Had he lived, our son would have celebrated his tenth birthday today. September 2, 2001 was a very happy day for us, beginning with a very early morning delivery. It was only the next day that a doctor heard something unusual in his heartbeat and he was airlifted to UCLA. He had a “successful” surgery on September 7 but his body never recovered and Timothy David died on October 6.

As I have thought about his life a bit today, I have realized that I have more questions than answers. There are many things I don’t know, including the answer to another son’s question: is God celebrating his birthday today in heaven?

We are thankful for the life he had and for the life he has.

(I linked above to our old family site, which recently moved. It’s interesting to me that my last update there was almost exactly five years ago.)

Timothy’s birthday, 2001

This is the fifth and final question.

5. How can fathers prepare for family vacations?

I think it starts with a commitment to take family vacations. A weekend trip to a beach house will afford fewer opportunities for the type of growth and learning than a longer vacation will. Some may feel that a vacation is a luxury best foregone in favor of giving to missions or elsewhere. I’m sympathetic to that perspective, but on the other hand, I am also a steward of very little time with my children and vacations are really a “value” way to get a lot of “bang for the buck.” The rewards of this trip did not end the moment we arrived home, but they continue now and in some respects will last a lifetime.

I think too that if a father thinks that he has to do everything right to make the vacation worthwhile that he may never give it a try. I say, “just go.” Learn from your mistakes and failures and next year do better. The vacation I have just described was not our first and if anyone thinks they have to be as organized or efficient as I may make it appear that we were, they may discouraged from trying. That would be an unfortunate consequence.

Another factor has nothing to do with vacations at all. Parents who are not raising their children to be disciplined and obedient may complain that their kids can’t possibly sit in the car that long. Or they will refuse to use an outhouse. Or they will be unbearable. In many of these cases, the fault lies not with the children but with the parents. I would encourage those parents to make the necessary changes.

There’s another area that doesn’t exactly fit into this question, but I cannot conclude this series without encouraging fathers that vacations involve more than pre-trip preparation and on-trip labor, but they also need post-trip reflection. For me, this is primarily about strengthening the memories made. A trip like this costs a lot in terms of energy, time, and money. I want to stretch that investment further, and we do that by helping the kids to reflect on the trip. This year we started daily journals, and each night they would write an appropriate amount (1/2 page to 3 pages, depending upon the child and where we went that day). We found this to be invaluable in clarifying what we did and why. You never know what goes over their heads until that evening when they ‘re trying to put the day into words.

This post-trip reflection continued after we returned home. Two of our kids have cameras and they were required to name all of their photos. Looking at pictures is another way of assisting the memory. We ‘re also in the process of creating a photobook that is drawn from all four cameras on the trip. We have done this with two vacations previously and I am absolutely committed to doing this every time. Photos on a computer are rarely viewed, but a photobook on a coffee table is often picked up and flipped through. For $30 (at Costco, Shutterfly, MyPublisher, or others), this is the best money spent of the trip.

We also had the kids re-write the experiences of their trips in the form of letters. To make it more interesting, we divided the trip into four portions and asked each child to write about one portion to one recipient (e.g., Grandma and Grandpa). This further assisted the kids in recalling the places we went and why they were important. Grandma and Grandpa loved it too as they received, in the course of a couple of weeks, four letters from four different kids giving unique perspectives on each part of the vacation. (And I scanned all of these for our records before we sent them.)

Another post-trip tool was some more reading. Along the way, as we visited gift stores, I would write down titles of books that looked of interest. When we arrived home, we went to the library and checked out Mayflower, both in the original edition and in the juvenile version. The boys read one while I read the other and we would talk about it every few days. School has started now (and band, and Boy Scouts, and Awana, and football, and soccer, and junior high youth group) and we may not be able to do much more, but today we talked about finding a biography of Abraham Lincoln to read together. I also would like to read some more books in the A History of US series. I look forward to many continued blessings from our family vacation.

This is the third installment of a series of reflections on our wonderful summer vacation.

