If you follow me on social media, you may be aware that we’ve been living in a winter wonderland this week. Starting on Sunday evening our weather turned arctic. We got enough snow to bury all of our outdoor toys (yep, the same toys that I told the kids to put away at least 5,483 times) and cancel school for infinity days. During our unexpected immersive experience in the worlds of Narnia and Frozen, I had plenty of time to sit at home and dream about being somewhere else.

Thankfully, that “somewhere else” happens to be a place we’re actually going in the not-so-distant future. This spring we’re taking our whole family–Mom, Dad, 9-Year Old Trouble Maker, 7-Year Old Trouble Maker, and 4 Year-Old Barely Potty Trained Princess–to Europe. Like, on a 16-hour-flight-to-a-country-where-we-don’t-speak-the-language Europe.

When we first started planning The Big Trip, Hubs and I went back and forth on whether or not we should bring our kids with us or just bribe the grandparents to stay with our offspring so we could galavant carelessly across the pond. After all, bringing kids along on travels adds extra stress and expense and hardship. Traveling with kids can be a very different, very anxiety-producing experience for the adults in their party. In the end, though, we decided that the difficulty–the challenge–of traveling with our kids would be worth it: for us and for them.

For any of you who are scared off by the idea of traveling with your kids, let me present my case for why you should take them along for the ride:

Traveling with kids helps them contribute to decision making.
When we travel with our kids we let them help with some of the planning for our trip. We’ll look over guide books and websites about the places we’ll be traveling to and allow our kids to make suggestions of things they would like to see or places they would like to go. We don’t always heed every suggestion they make, but at least they start to feel some ownership for the experience they’re helping to create.

Traveling with kids helps them develop responsibility skills.
We have our kids help pack their travel bags and keep track of their belongings while we’re traveling. What? You can’t find your Hyper-Strike Battle Beyblade? And whose job was it to put all of your toys back in your backpack before we left the hotel? Yours?
Yep. Responsibility.

Traveling with kids helps them see the world from a different perspective.
Wherever you go–whether it’s a new city an hour away or a country on the other side of the world–will have people and experiences different from what your kids experience at home. Meeting different people living in different ways helps kids develop a more flexible idea of what “normal” is. In this way, seeing things from a different perspective can help kids develop empathy for others and challenge them to try new things in their own lives.

Traveling with kids forces kids to step out of their comfort zone.
Almost certainly, kids who travel will be forced to try new experiences. New places to sleep, new foods, new languages, new modes of transportation, new ideas. Sometimes–often times–those new experiences can feel uncomfortable at first. When there is no other option than “The New”, however, you are forced to try it…or at the very least observe it. These are the character-building encounters that every kid should experience.

Traveling with kids is great for family bonding.
By the very nature of travel, you will spend a significant time together as a family. In our upcoming trip our family will spend 336 consecutive hours together. Compared to the 140 hours we would spend with all of us together at home during the same time period, that’s a huge jump in Quantity Time points. And it’s not only a lot of time, but it’s quality time. We will try new things and visit new places and learn new things–all together.

Traveling with kids teaches them “forced flexibility”.
Every time something doesn’t go according to plan while you’re traveling–which is quite often–you have to be flexible. Delayed flight? Flexible. Missed the bus and have to wait 20 minutes for the next one? Flexible. Want to eat a cheeseburger but there’s only sushi on the menu? Flexible. There are a lot of uncontrollable variables in travel, and this forced flexibility makes kids more resilient.

Traveling with kids gives them real-world experiences.
It’s one thing to read about ancient Rome or tropical rainforests, but it is an entirely different thing to experience those things in the flesh. Actually seeing and feeling and learning about new places and cultures can spark a zeal for learning and further exploration that no other experience can.

Traveling with kids is good for socialization.
When you travel you are forced to interact with new people: taxi drivers, tour guides, waiters, commuters on the subway. By interacting with new people on a daily basis, kids can learn valuable lessons in how to approach and interact with people. By seeing and meeting people who are different–and yet the same–as them can help kids develop altruism and a greater respect for all people. When kids return home, these social skills can help them more confident and accepting when they meet new people.

