column this week looks at “The Question that Reveals if a Habit is Right for You.” Namely, would you do this habit on vacation? I did read my Shakespeare! I did not try to run five miles daily or anything like that. One habit is sustainable in my life and one just…isn’t.

Photo: Turquoise waters…I don’t know who this person is floating in the water but this was the closest I could get to a no-people shot…

Easter weekend was pretty full — I guess a good thing since I didn’t have time to get tired! On Friday my choir performed a fascinating piece by Allan Bevan for the Good Friday service called Nou Goth Sonne Under Wode. (That links to a recording of singers at the University of North Texas performing the work.) It features orchestra and a soprano soloist and 8-part choir. It was written in 2005 or so but feels more traditional in parts. Not easy by any means but a good challenge to become familiar with this work! I have had chunks of it swimming in my head for weeks.

On Saturday our family adventure was to visit Holland Ridge Farms in New Jersey. We cut tulips and visited the Cousins Maine Lobster truck. Yum! Some members of the family went to see the new Harry Potter movie that night.

Then Sunday I was up early to make sure the Easter Bunny had come. This year, our first year in this house, we are creating various new traditions, and so the Easter Bunny decided to hide the eggs outside all around the new play set! Everyone was either up or rousted for a 7:50 a.m. egg hunt, because I had to leave for church at 8:15. I sang in two services, and so sang the Hallelujah Chorus twice, plus Randall Thompson’s Alleluia, and a brand new commissioned piece called Easter Hymn by David Conte. (That links to the recording of the service; the piece is at 57 minutes).

We were supposed to premiere the piece two years ago for Easter but that did not happen since church services had ceased happening a month prior. So the composer had been waiting diligently for us to perform it so it could be published and put out into the world! This was a very singable piece with four-part brass playing an old Easter hymn atop a rolling organ melody and the choir singing a poem from Christina Rossetti. Good stuff.

After that my whole extended family (well, minus one nephew) came over for Easter dinner. We had ham and deviled eggs and a bunny cake among other things. They all toured the house and the yard. And then when they left we just sort of crashed. I don’t think I ever got entirely reset to Paris time last week, but I’ve been pretty tired right around 4-5 p.m. every day.

This week has been pretty low key after all that — I should be getting first pass pages of Tranquility by Tuesday to look through, plus digging out from the vacation backlog. I went to an actual happy hour last night (a gathering of fellow alums in my area) and I think it was the first such event I have been to in a long time…

I had booked our activities through a travel agency, and so much of the trip was straightforward: a car and guide show up at the hotel and the guide shows you around whatever attraction you are visiting. But the last two days were a little more complicated.

I sometimes get anxious about logistics, and often things are easier than I think they will be. And sometimes they are harder.

On Wednesday we were going to take a bus to Disneyland Paris. (In retrospect I should have booked a van from the hotel straight to the park, but I guess everything is clear in retrospect…) We needed to check in with the tour operator at 8:40 a.m. for the 9:00 a.m. bus. We needed to get ourselves to the bus stop, which was a few miles from the hotel. An obvious idea would be a cab, so then I was thinking about where I would get a cab, but I learned that many cabs will only take 3 people. I had four total, three of whom were kids who I did not want to send in a separate vehicle from me, so I was musing wouldn’t it be great if there were an app where you could summon an appropriately sized vehicle to take you to a destination…and then I realized I had re-invented Uber.

So I was all excited that I had solved that problem, and I dutifully summoned an Uber van on that rainy Wednesday morning only to have…no takers. The app ran and ran and I was running out of time. So I canceled and called an Uber X and asked the hotel doorman to please talk with the Uber driver who did not want to take 4 people in his car. He did finally agree (pour les enfants!) and so we made it.

(My other plan had been to call a second Uber after summoning the first one but, again, I was quite wary of sending the kids without me.)

But the transportation was easier than the Covid test ordeal. I confess that I was pondering these logistics the whole time we were in Paris. I knew we needed to take an antigen test within a day of the return flight (anyone coming to the US has to do this). Theoretically it should have been easy, as almost every pharmacy in France advertises their 15-minute test results. In countries with less testing infrastructure, hotels that cater to American tourists often have a testing option there (which is what we did in Turks and Caicos last summer) but France is well-supplied. Most people would do the Covid tests the day before (Wednesday for a Thursday flight) but… this happened to be our scheduled Disneyland Paris day.

In retrospect, I wish these had been scheduled in a different order — maybe the Louvre on Wednesday, and Disney on Monday — but I didn’t think of this until the agency had booked everything. The tour agency had suggested getting a test at a pharmacy near the Disney bus stop, but the pharmacy didn’t open until 8:30 a.m., and with the bus check in at 8:40 this seemed like it might not work (and given the Uber issue it really wouldn’t have). Pharmacies tend to close at 8 p.m., and while I had hoped we would get back at 7:30 p.m. from Disney and could do it then, we made a strange detour back to the park (I think someone missed the bus? Maybe?) and then got to the bus stop at 8 p.m.