4. What would you do the same / differently?

I would certainly do this trip again, but so much was so clearly owing to the grace of God that simply can’t be prescribed for another. This includes:

• Visiting our long-time Israel friend on the eve of her major life transition
• Running into friends on the street in Washington, DC
• A question on this blog leading to several wonderful days with a family in New England
• The engagement spot surprise (not the first time I surprised Kelli there!)
• Ideal weather nearly everywhere
• A family member giving us a night in a very nice hotel at the end of the trip

I don’t know if it’s worth repeating some of what I have already said that I am thankful for:

• Having a known itinerary and hotel reservations; it would have added to the stress level if we had to find a hotel at the end of each day.
• A good balance of academic and fun sites
• Lots of study of American history before we left
• Memorizing Romans 12 together
• Using a GPS, even with a few dozen AAA maps in the car. It certainly takes pressure off of Kelli, especially in a big city.

An important emphasis for Kelli and me before the trip was how the kids would get along with each other and how we would relate to them. We were committed to making relationships more important than the sites and, among other things, that would mean being less time-conscious. We wanted to help the kids to be more considerate and compassionate to one another. I’m not sure how much progress we made, but there were too many times where I feel we failed.

Another area that I wish we could do differently was our evenings. As I noted before, we often arrived at the hotel at the kids ‘ bedtime. This made it difficult for them to do a good job on their journals. More than that, it gave Kelli and me little time to do things we needed to do. Kelli in particular was almost always up later than our bedtime, just doing the necessary things for the next day (washing baby bottles, preparing the formula for the next day, restocking the diaper bag, making lunches for everyone, etc.). I wish we could have had more time to relax together in the evening, but I’m not sure what I could change globally to fix that. A good bit of our late arrivals was not because of our plan, but because some element of the day just took longer than we expected.

The answer to this question is not so lengthy, but I’ve already gone ahead and written out my response to question number 5 and it requires its own post, so I will save that for tomorrow.

I am going to continue reflecting on our family vacation by using the questions posed by my friend.

3. How did you try to blend family, friends, fun, education, and shepherding?

Perhaps some people sit down and think out strategies for this but I work rather intuitively in such matters (for good or for ill). I probably think more along the lines of “how can we best use our time,” and that leads to a variety that addresses our needs. On a trip like this, the places rather dictate whether it’s a “fun” day or an educational one. Usually, however, we would avoid places that were devoid of “fun,” and there are plenty of options that make it easy to construct an itinerary that is both educational and enjoyable. Perhaps a helpful example would be our two days in Virginia. On the first day we split the afternoon between two sites that were much more “academic” in nature. But even at Jamestown, we spent most of our time listening to “John Rolfe” talk about his experiences and we fairly breezed through the on-site museum. At Yorktown we watched the introduction video and then worked on piecing together the battle narrative in the field. But we were conscious of the kids ‘ interest levels and kept the depth appropriate to that. The next day at Williamsburg we went to a courtroom reenactment that the kids didn’t understand, but they watched a swordfight, visited a silversmith, and completed a “kids ‘ quest” for a prize. When George Washington’s talk turned out to be about colonial economics, we left early.

We also were interested in using our time in the car. Kelli had the kids choose (non-library) books early in the summer that she then put away so they would have fresh reading material. I selected a number of audio books suitable for the whole family from the church library (including: For God and Country—Adventures in Odyssey, Bull Run, and Dr. Doolittle). When we weren’t able to finish the “Liberty’s Kids” video series before we left, we brought that along and these 22-minute episodes were nice “treats” for the kids to watch along the way. (And it was nice to see an episode about Boston the day after we had visited.) Perhaps a note about video-watching in the car: some families depend on it to get anywhere. Though we have the capability, I hate the idea of the kids not enjoying the scenery of the states we ‘re driving through, so we used it selectively and especially at the end of a long day when it was getting dark and as a treat for their hard work.

In previous years, we ‘ve brought along the Bible on CD and listened to a few chapters each morning from select biblical books. We didn’t do that this time, but we did work daily on memorizing Romans 12. This worked quite well and so I will give a tad more detail. In the five weeks before we left, we worked together on memorizing the first 8 verses. These are more general in nature, giving basic principles. When we began the trip, we started memorizing verse 9 in which Paul gives a series of commands. We decided to take one command a day (regardless of whether it was a complete verse or not). That then became the “verse of the day” and we would usually begin our drive reciting it and I would give a detailed exegesis from the Greek by memory. (Ha, that’s a lie! But I did try to explain it.) If you look over the chapter, you will see how very wonderful these verses are for a family vacation. For instance:

• Be devoted to one another in brother love.
• Be patient in affliction. (We had some a good laugh when a couple of the kids were exhorting the baby with this verse when his dinner was delayed.)
• Bless those who persecute you.
• Live in harmony with one another.

