What do you get when you try to fit two years of tourist activities into six weeks while maintaining a normal life schedule? Kill the Family Tour 2014.
I started calling this summer Kill the Family Tour 2014 on our way home from Philadelphia several weeks ago, when three of our four children were passed out in the car, and the fourth was fighting it, because not being tired and not sleeping in the car is his "thing". I realized then that we were killing them, and we had barely started.
For those who haven't regularly read this blog (all but about 5 people), didn't get to follow the Kill the Family Tour 2014 on Facebook or don't have some other way of knowing what in the world I am talking about, I will start from the beginning.
Last year, we invited The Wife's God-Daughter from Lithuania to visit us for the 2014 summer, watch the boys, and see America. I came up with this idea because my parents did the same thing for a few of my cousins when I was a mere boy. My boys don't have any cousins of the right age, so we thought of The Wife's God-Daughter. She very enthusiastically accepted, bought a plane ticket and flew from Lithuania to Dulles, VA, by herself at the age of 16, just in time for school to end. Of course, due to the plethora of snow that fell on the DC Metropolitan area, school didn't end for another five days. That was fine, because she was able to ease her way into the summer.
Well, maybe not exactly "ease her way into the summer". She landed at about 4:00 on a Friday afternoon. After introductions to the family and a pizza dinner, she was awakened at 6 am to go to a swim meet, on a grey, drizzly day. In a way, this was the best introduction. The summer was going to be a whirlwind tour of swim meets, Chantilly teenagers, other kids, and whatever we could do between periodic bouts of passing out.
Notwithstanding the above, we did ease into the Kill the Family Tour. We started Sunday afternoon by playing mini-golf. Lithuania has no mini-golf courses, so this was Our 4th Child's (O4C) first introduction to mini-golf, or as I called it that day, "silly things Americans do to pass the time." She took right to it, finishing second in the family and scoring one hole-in-one, something an unnamed amateur blogger failed to do that day. I did, of course, win the game, though.
From mini-golf, we took off running. I won't go into everything, because I don't want to bore you too much, and I seriously doubt I remember everything, but we had some highlights. We tried to hit some of the big things you can do with a family of 4, in the mid-Atlantic area, while maintaining an insane summer swim schedule and not getting on an airplane. Our goal was to kill the family, and show O4C some of America.
O4C had three things she was told to do in America, go to a Starbucks (she did that several times), go to a library (hit that the first week), and go to the top of the tallest building in the city. Those Lithuanians certainly are a wild and crazy bunch. For our second weekend, we decided to go for the tallest building in the city. After a family birthday lunch for my sister-in-law, during which Middle kept running outside to watch the Mexico-Netherlands World Cup game, we headed to downtown DC and the Washington Monument.
That failed, miserably. To get tickets to go up the Washington Monument, you have to pick them up that morning, apparently at about 7 am. We were not going to go to DC at 7 am, ever, so we had to give up on the tallest building. We did get to see some of the Mall and Smithsonian, though.
The next weekend was the 4th of July, and we went crazy. On the 4th, we went to the National Zoo. We went very early, which was awesome. No crowds, anywhere, including at the pandas. We rode the merry-go-round, went to 5 Guys for dinner and showed O4C an American fireworks display, which she enjoyed thoroughly. The next day, we had a family dinner, because O4C, who was becoming our daughter by this time, had to meet the whole family. She did go shopping away from crazy boys for a while that day as well. Sunday, we went to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell, Constitution Hall and a Duck Boat Tour. The family was beginning to fade.
Keep in mind, by this point, O4C had also attended five swim meets. In 17 days. I was fairly certain she thought we were crazy. She would have been right, but we hadn't even reached the peak point of the swim season.
In the next few weeks we hit DC again for monuments, Skyline Drive, Luray Caverns, Baltimore, Annapolis and probably some other stuff I can't remember. We also hit hell week for swimming, 4 meets in 7 days, and 8 meets in 17 days, plus a talent show, a movie night, a trip to Kings Dominion (just for O4C), and at least 34 other things I have forgotten by now. We even introduced O4C to the joys of a hibachi Japanese steakhouse.
We take our families to tourism destinations to give them some culture, some education, hopefully some fun and some memories. Ironically, it seems the closer we live to something, the less likely we are to visit. I have lived in the DC Metropolitan area for 37 years. I rarely go into DC. After seeing my pictures from the Tour's trip to Philadelphia, a friend commented that we saw more of Philly in one day than he has in 40 years living there. Everyday life has a tendency to sap the energy for doing tourist things out of normal days. While on vacation, we go to museums or historical sights or amusement parks. When not on vacation, we go to soccer games and swim meets, and mow the lawn, or just sit, trying to figure out how to garner enough energy to make dinner.
I realize vacations are different, but the last 6 weeks makes me wonder if we aren't missing something. Between the ages of 12 and 30 I saw more of San Francisco, Chicago and New York, than I saw of DC. I have been to San Francisco once in my life; Chicago and New York twice. I have lived here for 37 years. I wouldn't recommend repeating the last 6 weeks to anyone, but perhaps we should take better advantage of what is right next door from time to time, without needing a kick in the ass.
O4C's trip to America was our kick in the ass. Usually, it is Middle, who insists on going to DC every President's Day, a tradition killed by the snow this year, because the boys were at school making up a snow day. We took that kick in the ass and kicked right back. We did everything we planned except go to the beach and go to a baseball game. O4C is going to have to come back for those. Get ready for Kill the Family Tour 2015.
We also re-found social media. Ok, not social media as much as Facebook, the social media taken over by our generation. Shortly before O4C's arrival, The Wife and I both got new phones. We downloaded the Facebook app and became crazy Facebook users. We documented everything from that first mini-golf game to the last hug good-bye. Our initial motivation was for O4C's Lithuanian mother to be able to see what we were doing. (Sorry, but part of her belongs to us now, so, yes, to us you are now Lithuanian Mom, not "real" Mom.) Eventually it became a game to see who could get the most "likes". Once O4C's friends started to get in the action, The Wife and I took great pleasure in getting Lithuanian "likes". We really are a bunch of dorks, aren't we?
Kill the Family Tour 2014 on Facebook also became kind of a show for friends. I had several people tell me they enjoyed following our activities on Facebook. Things became particularly fun when my friends and O4C's friends started commenting to each other. It only happened a few times, but in some weird, small way, I felt like we were bringing the world a little closer. Yeah, I am making too much of this, but it was a special summer. One that none of us will forget.
Kill the Family Tour 2014 officially ended on August 2, 2014, when the family split up for the first time in 6 weeks. The sub-tour, Kill the Lithuanian (and Mom) Tour went to New York for a couple of days. Like the previous 6 weeks, they hit the highlights. Most importantly, The Wife got O4C up a tall building, Empire State. It may not be the tallest building, but I think fame makes up for a few feet. They also learned, much like the Washington Monument, going to the Statue of Liberty requires more pre-planning than they made. Regardless, they had a fantastic time.
Sub-tour, Rest the Boys 2014, went home and ended up in the one place we didn't find during the full Kill the Family Tour...the hospital. Although unrelated to Kill the Family Tour 2014, it was fitting that someone ended up in the ER at some point. Middle whacked his head on the corner of a bedframe and got 5 staples to close up the gap.
O4C and The Wife returned from NYC mere hours before O4C had to go back to Dulles airport, where this adventure started. We had what The Wife and I had been calling "The Last Supper", danced as a family to one last song and said our good-byes. We survived Kill the Family Tour 2014, even with a few tears. But more on that in Part 2.
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