Why are we doing this?

Maybe the best way to answer that question is by explaining why this website is called "Fun Filled Family Outing". Essentially, this is an inside joke for my family growing up. Every time my parents had a trip planned, usually a day trip to some state park or something, they would say, “We are going on a fun filled family outing!”. The trips were all good ideas in theory, and as a parent today, I understand where they were coming from, but they never quite hit. Soon, that phrase became synonymous with “We are dragging you someplace you don’t want to go, so that we can have some fun together like a family, goddammit!” And the truth is that, today I have a lot of fond memories of those trips, even if it only was because my brothers and I were together, unified against the injustices of our parents trying to make us have fun. We are obviously hoping for a much higher ceiling to this trip, but the name seemed to be appropriate.

For us, this trip is very much about spending one more year together as a family before Keira goes to college. Everyone tells you that your kids grow up fast, but until you experience it, you can't comprehend it. I bet almost every new parent has had a situation where they are burnt out and tired, grabbing a quick rest in a chair after pacing a room trying to sooth a crying baby all night the night before, and some knowing adult walks into the room and says, "You are going to miss this. Don't blink or she will be graduating high school." And in the moment you just want to punch them in the face. But if you do, just know that 18 years later you will be tracking them down to buy them a drink and apologize, because they were right.

This was part of the reason that we had Liam - Megan was lamenting that Elenna was growing up too quickly. I tried to explain that we weren’t solving the problem (the next kid would grow up quickly too), but rather we were simply delaying the inevitable. But we ultimately decided that a delay was better than nothing.

Unfortunately, I was correct, and despite routinely telling my kids each year on their birthdays not to grow another year older, they steadfastly refused to listen, and here we are - on the verge of sending one kid to college every few years for the next decade. So this trip is our last shot at delaying the inevitable.

But that isn't to say that this trip is a knee-jerk reaction to our daughter graduating high school. In fact, the whole idea for the trip started about 15 years ago when Megan read about a family that visited 12 countries in 12 months, doing a service project in each country. That was the impetus for our trip and that idea was bouncing around in the back of our minds for years. But along the way, the concept of “volun-tourism” started to be portrayed in a negative light, and we shifted the goal of the trip. It became more and more about the time with the family - one last year with Keira before she goes to college and for me, one year of actually being present with them and not worrying about work.

But even though we thought about the trip for years, it wasn’t clear that we were actually going to go on it - there were too many variables: Would it make sense financially? Would everyone be healthy enough to go? Could Keira defer going to college? The list of ways this could go wrong was endless. Even as I write this (about 10 days before we leave), it somehow still doesn't feel like this is actually going to happen.

But it is happening and this is the perfect time in our lives to take this trip. Keira was able to defer college for a year while Liam is so young he doesn't understand what is going on, and missing his final year of preschool won't matter. From there, "perfect time" becomes a little more debatable as having one teenage girl and another almost teen leave their friends and school for a year is a bit much to ask. In fact, they don't have a year off. They will be juggling travel and keeping up with their school work so that they can come back to the US and stay on track to graduate with their classmates. I'm not sure it's even debatable that the mom has the hardest job of anyone in any family, but I like to think that I'm a close second in ours. But given what we are asking of them, for the next 10 months I'm probably closer to a distant 4th.

I very much appreciate the sacrifices that they are making and that everyone in the family has/will have to make in order to make this work. Which maybe brings me back to the real answer to the question of "Why are we doing this?" Everyone loves their kids, but we also actually like our kids and are very excited to spend 10 months with them experiencing new things with them or reliving old things through their eyes.