Traveling These Days

Traveling these days is just not the same as it used to be. As we were getting ready to embark on our 12 hour roadtrip with our two young kids, we spent most of the time downloading our playlists for ipods, gathering up DVDs, and finding all the car chargers for the various electronic equipment we'd be taking along. When I thought we were ready to start loading up the luggage and be on our way, Jason was just beginning to wire our car with all the needed gadgets. When he came out with a power strip with 5 different plugs, I knew we were in for trouble. It took him a good hour to get everything arranged and plugged in. We had the DVD player that is already in the car, our portable DVD player with two screens--one connected to the XBox and one connected to our DVR (we had to bring that so my brother Mark could catch up on the last season of Lost), then in the front we had two different mp3 players each with headphones and charger and the little thing that makes it so you can hear the music through the car radio, and lastly, the GPS. There were so many wires and gadgets all over the place it's a miracle we had room for the kids and our stuff. It's another miracle that I figured out how to use it all. There was one point that we were all doing something different. The kids watching a movie, Mark watching Lost, Jason listening to a book on his ipod, and me listening to my music. Although, I really appreciated being able to turn on a movie for my kids, or let Britton play Xbox when he got grumpy, or have my very own favorite music to listen to at 2 in the morning while I'm driving and everyone else was sleeping, there was still a part of me that misses those roadtrips when we were forced to talk in the car to entertain ourselves. I missed the good conversations, singing songs, and playing "Mary car games". I think when my kids get a bit older and more capable of handling 12 hours in the car, I'm going to ban all electronic devices and just rely on our personalities to keep us happy.