This Family Must be Crazy

Ahhh... The holidays... Yikes!

Nothing is ever easy for us except the trouble we cause ourselves. Too much guilt? Check! Too much pressure from friends and family? Check, check! Gotta drive north to make everyone happy? You can bet your happy little minivan on it!

Moving from Kansas to Florida has presented a logistical problem for our family when it comes time to decide what to do about the holidays. The kids see two long weeks which could be spent in the company of friends and family, playing cards in front of a roaring fire and sledding down snowy corn-free hills… Is this heaven? No, it’s Iowa. At least the kids are pretty sure it is.

I see weeks of driving around and visiting and eating too much and rehashing the same long-winded story about what life in Florida is like... Then again, people do care to know. 

Can we afford to fly all of us north? Do we want to kennel the dogs for two weeks? Do we want to spend money renting a car to drive to multiple state family destinations once we arrive? Do we even want to spend the holidays with all those people? Are we really related to them or can we drive by quickly pretending we didn't even notice they were there?

In the end, we generally bow to pressure and decide to drive. Since we have family and friends in a number of Midwestern states, it doesn’t make financial sense to buy four plane tickets, kennel the dogs and then rent a car. “We’ll drive!” she says with an affected smile of graciousness.

We have always driven a lot. For us, much family means much travel. Imbued with a sense of guilty necessity about seeing family, we have always traveled a lot. Considering that we’ve always been in the youngest generation of our family, it makes sense. The grandkids go to the grandparents, etc.; but I like to whine about it anyway.

The kids are great in the car. Starbucks is a lifeline. McDonalds is hell in a paper bag. Give us a good Harry Potter book on CD and we are one happy family with visions of sugar plums and snow flakes and the cell phone ringing mindlessly… “When are you going to get here?!”

(Love you all! See you in December!)