European Vacation 2018: Planning

When is the trip worth it with kids? For years we've generally stuck to simple vacations thinking that the kids don't much care and it's really more work for us anyway.  Living in the Midwest provides us many opportunities to take easy road trips which have thus far satisfied my wanderlust.

But 4 years ago Spencer's family started planning this cruise to Europe.  At the time Emmett was an infant and it seemed like an impossible fantasy.  Who takes children to Europe, right??  Well the reason to not go was always the possibility of babies in the family, but by February it seemed that wasn't going to be a reason to keep us from going and so we committed.  I will admit that it had been so long since I had taken a foreign trip like this that I was so giddy at the thought.  I love to travel but it's a love that requires time and money: somethings that were in short supply for the early years of our marriage and child rearing.  Thanks to the generosity of Spencer's mom (and keeping a few other vacations simple to save up), this trip was within reach.  We decided that our kids ages might be a bit young to fully appreciate Europe, but they were old enough to get valuable things out of it.  They were old enough to understand how to be flexible (even if they can't always actually be flexible), old enough to walk long distances, old enough to know stuff about history and art, old enough to understand sleeping on airplanes and not need naps, and old enough to know how to stay close and not run away.  I loved the idea of taking our kids to experience different cultures and parts of the world.  Also, a cruise is definitely the way to travel with kids so we knew the fun on the cruise would help make the less interesting (to kids) parts more tolerable.  Magically, it seemed like things were lining up nicely for a big adventure!
                                              

Passports (Amelie had the cutest passport photo)

We knew that to make the long trip really worth it, we needed to do a lot of planning.  First off was finding plane tickets which would determine our itinerary.  We found a great deal on plane tickets to London which allowed for a few days in London--I was so excited to see London since I hadn't been before and it was near the top of my places to see.  Once we had the itinerary planned we began finding library books and doing Family Home Evening lessons relating places we would see or artists or architecture to values and personal qualities we are teaching.  I actually really enjoyed having intentional lessons that made the world around us directly relate to our kids.  We had a lesson on Vatican City and the Apostasy and Restoration; a lesson on Gaudi and using talents to glorify God; a lesson on different types of government (Monarchy, Democracy, Republic).  I think perhaps the most useful lesson though was one Spencer taught on jet lag, unpredictability of travel, and the Natural Man.  This one was fun where he showed a website that had the earth and what time it was in different places, so we showed them what time it was where we would visit and home.  He then showed a GIF of a cat falling into an empty bathtub and freaking out, using it to say sometimes we would fall into the BATH (Bored, Angry, Tired, or Hungry) and that might make us feel upset, but we didn't need to freak out.  To combat these, Spencer came up with FLIP 3T's : Flexible, Laugh, Identify why you feel that way, Plan ahead, Trust your parents, Take turns, and Thank Heavenly Father for your blessings.  I tell him all the time, but I am so grateful I have Spencer on my team: he's brilliant.  The kids were very engaged in this lesson and it set up a great narrative to base our trip on.  Having a big exciting trip to look forward to helped make it enjoyable to learn together about volcanoes, different forms of government, historical figures, artists, and how to travel.  Taking the time to learn all of this helped make us more excited for the trip too!

We also tried to teach saving money for a goal by deciding how much we would cut back in different parts of our budget to put towards the trip.  This was a little hard for them as the idea of a distant trip was not always motivating for them, but hopefully it's one of those messages that will sink in over time.

 sample packing to make sure it all fit

So much of the enjoyment of a trip is enhanced for me by the planning and anticipating.  We planned itineraries, how to get around (again, Spencer did so amazing at this), where to eat, what to pack (and how to pack as light as possible), the best kind of footwear (Keens for kids, Birkenstocks for me!) and clothing to be comfortable, how to survive an 8 hour plane flight with kids.  We had to prioritize what we wanted to see and keep in mind what would be most enjoyable for the whole family.  This meant some things were skipped (Westminster Abbey and the Vatican museum).  But of course we knew, no matter how much planning we did, we had to be willing to be flexible.  We were all really excited about this trip!

family hikes to build endurance