So we had to do the test the morning of departure, which was really not ideal. I got the kids up to make it to a pharmacy near our hotel right when it opened at 8:30. Entering all the information on French forms online four times was fun (new learning: I live in the États-Unis, which I knew, but in a drop down menu, the e with an accent often comes at the end of the alphabet, and not with the “E” section…kind of hard to find!) We got the tests done and they said I would be emailed the results in 15 minutes.

We went to breakfast, and 15 minutes came, and went, and 30 minutes, and 45 minutes…

At this point I was deep into my daily 30-minute freak out. Our plane was leaving in a few hours! I knew I had the information correct on the forms because I got an initial email that I had registered. So I left the kids in the hotel room and went back to the pharmacy to investigate. The tech who had done the tests (and who didn’t speak much English — not that she should be expected to! — but I’m just mentioning this to explain why the whole experience was more complicated) conveyed to me, through a random lady shopping in the pharmacy who agreed to help translate, that the pharmacy receptionist hadn’t come to work until 9:45, and hence the tests hadn’t been put in yet.

So much for results in 15 minutes. But her colleague had just shown up! So that was good — I did get the results within 10 minutes then. But, sadly, though I could see we were all negative in the test results section, I kept getting one of those “error” and “forbidden” codes when I clicked on the link to get the digital certificates. Trying to enter a screen shot of the results page in the VeriFly app resulted in the app not being able to read the results. I really needed a clear QR code. (I imagine I could have shown my phone to someone at the airport and checked in that way but that would have meant an entirely separate wait there, and the uncertainty of whether our results were in the right form…).

So…picture me asking s’il vous plait if the pharmacy could print my results. I don’t believe they were thrilled about this, and there was a mix-up when they re-entered the children’s birthdates meaning we needed to do some reprinting, but half an hour later, I had four printed EU digital test certificates with lovely and clear QR codes that the VeriFly app just gobbled up. I got back to the room just in time to load up the suitcases into the car for the airport.

Fun morning! Travel in the Covid era has this added uncertainty that can ratchet up the anxiety a lot. But as often happens, now that I have leapt through that particular hoop, my trip becomes rosier in retrospect. I forget that in my jet-lagged state I would be up at 2 a.m. worrying about how to make a within-1-day Covid test happen. And hey, we made it home. All good in the end.

Photo: Another picture of Versailles….

I was remembering this when contemplating a biking add-on to our Versailles excursion during last week’s Paris spring break trip. I have been to Versailles (though it has been a while) and while it is opulent, and on the list of required destinations when in Paris, I suspected the children would only have so much tolerance for rooms of old furniture. I figured biking would perk everyone up.

And it did! We got our bikes and stopped at some of the “extra” castles on the estate (The Petit Trianon, the Grand Trianon, etc.). Then we just circled the pools between Versailles and Grand Trianon — seeing far more of the grounds than we ever would on foot. The little wildflowers had exploded all over the forest carpet, and the green on the trees seemed to be rolling in thick like fog. We pedaled hard and listened to the birds and the air swooping past us and the pleasant spring air made the world feel perfect.

All was not perfect of course, but something about a good pedal on a nice day can make you feel that it might be possible. I stopped worrying about the “ordeals” of the next few days on the trip, at least for a few hours. That will be the subject of a later blog post this week!

In other news: We made it to Holland Ridge Farms over the weekend to see the tulips (thus crossing another item off my Spring Fun List). Five little sets of hands picking tulips meant we left with a lot of tulips, but hey, there could be worse souvenirs. My 12-year-old and I had gone together last year and discovered the Cousins Maine Lobster truck. So he and I were reminiscing about that a lot and how it has been quite a year since. It feels like longer than 365 days! But I guess in life that’s probably a good thing.

Photo: Versailles

We packed a lot in. We saw the Musee D’Orsay on the first day, though the kids were a bit over tired to appreciate the art at that point. We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. They got crepes from a street vendor and macarons from a fancy shop. We toured the Louvre. We visited Versailles and then biked around the surrounding forest/park. We went to Disneyland Paris for a day.

It wasn’t the easiest trip. International travel rarely is. I haven’t traveled to Europe since 2018 and I am out of practice — meaning that while I remembered to pack the outlet converters I forgot to pack the melatonin and paid for it at 2 a.m. as my body refused to sleep. Four people in a hotel room is also not conducive to sleep, and the kids have a limited tolerance for culinary adventures. So we ate in cafes/bistros that had pizza and pasta every night (fortunately, many very cute places along the various boulevards have such offerings). The obtaining of a Covid test within 24 hours of departure (for the US) turned out to be far more of an ordeal than it should have been, given how every French pharmacy advertises the 15-minute turnaround of their rapid tests. Perhaps that will be its own post.