Throughout the day (some days better than others) we would try to reinforce the verse. Over the course of the trip we worked on reviewing various parts of the chapter.

One other thought about blending these elements comes from my experience in leading trips in Israel. I believe it is best to “front-load” the trip. Go harder and longer at the beginning and slow down and relax more towards the end. Hit the more academic sites when everyone is fresh and visit the more fun sites when everyone is tired. Sometimes there are limitations in this regard, but I found that this trip easily fit that model. On the “way up” we had longer days and visited the most important historic sites. Our trip was half over when we left Boston and the rest was mostly fun (friends, beaches, canyons, and caves).

My inability to keep my answers short leads me to believe that I need to turn this “interview” into a three-parter. Tomorrow I ‘ll wrap up with two more questions.

4. What would you do the same / differently?

5. How can fathers prepare for family vacations?

Kelli’s perspective of kid photos

A friend with a young family has written and asked me to go beyond the “what we did today” level given in this series about our family’s vacation. Initially I was resistant but he helped by suggesting five questions. That moves it from the general to the specific and makes the task more appealing.

I should preface these remarks by declaring plainly that I feel very weak in nearly every area to be discussed below. There are places where I feel right at home (like on a bus in Benjamin), but being a father and family vacation leader is not one of them.

1. What were your goals for the trip?

A primary goal was to give our family time to be together. If we are at home, we ‘re busy doing other things (even if we ‘re all present in the house together). Going away gives us concentrated time together. We could have done this in a variety of ways (a week at the beach or in a mountain cabin), and while I personally would have preferred a rest like that, we felt it would be better this time to see more of the country. We were motivated to go to the East Coast because of our expectation that we ‘ll never be closer than we are now. We also thought (incorrectly, it turns out) that this year the boys would be studying American history and seeing these sites would give them a jump on the subject. A “study trip” of this nature does not conflict with the family aspect but can (and indeed did) enhance it. I could say more about the goal with regards to our family—it was certainly more than a desire to “be” together—but I ‘ll touch on that in a question below.

In addition to learning American history, we were looking for some experiences and exposure that they do not often get elsewhere. Things that fit in this category include riding the subway, visiting a farm, hiking in the mountains, enjoying a fish feast, and seeing some amazing parts of God’s creation. Besides the enjoyment and learning that comes from this, we are intentional about wanting to “make memories.” I ‘ll say a bit more about some ways we try to do that below.

In the years we ‘ve lived in Dallas we ‘ve taken several road trips to states east of the Mississippi. When we realized that our intended destinations would take us to every state we had not yet visited except South Carolina, we chose an alternate route so that we would drive through a portion of that state. Thus visiting every state also became one of our “goals.”

Another personal goal was to take the children to the place where I asked Kelli to marry me. That was a secret goal.

2. How did you prepare for the trip?

The hardest and most important component was the decision to go. When we arrived home after last summer’s trip to Niagara Falls, we were seriously questioning our desire to do this East Coast trip. For one thing, we spent a couple of days in Chicago last summer and that really had me considering whether I was willing to fight and pay for more big cities this year. We were also looking at having one more (very young) passenger and the impact that would have on space in the vehicle, feeding schedules, and more. We struggled with whether we were up to the challenge. Ultimately it came down to just deciding we were going and moving forward.