Traveling with kids gives them memories that will last a lifetime.
Travel gives your family a shared experience and a shared history that you will all remember for the rest of your lives. Somehow even the bad memories of travel (I’m looking at you, puke-covered Fiat) tend to turn into good/happy/hilarious memories over time. I can’t tell you a single birthday gift that I received as a child, but I can easily recount for you in vivid detail every trip my family took together growing up. These memories are the ones your family will carry with them forever.

So, even though travel with kids is hardly convenient, it is always worth it. I can’t wait to make new memories with our kids this April–no matter how crazy or comical they end up being!

 

With the exception of a few years of living out my wanderlust dreams, I’ve spent my whole life living in “Seattle” (And by “Seattle”, I mean within a 100-mile radius of the city for which everyone else in the world defines this region of the country). Having lived here for so long, I am quite attune to the quirks and curiosities of this place. Nothing, however, can prepare you for the absolute mayhem that ensues each winter when this one crazy thing happens. It’s such a taboo subject that many Seattleites refer to it as a 4-letter word: s***.

That’s right, SNOW.

Now I don’t know what it’s like when it snows where you come from, but in Seattle it’s quite a spectacle. People lose their minds and all sense of normalcy goes out the window. If you’re new to a Seattle winter, your first Seattle snowstorm might catch you off guard. And since we officially have s*** in the Seattle forecast for most of this upcoming week, I thought I’d help you out and provide a handy little guide.

How To Prepare For A Seattle Snowstorm

1. Check your phone’s weather app and get very nervous-cited (nervous + excited) when you see snowflakes. Screenshot the snowflakes and post them to Facebook.
2. Pray to God and Cliff Mass that snow won’t impede (A) Your ability to receive emergency services should the need arise, or (B) the Seahawks playoff game.
3. Drive as fast as you can (Read: very close to the posted speed limit) to your nearest grocery store. Buy all of the bread and milk. Squeeze all of your loaves and jugs into your Subaru.
4. Drive over to Target and buy a sled. And a snowball maker. And an igloo snow block mold. And snow chalk. Why didn’t they have these things when we were kids?!
5. When you get home, realize you don’t have room in your fridge for all of the milk you just bought. Move the milk outside onto your deck because it’s as cold as a freezer out there right now anyway. Hope raccoons and squirrels aren’t interested in your milk.
6. Pull out the boxes of snow clothes that have been packed away in your garage since last March. Realize that 2 out of your 3 children have outgrown their previous season’s winter wardrobe.
7. Return to Target and sift through the bikinis and sombreros they put out the day after New Years so you can buy two pairs of snow bibs, two pairs of gloves, and two pairs of boots. They only have snow bibs that are 3 sizes too big, and all of the gender-neutral boots left with the Thanksgiving turkey. Hope your sons are good at layering and that they enjoy pink unicorn footwear.
8. Check your weather app again. Yep! Still Snowflakes!
9. Stop at the gas station on the way home so you can fill up your car and gas cans for your generator.
10. When you get home, check your email. Read all 78 emails from various organizations in your community that want to remind you of their inclement weather policies.
11. Set up a security camera pointing toward that road with a hill that tends to get extra icy. Hope for some poor saps to try and make it up that hill in their car and, in turn, make you a YouTube millionaire.
12. Keep pipes from freezing by turning every faucet in your house to a slow drip. If you have kids, however, you may skip this step. Like every light in your house, every faucet in your house is already on.
13. Double check your weather app. YEP, STILL SNOWFLAKES!!!
14. Create a winter home emergency kit for the chance you may not be able to leave your house for several days with your children. Your kit should include, at a minimum: wine, chocolates, Ibuprofen, and noise-canceling headphones.
15. Collect all of your kids’ kinetic sand and slime-making materials. These may come in handy as de-icers tomorrow morning.
16. Go to bed with visions of snowflakes dancing in your head.
17. Wake up the next morning and run to the window to see if it snowed! Even though it’s almost 8:00AM, it’s still pitch black outside and you can’t see a darn thing. Flip on some lights and squint really hard. Is that…? Could it be…?! Yes! It is. Rain. Just rain. Lots of rain.

The End.

Here’s to whatever this week holds, Seattle friends!

