An Easy Start (#1)

This past weekend we started the year with a very easy trip.  McKinney Falls State Park is about a 40 minute drive from our apartment, out near the Austin airport.  We go out there fairly often, usually staying at the walk-in "primitive" sites.  I put "primitive" in parentheses because the sites are only about a quarter mile from the car and have potable water on location.  Unfortunately, there is apparently a rule that the primitive sites can only have 4 people, and since there are 6 of us, we would have to pay an additional $10 per extra kid (choke, choke).  The primitive sites were also nearly booked, meaning that we wouldn't have much privacy either.  As a result, I ended up taking the #40 car camping spot (which allows 8 people).  This site is right next to the rest rooms yet now surrounded by too many other people.

We headed out Friday after the kids finished school.  The weather was beautiful, in the high 70's, and we ended up having a blast.  Like all of our trips the focus was food. Friday evening we cooked hotdogs over the fire and then made some awesome homemade ice-cream.  I probably went a bit heavy on the cream, but oh it tasted so good.  There were of course marshmallows too, but that goes without saying.

Saturday morning we woke up early for some quick oatmeal before heading out for a hike.  The trail at McKinney Falls is paved the whole way for bicycles, which is kinda weird, but it was still a good hike.  Overall we only hiked about 2.5 miles with lots of snack breaks.  Mom made P&J (on tortillas) for the kids,  and tuna sandwiches for the adults.  Dad made fresh guacamole (smashing the avocados in a ziplock bag) which we then ate with pretzel crisps.  Yummy!  Our hike was cut short because we had to break camp before the checkout time (we were still a little late).

Overall it was a wonderful trip and a good way to start the new year.

Our 50 for 2012

"Our 50" is a mechanism through which our family sets a yearly goal, and then utilizes the power of a countless number of prying eyes to hold us accountable.  Holding to the name, each year our goal has something to do with the number 50.  The goal must be difficult, but not impossible, to achieve.  It must also be something that can be done as a family since the ultimate goal is to become a stronger family each year.

Our 50 for 2012 is "nights camping".  We have decided that over the course of the year we will spend 50 nights camping under the stars as a family.

Eating Out

I had a restaurants.com gift certificate for a fancy restaurant in Austin's Arboretum area (Bandera's), and my wife and I were just looking for an excuse to use it. I really like good food. Then it came, the email we were waiting for, my wife had been accepted into the vocal performance graduate program at UT Austin. But wait, it was already Friday afternoon and too late to find someone to watch the kidz.

So obviously, as often happens, we decided to bring the kidz with us to the restaurant. This is where the "miracle of the old laptop" comes into play. We sat down, ordered a massive amount of food, and then... yup you guessed it, we turned on the laptop. With the volume down low our kidz were able to sit quietly and watch Madagascar giving us an hour and a half of peaceful time to eat and enjoy each other's company.

How this works:

• Bring a laptop
• Bring a movie that will keep everyone's attention
• Ask for a table that is somewhat isolated and preferably one near an outlet
• Be respectful of other customers
• Order your kidz something relatively clean to chew on (ex french fries)
• Have a fun date night

While we have used this technique countless times, I have to admit that this evenings experience was particularly successful. First off, the restaurant was relatively empty, allowing our boys to have their own table at which to watch the movie. Usually they sit on the floor which isn't as comfortable for them. Second, the wait staff were incredibly nice.

This taught me something new:

• If you have a particular restaurant that you are wanting to visit, give them a quick call to find out when they are least busy. At the same time you can ask if they would be happy with your decision to bring the kidz.

Preparing for the Ride

Have you ever been trapped in a small cage with a bunch of flying monkeys hyped up on caffeine. Me neither, but I have been stuck in a car with a two year old, no air conditioning, and no entertainment for 20 hours straight; so I think I can guess what it feels like.

Car rides are a difficult time for kids, and the longer the ride the more problems can come up. I like to preempt these issues with some simple planning.

1. While I don't typically like to sit my kids in front of the TV for more than an hour at a time, when we are in the car I don't mind letting them veg. Instead of movies, I like to burn my own DVDs that contain a mix of different "educational" programming. They can watch some Little Einsteins mixed with Word World and Super Why.

2. Food is essential when you are on the road. Kids love it, I love it, and my wife loves it. Proper snacking can keep you awake and smiling. Poor planning will land you in the McDonalds parking lot twice each day. We like to bring carrot sticks and pretzels. My wife claims that they are the best snacks because the crunch which helps to keep you alert. I think she is just trying to keep me from the junk food. My personal preference is beef jerkey. It can take the kids 10 minutes to gnaw through a big piece.

3. Potty breaks are the most important part of your day. I can say from experience that it takes twenty times as long to stop after an "accident" than to pull off the side of the road. Even if your three year old crys wolf 15 times before he actually needs to go to the bathroom, you are still ahead by listening to him. Make sure to pack toilet paper an a shovel. If you have boys, an empty water bottle can also be worth its weight in gold.

Getting Ready to Drive

An obvious but important step to any road trip is getting the car in order. It is bad to have car problems, it is worse to have car problems when you have kids in the car, and it is a disaster to have car problems when you are stuck with kids 500 miles from home.

During our drive from Utah to Austin, in our old Escort with no air conditioning, we suddenly lost our ability to accelerate above 50 miles per hour. This happened somewhere near Phoenix. Since we were moving at the time we had the car packed with stuff, including our 6 week old baby, and the roof was piled two feet high in a travel bag. We were dead. Luckily we had "family" (third cousin once removed through a common-law marriage) that lived nearby who were able to help us out. Our trip was delayed two days, but we made it to Texas only to find out that some minor overdue service, replacing the spark plugs, could have saved us a major headache.

So today I invested four hours of my life taking the car to Midas. (I am a big fan of Midas.) They checked everything over for me, gave me the price for all of the work that "should" be done ($850+) but also told me what needed to be done in order to make sure we had a safe trip without any foreseeable headaches (~$400). As you can guess I had them do the latter.

When you are stuck on the road with kids everyone suffers. The kids get cranky. Mom gets cranky. And since it inevitably forces the plans to change, Dad gets cranky too. I have learned to do whatever possible to avoid these headaches.

Preparing to Work

With the countdown set at two weeks until we leave for our road trip, there are a lot of preparations that need made. While some of these preparations are typical, such as getting the car inspected, paying bills, having our mail held, the bulk of our effort is going toward preparing to work from the road.

While I have flexibility in when I get things done, a lot of my work requires internet access which will be hit or miss while traveling. For this reason, I have to get ahead on any internet searching and make printouts of things I will need to read. I will be printing 3 weeks worth of articles to read as well as getting through two books. I expect that I can still manage 20-30 productive hours per week while on the road.

Since Kim is in music, her preparation is even harder. Like any sport, you can't simply train twice as many hours this week in order to make up for next week. Instead, she is meeting with her accompanist twice per week (instead of only once) for the next two weeks, but one of the meetings will be to prepare recordings that she can use while traveling. This will allow her to sing and learn her songs while we are on the road.

Today's Lesson: With preparation you can WORK productively while traveling.