I’ve never been a real “go-with-the-flow” kind of girl. I self-identify as a sort of uptight, over-analytical control freak. (Boy, do I sound fun.) So when it comes to traveling, I like to have everything neatly organized.  

Being a pilot (or being married to one) has its perks – namely, flying for free, if there are open seats on a plane. My husband has been an airline employee for five years. In that time, we’ve made a few babies … but we’ve never made an attempt at air travel without purchasing tickets and knowing we would actually get where we were trying to go. 

But lest we do anything halfway, when we finally decided to try this thing out, we chose to fly all the way across the country at the height of summer break. 

It started out okay. We would travel to Dallas on the first day, then spend the night and make our way to San Francisco in the morning. Turns out, there was a 50-mile wide storm in Dallas. (Texas doesn’t do anything halfway, either.) 

So instead of landing there, we diverted to Shreveport and sat on the runway for a few hours while the kids tried to get on the Wi-Fi and angry passengers tried to get off the plane. 

Once we eventually made it to Dallas, we ate some bad hotel food and tried to get a few hours of sleep before our 4 a.m. wakeup. 

Lesson: When you’re with the people you love the most, you can weather any storm.

The next morning, we excitedly went back to the airport to make our California flight. But the storms the night before had left our once-open plane with 100 standby passengers all hoping for seats – our seats. 

My husband was ready to throw in the towel. “I’m never doing this again,” he said. 

Then, he told me and my oldest son to check out the departures board. “Pick anywhere you want to go and we’ll try,” he said.

We had fun looking for potential destinations, scanning alphabetically from Denver to Phoenix and Washington, D.C. While we were toying with these ideas, I spotted two West Coast-sounding cities – Monterey and San Luis Obispo (the latter of which I only recognized from a friend who visits there every summer, promptly texting to inform her she had saved the day). 

We scanned the loads on both planes and made our choice – to San Luis Obispo we would go. Walking up to the gate, we felt like rock stars. Take that, giant storm. We are geniuses. 

Then, we heard a familiar voice shout, “It’s the best summer vacation ever!”

You know that friend I mentioned, who hangs out in San Luis Obispo? Her husband, from our tiny hometown, was heading there to meet her on the very flight we were attempting to board.

And we got on, with minutes to spare. 

Lesson: Sometimes you think you’re going one place … and you end up somewhere better. 

When we landed, our friends treated us to an incredible lunch overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Inspired by the view and our good fortune, we decided to add two more hours to our three-hour car drive so we could travel up the coast rather than by freeway.

To encourage the kids to enjoy being trapped in their booster seats, I told them to imagine we were a pencil, drawing the westernmost map line of our United States. “We are literally on the edge of America,” I said. “You could throw something off of it. But don’t.”

It was absolutely breathtaking – until we hit rush hour traffic. Still, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Lesson: Take the long way. 

The days that followed were filled with whale watching tours, redwood walks, amateur bouldering, great Mexican food, the backyard wedding of our nephew (the actual reason for our trip), and a ride across the Golden Gate bridge – okay, four rides across the Golden Gate bridge, because we kept missing the spot where I pictured us taking a picture. 

There were meltdowns. There were inconvenient diaper changes. There was that moment in the Dallas airport when we said we’d never do this again.

But we made it to California in July and we made it back – making memories all the way.

And we’ll totally do it again. 

I’m a big believer in doing weird things to break up the monotony.

It’s especially effective in families with young kids, who get bored even when given access to 72 LEGO sets, 10,000 dried out Crayola markers (seriously, where do the caps go?) and countless episodes of Peppa Pig.

So my husband had one day off this week. I had read that an artist built a replica of Stonehenge just a few hours away, and although I’d rather travel to England, we piled in the van on a whim to go check it out.

(Side note: the van is an Odyssey, so we named it Homer.)

Well, our odyssey was nearly as odd as that one. “Bamahenge,” as it is known, is not a tourist attraction, per se, but rather a series of strange sculptures tucked into clearings in the woods along a nondescript highway.

You can’t plug it into Google maps. Actually, you can, but you still end up getting a bit lost. It’s almost better that way, because you drive right past the fiberglass monoliths only to come upon a fiberglass stegosaurus and triceratops.

So you’re just kind of marveling at those guys while a few other cars stop, presumably at random, because they’ve spotted a dinosaur on the side of the road. They ask you what this is all about, and you suddenly feel like a bit of an expert, because you’ve seen the T-Rex and you know about the Lady in the Lake, which they’ve never heard of.

And then a nice lady with a much nicer camera than your iPhone asks if you’d like to have your picture taken with the King of the Dinosaurs, and she takes the time to edit it and email it to you a few hours later. (Which is a lesson about the kindness of strangers, and how it actually does still exist, even in the most unusual of places.)

In the end, we drove an hour away from home on a summer’s day instead of playing video games or going to the beach – and it was weird and it was hot but it was fun, and I bet the kids will remember it and laugh. (Or wonder what the heck we were thinking.)

I know I will.

Always up for an adventure,

Ashley

You know those moms you see at drop-off who are, like, totally flawless with a fresh blowout and a face full of there-but-not-there makeup?

Well, I’m not shaming them … but I’m not ashamed to say I’m not one of them.

I used to think I had it all together. Then I had my first kid. Then another one, who was nothing like the one who came before her. (I mean, not even a little bit. How does that happen?)

By my third baby, I realized it’s hard to have everything together and still be everything you want to be for your kids.

I’ve missed play dates and girls’ nights out, written thank you notes that are still sitting on my desk six months after I should have sent them. I’ve quit jobs when babies were born and asked for them back again once they grew up a little.

But people forgive me.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve yelled at my kids – then later, lying in bed that night, silently yelled at myself and hoped and prayed to be better tomorrow. I’m grateful for the lessons we learn from our todays and for the chances our tomorrows bring.

I can forgive myself.

Through it all, I’ve realized that the most important thing is to be there for the kids. Even though I have a husband who travels, when I’m on my own I have an incredible tribe of family and friends who would drop anything to be there for us. And I know how lucky I am to have it.

This is a place where moms who don’t have it all together can come together – to laugh and cry and talk about the things that give us strength even when we feel like we’re failing.

Because guess what? We’re never really failing as long as our kids know we love them.

(They’ll forgive us for the rest.)

XO,

Ashley

Leave a comment: What are some of the things that help you feel better on the flighty mom days?