Camping Crazy

I am taking a road trip through the state of Florida over spring break - just me and the kids. Am I crazy? Likely, but I'm doing it anyway. Let me 'splain...

There are generally two schools of thought about how much interaction you should have with your kids. One school - I'll call this the "Family Fun" method - is based on spending most of your free time with your kids, usually involved in some craft or activity. Family Fun magazine promotes this mindset, with intricate and time-consuming crafts and activities that usually leave me either cussing or in tears. The goal here is to engage your children in lots of creative, mind-stimulating activities, and to spend lots of "quality time" with them. This will ensure that they have wonderful, life-long memories of your time spent together.

School # 2 - and I'll call this the "John Rosemond" method, basically advocates the "you have more toys than Toys R Us - go find something to do" approach. Also known as the "go outside and play" approach. John Rosemond (a pretty well-known parenting guru) feels pretty strongly that adults were not put on this earth to entertain their children. He believes we are not raising children. We are raising people, and forcing them to entertain themselves and be creative and imaginative on their own is a great way to do that.

I'd like to think I am somewhere in the middle, but in reality I fall closer to the John Rosemond school. More often times than not, I send the kids out to play, or tell them to go find something to do.

So I'm feeling a little guilt that I don't make more of an effort to do cool things with my kids. Disney World aside, of course. And trips to Mexico.

So this is where my idea was born. I love camping. The kids love camping. Bart hates camping. I love exploring and visiting new places and just hitting the road. Bart hates that stuff, unless it involves a golf course and a nice hotel. I USED to - back before I got all grown up - love to just fly by the seat of my pants and head out somewhere. Bart never did that. (God bless the boy, he is the Yin to my Yang...) The kids have a week off for Spring Break, but Bart has to work. Rather than having them here, bouncing off the walls and generally driving me crazy all week, I decided to plan a trip. We have to be in Pensacola at the end of that week anyway for my sorority reunion, so why not take our sweet time getting there?

So - we're spending 2 nights at Aunt Courtney's house, and doing a day at Disney in between. Then we hit the open road. We're heading up to St. Augustine, mainly because I've never been there. We're going to visit the lighthouse and climb to the top. We're going to visit the Castillo de San Marcos. We're going to - OF COURSE -visit the Fountain of Youth. Then we're camping for the night at Anastasia State Park. In a tent.

The next morning, we get up and head west. We're going to Apalachicola, mainly because I've never been there. And because they have the world's best oysters. (The beaches down that way are supposed to be good too...) We're going to the world-famous Papa Joe's Oyster House, where I fully intend to eat as many of the little bivalves as humanly possible. Then we head about 30 minutes west on the coast to camp at St. Joseph's Peninsula State Park. The beach and nature preserve are supposed to be awesome.

The next day, we head north to Marianna to do the Cavern Tour. Now, I have actually done this before, and I thought it was pretty cool. So I'm taking the kids there. We'll have lunch at the park, and then head on to Pensacola. We're making one other minor side trip. On Friday, we're going to The Northwest Florida Zoo (formerly known as The ZOO and Botanical Gardens.) This is the Zoo where I worked for 4 years, and still look back on it as the most fun job I have ever had. It closed down last year for financial reasons, but now it's back open. I want to take my kids there, and show them where I worked. They probably won't appreciate that this was where I got my vast - and mostly useless - knowledge about all things animal. I ll probably tell them how I made friends there that I still have to this day, and how I had to drive my Geo Tracker across the bridge in a Tropical Storm in order to help secure the animals. I might show them the on-site trailer I lived in for 6 months, and tell them how I used to hand-feed and pet Eland every evening after work. I'll tell them how -at my job interview - I was thrown on a safari train to narrate, and then tossed into a cage with a rather ornery King Vulture. It was a great place to work, and I want to support the new ownership. So we're going.

I'm hoping that I can pass on my love of adventure, my love of cheesy tourist attractions, and my love of some unique Floridana to my kids. I hope one day maybe they'll tell their kids about the time mom took them on a road trip through Florida. I'm bringing the DVD player, but it's use will be severly limited. I want the kids to play license plate games, and I Spy, and we'll all sing stupid songs. (Can I get a rousing chorus of "On Top Of Sphagetti", please?) I want it to be more like the road trips families took when I was a kid, complete with Mad Libs and orange soda. We're gonna camp, and ride our bikes, and walk on nature trails. We're gonna do cheesy touristy things and eat ice cream and fly kites at the beach. It's gonna be great.

Bart says I'm nuts. He says it's too much for the kids to do in one week. I think I can handle it, though. We'll stop at Publix every day and get the food for the next 24 hours. If it rains, we'll sleep in my truck. If it rains A LOT, we'll check into a hotel. If we're miserable, we throw in the towel and head straight to Pensacola.

My friend's husband Barry said "Your are such a cool mom. Can you adopt me?" I guess we'll see who is right.

It should make for some amusing stories, and hopefully some good times. Maybe I'll make it an annual thing. I've been dying to take them on a road trip through the Keys (another part of Florida Bart dislikes...) Maybe that will be our Spring Break 2011?

Wish me luck - and happy camping, of course!

A Parenting Success

OK. I still haven't caught up yet, but the worst is behind me. The school carnival is over, Chase's birthday is over, and the trip to NC is over (although that last one was fun...) I have firmly let the PTA know I will NOT be back next year.

I'm still not a Travel Agent, but I am doing research.

On the up side, I performed what I think was a stellar little bit o' parenting in NC. We flew up there to see our friends the Reeds. We spent 1 day hanging out at their house in Denver, NC. We spend the 2nd day tubing at Hawksnest in Seven Devils, NC. The third day we head up to Sugar Mountain NC to do some skiing.

Now, we all know that travel is not cheap. And skiing is not cheap either. So when we pay money to go all the way up there and then put our kids in ski school, I call that a moderate investment. What you don't want to happen is to have the Ski School instructor call 1 hour into the kid's lesson and say "Chase is done and ready to leave." And yet it happened.

I sent Bart back up the lift, and I headed down to deal with "the boy." He was in the office pouting and complaining about how hard it is, and how he wants to go home.

First, I explained to him - very patiently - how it takes practice, and everyone falls, yadda yadda yadda. Then it comes to light that what he's really upset about is that Karlin was doing it better than he was. So I took some time to point out all of the things he does better than she does. I almost had him, and then he went back into pout mode.

So then I got tough. I gave him 2 choices. He could stay with his group at ski school, learn to ski, and get hot chocolate. OR...he could sit at a picnic table for the rest of the day. What I said exactly was: "There's no babysitting here. No game room. No TV. No Video games. No playground. If you quit, you will sit at this picnic table for the REST OF THE DAY." He then said he wanted to go home (and this was at about 11 am). I said "No Chase - no one's going home until at least 4:30 today. If you quit you will sit at this picnic table for the rest of the day. Do you understand that?"

Then he changed tactics on me and said "I want some hot chocolate." So I said "No - only kids in ski school get hot chocolate. Do you want to stay with your group, have hot chocolate, and then try to ski again? Or do you want to have some water and sit at this picnic table for the rest of the day?"

I am happy to say he chose ski school, and ended up doing really well. I was proud of myself for not losing my temper (because I was watching a lot of money potentially going down the drain, and I knew that if he sat out Bart and I would have to take turns sitting with him. That meant less ski time for us.) I am also glad that I gave him a choice, but made it very clear how things were going to be.

By the end of the day, he and his sister were both riding the beginner ski lift, and riding down the green trails. They even say they want to go skiing again next winter.

Well done all around! :)