On my end a major part of the preparation is constructing an itinerary. This was more difficult on this trip than others because I had not been to many of these areas before. (Thus my question on this blog about sites in New England.) Google Maps was quite helpful in figuring out how long it would take to get from one spot to another but it did not tell me how long we needed to stay at each place. Then there was the hotel challenge. With a large family, there are not many hotels in which everyone can fit in a single room. Especially with young children, we really prefer not to be split into two. So that determines itinerary somewhat. (Tip for large families: the SixSuitcaseTravel website helps, but since most of the hotels it recommends are more expensive, I ultimately have learned to just search the Comfort Suites website. I have found that a room at CS is usually about 2x the cost of one room at Motel 6, but it’s better for us to be in one room and you get a free breakfast that is very good.) I would prefer to have freedom on a trip like this, so that we can decide to spend more time at one place if we like, but the hotel situation for us demands that we make advance reservations and thus our itinerary is nearly fixed in stone before we leave.

If you asked our kids how we prepared for the trip, they would tell you about the reading and research we did in advance. I’m not going to try right now to recall everything we did, but I can list some categories:

1. Reading U.S. history books to the family. The History of US series is fantastic and worth purchasing. (Friends of ours found it for us at a local used book store; you might check there before buying from Amazon.)
2. The kids read books that we selected for them. We would usually have a short book a day (checked out from the library) and a long book that they would read over the week (e.g., Johnny Tremain, My Brother Sam Is Dead, Across Five Aprils and George Washington, Spymaster). We found these by looking through the shelves at the city library as well as getting recommendations from the back pages of A History of US, Amazon, and friends.
3. Requiring research every day before the trip. This won’t work very well if your trip is early in the summer, and this is one reason we prefer to time our vacations for later in the summer. Sometimes all the kids researched the same place and sometimes we had them split up and then present their findings to the family. Research was primarily centered around a site: Jamestown, Yorktown, the Capitol building, Gettysburg, Statue of Liberty. Usually the first day or two would be devoted to fact-finding. Then they would spend a day or two preparing their work either as an essay, a talk, or a PowerPoint presentation.
4. Watching videos. This included a few documentaries from the library as well as the 40-part series on the Revolutionary War entitled “Liberty’s Kids.” This is an excellent series that helped the kids to tie together what they were learning elsewhere.

Another part of preparation concerns food, clothing, and other items to bring. I can’t tell you much about that, but Kelli told me the other night that she would recommend starting earlier. (And I think she was working on it at least six weeks in advance.)

This post is too long already so I am going to save the last three questions for a separate post tomorrow night. Kelli has agreed to supply a photo for each of the posts.

3. How did you try to blend family, friends, fun, education, and shepherding?

4. What would you do the same / differently?

5. How can fathers prepare for family vacations?

Resting in Washington, DC

We made it home. According to the GPS, we drove 5,214 miles. According to the car’s odometer (which we never turned off), we drove a few more. It was a fantastic trip.

Some careful readers know that the whole record of it was delayed by three weeks. My initial thought was to “tweet” the trip but to delay those tweets by three weeks. The reason for that is I don’t want the bad guys knowing we ‘re away from home, especially when we ‘re in Maine and can’t exactly make it back quickly. But the delay also enabled me to blog it and to include photos. If you were surprised that I had time at the end of each wearying day to download my photos, process them, and then write a blog post, you were on the right track. In fact, there was no way I could have done any of that. We rarely arrived to our destination before dinner (twice?) and the average was about 8:30. Then there was the unloading, room setup, kids to take care of, and important emails of the day to respond to (if I had internet access). Kelli had much more to do. The delay of this report thus did more than just keep the house my books safe but it enabled a report at all.

Along the way, a number of you have written and thanked me for this. I appreciate that, particularly because I have not been sure how much of interest this is. It’s certainly a far cry from a critique of an amillennialist or a meditation on a passage in Isaiah. The journey (the second time around) has been enjoyable for me in part because it’s been enjoyable for you.

A friend has written and asked me to reflect on the trip with regard to how we prepared, what our priorities were, and what we would do differently. I intend to conclude this series this weekend with responses to those questions.

When I was planning this trip, I thought it would be a bit too much to drive 17 hours (plus stops) from Charleston to home. Along the way is Nashville and since no one in our family has spent any time there, I thought it would work out well to cut the driving into two days and have an afternoon to see some sites there. However, when I started researching what we could do, I came up empty. We ‘re not interested in Graceland and I didn’t want to take the kids to the Grand Ole Opry. The best I could find was a big park somewhere in the city.

This is the view you would have if you rode in the trunk of our van.

