I love the fact that my kids are getting older.
And it’s a big bonus that we all enjoy doing things together.
This wasn’t the case when I was growing up. There were a lot of kids and not a lot of money. The house I grew up in didn’t even have any real residential HVAC. There was a wood stove for heating and that was it. Us boys slept upstairs and it was brutal in the summer after the sun heated the top of the house all day. I didn’t see any air conditioning until I got to college. My kids have it better than that and we decided that two was our limit. Having two kids that are pretty close in age has been great when it comes to spontaneous road trips. This is something my wife and I did before the kids came along. We’d sort of trade off on deciding who was leading the adventure and just take off. It’s a little more complicated than that these days but we still rotate who’s in charge of leading the adventure. Normally, we like to make a three or four day weekend out of it. But just getting out of the central air conditioning of our home even for a weekend is worth the effort. We generally stick to a rule of no more than a five or six hour drive to our destination. We also stick to the interstate hotels near whatever attraction we’re headed to. Certainly, these types of hotels are more affordable but they come with another important factor. We have always been able to count on consistent air conditioning or heating from the commercial HVAC units inside these hotel rooms. Nothing will ruin a weekend away quicker than bad HVAC.