The scene: New Years Eve 1999. I am 16 years old, a junior in high school. We are on the verge of Y2K and everyone is a bit on edge wondering if the world as we know it is about to collapse and sink into chaos. On this fateful night, all of our nearest and dearest gather together: My parents, my younger sisters (12 year-old middle schoolers), my grandparents, and our closest family friends, the Lindner family. We sit together in the living room of my parents’ new house that they had just finished building the year before. In the middle of the room sits an empty box.

***

For twenty years that box, now full of treasures, sat on a shelf in my parents’ storage closet.  Twenty years seemed like a long time to wait. During that time my sisters and I graduated high school, completed college, started our careers, got married, and had children. Time passed and life happened. As we–the children of the family–grew up and began lives of our own, The Box became a constant subtle reminder of our family’s shared history.

Many times we would completely forget about The Box. And then someone would go into the closet to pull out extra winter gloves or a box of childrens books for new grandchildren, and we would catch a glimpse of The Box tucked away on its shelf. Then we would remember: This is where we came from. As time went on we all forgot what was actually in The Box, but the mystery just added to its allure.

***

As New Years Day 2020 approached, excitement was in the air–not just because we were approaching a new year, a new decade, a new beginning, but because this was the year we could finally open The Box.

We made plans to gather together once more so we could open The Box together. This time, though, it required quite a bit of planning. What originally was two families totaling 8 people had now grown into six families consisting of 18 people from two states and six different cities. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and we set a date for January 1st, 2020.

On New Years Day we gathered together once more in the same living room of my parents’ house. And in the center of the room sat The Box.

***

As we all watched on with eagerness, my dad and his best friend, Ed Lindner, did the honors of cutting the seal on The Box. When they lifted the lid we could finally see the latent treasures. There were newspapers (the real estate section was quite enlightening/depressing, depending on how you look at it), magazines (Teen People with a 17 year-old Brittany Spears on the cover), and advertisements (Circuit City was having a blowout sale on the brand new flat screen TVs). There were relics of our youth: Beanie Babies (Still worth exactly nothing, despite our hopes that we’d be millionaires from their popularity and rarity 20 years in the future), McDonald’s toys (my kids’ favorite), a baseball. There were mementos of our past lives: ribbons and awards, photos, my homecoming corsage. There was even a gold coin.

None of the treasures, however, compared to the stack of envelopes stacked in the center of The Box. For inside these envelopes laid the hopes and deepest thoughts of the former selves of the people gathered in that room.

Each envelope bore the name of one of The Boxes founding members, and inside each envelope was a questionnaire we had filled out. The surveys included everything from our favorite places to our thoughts about what life would be like in the future. The answers were both hilarious and touching. As we went around the room reading our “letters” aloud there were tears of both joy and sadness. Joy over who we are and how far we have come. Joy over the relationships that have endured and the new ones that have come. Sadness over what and who we have lost.

We spent hours that New Years Day going through the letters and the contents of The Box. And as we did, I was reminded of the power of a dream and how precious this life is.

When we created The Box I was a teenage girl dreaming of the life I now live. I had dreamed of some day being able to travel and teach and start a family. And now, 20 years later, I can truly say that I have lived the dream. Since the box’s creation, I have traveled to over a dozen countries and even spent time living abroad (a dream I had but wasn’t even bold enough to put down in writing). I got to live out my childhood dream of being a teacher and having my own classrooms of full of real-life students. I’ve been married to my one true love for nearly 14 years, and together we have 3 beautiful, crazy children. The life I dreamed of 20 years ago is my current reality–complete with the peaks and valleys of a life truly lived.

I know that things could have easily turned out differently for me–that my dreams could have produced a different reality–but I suppose I was lucky. Or maybe, just maybe, the dreams I had as a girl were placed in me as a guidebook. The life I was supposed to live already had a roadmap, and it was simply up to me to stay the course. My hopes drove my desires, which led to my doings. And by staying close to the path that had already been carved out for me, my dreams really did come true.

***

I have no idea what the next 20 years will hold for me, but I can’t wait to find out. In another 20 years I will be in my mid-50’s with three adult children. My world and the world around me will surely have changed yet again. And despite the changes that lie ahead, I look forward to that day 20 years from now. That day when I will look back and realize I’ve lived my own dream.