Last night I brought the map in and was looking over our route again. I noticed that we were passing pretty close to the birthplace and childhood home of Abraham Lincoln. Already on this trip we visited the Lincoln Memorial and saw Ford’s Theater. We had studied the Civil War and visited the site of the Gettysburg Address. So it seemed quite appropriate that we make a slight detour to see these important places in Lincoln’s life.

I also noticed on our map that we were passing close to Mammoth Cave National Park. I had never heard of this site until about a year ago when my parents visited us shortly after they went on a tour here. They were impressed and encouraged us to go. It didn’t work out in last year’s schedule but here it sat perfectly along our route AND on a free afternoon. I knew our kids would like caves. And thus was born our “bonus stops” of the trip.

We considered it a happy providence that the “Adventures in Odyssey” that we just happened to listen to in the hour before we arrived at Lincoln’s boyhood home was about Lincoln. We had no idea that this was coming and it was a special treat.

Kelli, Bethany, and Jonathan in a cabin at Lincoln’s boyhood home

The cabin located at “Lincoln’s Boyhood Home” belonged to a friend of the Lincolns, and the cabin over which a monument is built at his birthplace has been determined to not have belonged to the Lincolns. (This sounds a bit like the holy sites in the Middle East.) But while we couldn’t get excited about “this is the very wall where he leaned,” we enjoyed the opportunity to see the area, study the exhibits, and think more about what a great man Lincoln was.

This Neo-Classical building surrounds a cabin from the early 1800s.

We left Lincoln’s birthplace at 2:49 and I told the kids that we would arrive at Mammoth Caves before we left. In fact, I showed them on the GPS that our scheduled arrival time was 2:42. That mystified them a bit and they tried to come up with various solutions for a while. They figured it out when they saw the sign indicating that we were crossing into the Central Time Zone. I doubt they ‘ll ever forget the day when they arrived at a place before they even departed!

Mammoth Cave was large and impressive. Kelli was not so interested in a two-hour tour underground and so she stayed with Jonathan while I took the kids deep into the heart of the earth on a guided tour with two National Park rangers. I forget all of the facts and figures, but this cave is hundreds of miles long and parts of it are filled with beautiful formations. Everyone enjoyed the trek, though I confess I was a bit unnerved at a few places where we were suspended high above the ground floor of the cave.

This section of the cave is dubbed “New York Subway.” I guess that makes twice on this vacation!

There are stalactites and stalagmites and lots of other cool geology things.

“Frozen Niagara” is one of the highlights of Mammoth Cave.

It’s tough taking photos underground with limited light.

Our last night on the road is in Nashville. We ‘ll leave early in the morning for our long drive home, having seen nothing in this city. But I think today’s “bonus stops” were well worth it.

After a relaxing morning (are we allowed that on a vacation?), we left our friend Becky’s home and drove through Pennsylvania, the Maryland panhandle, and through the mountains of West Virginia to our hotel in Charleston.

It rained a good bit as we drove and though the scenery was interesting, at no point did we stop for a view or to take a picture. We did have a momentous event occur as we drove through Gettysburg. Each summer on our vacation we try to find license plates for all 50 states. When we drove out west, we saw about 43 states or so. Last year when we went to Niagara Falls, we saw all but two: Wyoming and Hawaii. But this year we were feeling better about it because we spotted Hawaii parked in Washington, DC, and we had seen Wyoming somewhere early on the trip. About a week ago we had seen 49 states. South Dakota was seemingly staying home this summer. But as we passed through Gettysburg (without stopping), we saw what we were looking for. Everyone hopped out of the car (except Jonathan) and ran up and kissed the car. Ok, that’s not true. But we were happy and we did stop looking.

When we drove into West Virginia we hit another milestone. Now the kids have been to every state east of the Mississippi River. Altogether Luke has visited about 40 states, Mark has 39 and the girls may have about the same. I think we ‘re passing through about 18 states on this trip. I’ve not yet been to five states and 180 countries.

The only serious photos I took today were of the kids ‘ water balloon fight this morning. You can get a taste of the action below.

I’d say Mark is pretty excited about this sport.

Close, but I’d say this one is going to hit the ground.

Wet.

I’d say that’s a 90-mph fastball.