Traveling with the kids

  We try so hard with vacationing NOT to travel on Sundays.  Yes, this is self inflicted pain.  We have decided with the kids it is best to stay consistent, so keeping our Sabbath Day observance in the car creates a great deal of pain and suffering for those who are confined to a seat belt next to their siblings.  Our general rule of thumb is sticking to uplifting music, church talks, scripture reading, Personal Progress and Faith in God goals and family games.  As anyone can imagine, incorporating these activities into the confines of a car is a little bit of a challenge.

 Well, after moving to Yuma, we now find traveling on Sunday has become a little more frequent.  We have trued to compensate for the discomfort by traveling later in the evening so they can sleep in the car.  This week that did not work out and we had to get the girls up, dress them for church and then make the five hour drive with everyone wide awake and irritated at the parents.  I'm not sure what irritated them the most, the Sunday rules, the drive time, or the church clothes.  No matter, it didn't change the fact that the parents were inflicting what they all considered cruel and unusual punishment.

  And then, by some small miracle (aka the two older girls getting a short nap) it happened.  The complaints that Taylor Swift and Kate Perry are not on the Sunday music list stopped.  The girls were enjoying the family car games and laughing at each other instead of making those snide remarks to each other.  Yes, there was an occasional meltdown by the eight year old, and yes the six year old had some interesting self created tattoo art on her arms and legs by the time we got to church, but they all survived and they all were relatively pleasant.

   Now, would I do this again?  Not if I can avoid it.  It is much easier to have them all attached to their own MP3 players listening to the song they want or watching a Disney flick in the back, but the point is they did survive, and they actually wanted to play together after church.  I am so grateful for small miracles, because anyone else who has done this type of drive with five kids knows that is exactly what this is.  A small, but very significant, miracle for a mom.