Road Trippin'

When we travel, we almost always drive. With 4 kids, it is almost never worth it to fly somewhere. We have family all over the country, so our kids have taken multi-day road trips their entire lives. We've gotten really good at it.

In the medical school and residency years, most of our road trips were done without Tyler. He would either not accompany us on the trip at all, or it made more sense for us to drive and for him to meet us at the location as a way to maximize his time off. I can't count how many times the girls and I drove a day or two to visit family and he met us there. Often the girls and I would be gone longer than him, and I learned my limits and preferences for travelling with the girls alone. I'd listen to audiobooks while the girls watched movie after movie. We would eat out one meal a day and the rest were simple snacks and car food. Heck, we still travel like this a lot of the time. Now that we have a mobile hotspot, the girls use their own tablets for travelling and can watch Netflix or whatever. They get very excited for road trips because of the basically unlimited screen time.

Since the girls grew up doing this, they've all handled road trips very well. Even Clara, at 2 years old, has almost no issue. We all view it as a fairly relaxing time. Now that Tyler is able to accompany us a lot more, he struggles with the driving part of road trips more than anyone. Hopefully it will become less painful for him though!