First Family Vacation

Lucas is sitting between my legs in the plastic bucket seat on this dark green peddle boat. I'm barely breathing because our combined life jackets take up all the space between us. He's stretching his Lightning McQueen sandals as far as his toes will go so he can touch the peddles.

"I'm making us go backwards!" he's yelling.

Really its Hubby who's peddling and I'm ever so grateful since this was my spontaneous idea that I didn't think he'd go for or that we'd go ahead with because we aren't, as a family, all that spontaneous.

But now here we are in the middle of a lake on a gorgeous August day in the beautiful town of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.

I could now check off "spontaneous summer jaunt in Idaho" from my bucket list, but it's not on the list as I never in hell imagined travelling to Idaho, or frankly even knew where it was.

But here we are on day 4 of our 10-day road trip (where we spontaneously didn't even bother to make any hotel bookings) meandering through the States on our way up to the Kootenays.

And if I had any goals for this vacation, we are making them reality in this moment. I fumble with my iPhone attempting to capture our adventure rather than drop it into the lake.

Because what's crazy is that this is the first vacation that we've taken as a family in the four and a half years since Lucas was born.

Not that I'm complaining about the cruise that my parents took us on or about both the times Hubby's parents watched Lucas so we could go to Vegas. We know we're so lucky to have the family support we have. But there's been this feeling lately like we were missing something.


It seemed like every other family we knew had this thing about them that was uniquely them. They went on weekly outings and had secret handshakes and shared this sense of belonging to a family unit. Did we have that? What was our family's identity? Did we DO family stuff together besides group trips to Costco? What did it mean to be a Jurock-Staley - heck we didn't even share one last name.


Had we spent so much time trading Lucas between Hubby and myself while we juggled work and school and family and our individual pursuits, that we weren't a unit? Lucas has a strong bond with each of us, and certainly Hubby and I have a 16-year-old strong bond. But what about our trinity?

And so we embarked on this road trip. And as we headed out of town, I asked the questions. Did we really want to think about expanding our family? And we talked around the topic, and I think the reason was that I couldn't shake the feeling that we had to get THIS right first.

And as the days progressed and we laughed and yelled and sang our way through Seattle and Spokane and Idaho and Kimberley, I wondered what I had been worried about.

Hubby, in his golf shirts (as opposed to his normal attire of superhero tees) embodied the role of Dad, fussing with the GPS and grumping about the price of gas, while also being the one to double check the locks always walking ahead to check things out. I assumed the maternal role, making sure everyone was fed and watered, got enough sleep, nutrition, and baths.

And Lucas gave us the reason to find fun wherever we went. Even in the middle of Idaho as I suffocated behind his life jacket.