6 hours and 37 minutes. That was how long my GPS was telling me our trip would take, but I knew it would more likely be 8 or 9 hours after stops and traffic and who knows what else. We were heading home last week, at the tail end of a weekend visit to my wife’s parents in Virginia – our minivan loaded down with enough stuff to undoubtedly fill at least 3 school cafeterias to the ceiling. I’ve resigned myself to the unfortunate reality that there is no easy way to manage a long northward trek with a van full of 3 kids.

Thank goodness we have a DVD player in our van to at least attempt to pacify the kids on the long car trips. Unfortunately, after a few hours, even that loses its luster. When I was a kid we obviously had no such thing; we played the license plate game, ’I’m an Animal’ and listened to our Mom read books. (I feel like this is my generation’s version of “I used to walk to school 5 miles uphill in the snow!”) But even a postitive like movies can go wrong very quickly – “My headphones aren’t working!…Put them back on your head…I can’t hear anything!…Stop fooling with the volume…I’m not!..Put them back on your head…Why can’t I hear?…Put them back on your head…The movie’s skipping!…No it’s not…It’s skipping!…I can hear it, it is NOT skipping.” – Shoot me.

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