Anyway, it is always easier not to travel, especially internationally, but then I know I would miss out on some peak experiences. Going to the top of the Eiffel Tower is perhaps a travel cliche — one reason I’d never done it on my adults-only trips to Paris — but with kids it seemed like a must-do and on a clear spring day it was stunning, cliche or not. The Mona Lisa draws the crowds, but I always love looking at the handful of other Da Vinci masterpieces in the Louvre, such as the perfectly composed extended family portrait of Anne, Mary, and Jesus holding a lamb. Riding a bike through the greening woods where Louis XIV lived was sublime. The cool breeze on my face and zipping past the rippling water by the palaces will remain a favorite memory. And my kids are convinced that the Big Thunder Mountain Railway at Disneyland Paris is better than the one in Orlando (you whoosh around in the dark for quite a while!).

So, having done the trip, I am happy to have done the trip. The kids seemed to have enjoyed it too, though my eldest said it was good except for the 30 minutes every day when I would freak out (someday, if my children are herding their own children around a foreign country, perhaps they will understand…). There were moments my experiencing self was unsure. I am definitely unsure about traveling internationally with even younger kids (the older ones are 14, 12, and 10; the 7- and 2-year-old stayed home with my husband). But I was glad to be able to show my kids another part of the world. We had a lot of good conversations over those plates of pizza and pasta. I practiced a little of my French! Not too much, though, given how many people in Paris speak English. We didn’t stay in a particularly touristy part of Paris but even so, many restaurants posted French and English menus outside. At one point my daughter remarked that “We’re talking and probably no one knows what we’re saying” and I’m like…um, I’m pretty sure they know what we’re saying. Which is helpful when traveling internationally! There are definitely places that would have been harder.

Now, after a good night’s sleep in my own bad, my memories are even rosier. Isn’t that funny?

Photo: Random Paris street scene

This past Saturday was the only day that was going to work. Cherry blossom experts predicted the peak would be March 22-25. Next weekend is more problematic. Sunday tends to be church and activities, plus it was a lot chillier. So I was watching the bloomcam that’s on the top of the DC Mandarin Oriental like a fiend, seeing whether the blossoms would be out. A handful of 70 degree days last week meant that many were!

So we decided to go. It was not the world’s easiest trip. We hit traffic and the toddler screamed for quite a while because he was having trouble going down for a nap in his carseat (and, it turns out, may have been getting sick — he vomited all over me and him on Sunday late afternoon. Yikes…). We stopped at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum first, and while it was fun to see the rockets, half the museum was closed for renovations. The 7-year-old just could not stop complaining about the walk down to the Tidal Basin and the 2-year-old had to be carried much of the way (he doesn’t do well in the stroller). On the way home our van’s tire air indicator started blinking alarmingly, and so we had to stop at a gas station and use the air machine.

But the blossoms were indeed beautiful! Even if they weren’t quite at peak puffy gorgeousness yet, a great many were out, and because we were a day or two early the crowds weren’t too intense. I’m glad we went — remembering self and all that.

Anyway, the point of this post: Obviously this trip had to be planned into our family’s weekend schedule. Very few things can ever happen spur of the moment — hence my stalking of the bloom cam. With five kids and their stuff, we always have activities or friend get togethers that need to be built into the model. We needed a day where we had open space within a few days of the peak forecast. We had a limited window to get down to DC after the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby in the AM and before the Air & Space museum closed. Much of my life has to be meticulously planned to hit windows like this.

Theoretically, planning seems like it would be in opposition to spontaneity. There is planning things out, and then there is being open to what comes. These are different personality types! There are those of us who like to structure things, and those of us who dwell in possibility, or however you want to characterize it.

But I think the two tend to work hand in hand. We have spontaneous fun experiences because we have plans. For instance, because I planned the DC trip, with two anchors in it (Air & Space museum + cherry blossoms) we were there on the Mall, where a lot more interesting stuff happens than at our house. We all got to pick snacks from the dozens of food trucks lined up near the Smithsonian museums. It’s always an adventure to be able to pick freely between snow cones, Mexican food, falafels, and so forth! Then we walked past an agricultural exhibit and got to stop and see some really tricked out tractors and other farm machinery. This was incredibly exciting for certain members of the family (the toddler called one combine harvester a lawn mower, which I guess is true in a way…). We had no idea that would be there but it was certainly a bonus.

Now I suppose it would have been possible to plan a DC trip that didn’t allow for any spontaneity, but that’s not my style. (An upside of driving is we had the flexibility to leave when we wanted). Or perhaps seven people would have just wound up spontaneously somewhere fascinating without any planning whatsoever, though that tends not to happen in my life. Maybe in someone’s? It’s probably more possible if there’s only one of you.

In my case, having a reasonably thought through plan for the weekend increases the chances that we can do stuff other than kid sports and lessons. When we do our planned adventures, we tend to experience some spontaneous fun along the way that helps keep life interesting. So I tend to think the two aren’t really in opposition. They can work together to create memories. 

In other news: This weekend’s baking project was vegan banana chocolate chip muffins. They turned out pretty well!