Greetings from Rochester, MN – home of the Mayo Clinic. My husband has been taking classes here the first week of May every year since 1995. That makes this our 15th year of spending a week here.
That first year our children were four, six, and eight – now they are 19, 21, and 23 – and yes, they all came with us, for which we are grateful. They still enjoy our family times together.
We have gotten very comfortable with our time here even though how we spend our time has changed a lot over the years. I still remember the year they opened a new McDonalds with a big playground. In those early years it was a delightful place to spend a couple of hours when Dan was gone for the whole day and our other option was long hours in a motel room.
Our first year here Eric, our youngest, was still being treated for leukemia. We had to be very careful when we traveled to be sure there was a pediatric oncologist in the area because Eric often had to make sudden trips to the ER for a temperature, vomiting, or other problems related to his health issues. He did end up in the Mayo ER and we were grateful to have it readily available.
Traveling at all was new to me. My family took a total of two family vacations that I remember. But Dan’s family took several trips every year, so when we got married I quickly adopted his family’s ideas and we became a traveling family.
BC – or “before children” – Dan and I had wanderlust and traveled every opportunity we had – often just to visit relatives, or camp for a weekend.
All that changed when we had our first child, Emily. To say she didn’t travel well is an understatement. We used to say, “How far can we go in five minutes?” She cried loudly the entire time she was in a car and fell asleep exhausted as soon as we stopped. Nothing comforted her except getting out of the car. She did this for the first two years of her life.
I like to say that she is blessed to have siblings, and that she got it all out of her system then and now is a great traveler.
Traveling with children certainly becomes more complicated than two adults traveling alone, but we were determined to continue.
We took seriously the verse in Psalm 127:3-5 which says, “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”, so we set out to find ways to travel with our children and make it a fun and educational process.
We were talking recently about all the things we have done in this area, including touring the Mayo Clinic, Mayowood Mansion – home of the Mayo brothers, two doctors who began the Mayo Clinic. There is a nature center here that we have visited many times and a history museum that has provided hours of entertainment. We even toured the Spam museum a couple of years ago. Tomorrow we will go to Pope and Young Museum in Chatfield, MN where they have hundreds of bows from compound to traditional recurve and longbow. We are all looking forward to what we will learn there, since we all have taken archery classes and Eric and his Dad started deer hunting last year with their compound bows – Eric even shot one.
Travel has been a big part of our homeschool efforts, not only from places we’ve gone or visited, but from spending time together as a family – oftentimes in smaller areas than we are used to, like the back seat of a rental car.
Our vacation verse is Philippians 2:4 “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
We’ve used it on every trip we’ve taken to encourage our children, and ourselves, to be alert for ways to do something that will be a blessing to others in our family. Since we are out together daily as a family, Dan has typically worked with Eric on the way he treats the ladies in his family – carrying heavy things, opening and holding doors for them, and looking for ways to serve them. I’ve worked with the girls on their gratefulness skills – alerting them to notice the ways Dan and Eric are serving them and being thankful and gracious.
The way we pack for travel has really changed too. In the beginning I had to pack for four and sometimes all five of us. Now everyone packs for themselves. Last year my husband taught me something about packing – yes, he did, and this year I packed the way he does.
Our habit is that when we arrive at our motel we all take what we can carry, then the guys bring in the remainder of our things while the women begin to unpack and organize. Last year Dan came in and started to unpack his suitcase – two minutes later, to my great astonishment, he was finished. When I asked him how he could have done that he showed me. As you can see in this photo all his clothes were on hangers – because he packed them that way. He just put them in his suitcase hanger and all so all he had to do was pick them up and hang them in the closet.
Last week when we had a two-day trip I decided to try it too, and it really works great, so I did it again this week. Since the girls and I usually wear skirts we are always short of skirt hangers and often need to bring our own along and this eliminates that problem and makes our packing much easier. This might not work so well on a longer trip, but I’ve found that even if I bring a lot of clothes I end up wearing a few outfits most of the time, so I’ve begun to just pack lighter to begin with and not carry along a lot of things I end up not using.
Finding Joy in the Journey,
Phyllis
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Phyllis Sather
Proclaiming God’s Faithfulness at:
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