So you want to go on a Family Holiday?

As seen in SA Kids: September/October

Us on the Skywalk over the Grand Canyon.

Take it from me, just don’t. It’s stressful.

We recently returned from a whopper of a holiday. We decided, and I think we must have been under the influence of alcohol when planning this, to take our kids (aged two and seven) to the USA for six weeks. Not only that, we also decided to hire an RV and include an itinerary that saw us travel 6,500 miles (more than 10,000kms) in 31 days.

I imagined many Brady Bunch moments in the months leading up to our holiday. I had fantasies of my smiling children (and me with an amazing tan and the wind in my hair) checking out all the sights of America. But we hadn’t even left the country before the drama started.

Our long-haul flight was delayed for 12 hours. Twelve hours. By this stage we had left home and were in Brisbane, and were sent to a hotel for the remainder of the day until our now evening flight. My eldest son at this point got a migraine – cue the vomit and all through the Brisbane airport and also through the foyer of said hotel. And also on his clothes (and all his other clothes were packed and already checked into the connecting flight). At this point it was either go back to Adelaide and call the whole thing off, or keep going and see what else could possibly go wrong.

Thankfully, the flights at the beginning of our trip were the bulk of our dramas, but I didn’t realise just how much our boys would slow us down. I planned our itinerary with very little room for movement and, thanks to the flight delay, we already had 12 hours to make up somewhere. This trip felt like a race from start to finish. It was exhausting.

Our toddler decided to cut new teeth (the last of his molars) while we were away, and I don’t think there was one meal we sat through on the entire trip that he didn’t scream through. So my husband and I tag-teamed our meals – it was very romantic. And the migraines/vomiting continued from my eldest son – Disneyland and the Hollywood Walk of Fame were just a couple of other locations that were graced with his regurgitation.

Drama aside, we created a lot of memories together as a family (the screaming and the vomiting were just small smacks of reality). We flew over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter, we swam with dolphins in Hawaii and we went to a Yankees game in New York. Ryder also learnt many new words (like ‘plane’) while we were away. These are amazing experiences and memories that I will have for the rest of my life.

And it’s only now that we’re home and back into the throes of reality that I have realised just how important this time together was for us as a family. It bonded us. If anything, it has made me realise that those ‘perfect family’ fantasies I had before we left just aren’t us. I can’t wait to spend time with the kids and go away again where we can forget about day-to-day life and escape. Perhaps next time though, I will wait until they’re a bit older and less high-maintenance… but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun.