Our Story

When I look back on my favorite experiences, most of them involve travel and even my first memory was when I was three riding the train from our home in Iowa to California. I also fondly remember car trips to Washington DC, California, and Florida. The last two included my first trip to Disneyland and Epcot (Yes, we went to Florida for Epcot and skipped the Magic Kingdom.) Later as an adult, I made quite a few trips around various places in North America, and they were the highlights of my year.

When I met Sarah in 2007, one of the things we bonded over was our love for travel and it wasn’t long before we were going on camping trips around Minnesota and Wisconsin. It’s not a surprise that when I proposed marriage, I did it around travel. I set up a trip and let her know when we were going but not where. Each day before our trip, I would come up with somewhere that we might be going and try to convince her that was where we were going.

Before the kids, we continued going on trips to places like Boston, Colorado, Florida, and Savanna, GA. That all changed in 2014 when we were expecting…triplets. After the kids were born, taking care of them was quite the challenge and we had a year that we didn’t get out of town at all, so it was exciting when we finally felt we were ready to hit the road a year later.

Our first trip was up to Duluth, MN when the kids were two and we were going to spend a few nights at a hotel where we were going to ride on the train from Thomas and Friends. AJ woke up at 2:00 AM and just screamed and cried uncontrollably and it seemed like everything we did wasn’t helping. That was the first sign that things were going to be different for us.

It took a few years later to get an official diagnosis that AJ was on the autism spectrum and that has brought many challenges for all of us. Add to that, the other two kids were diagnosed with ADHD so traveling anywhere can be tricky, and just about anything can be a trigger for a meltdown.

For me, the low point was when we decided to celebrate the kid’s seventh birthdays at Disney World with my mother-in-law. The entire trip didn’t quite go as planned and had its share of ups and downs. We had lots of good times like swimming in the pool or going on rides but for most of it, we were just trying to avoid meltdowns and always on edge.

We knew the trip could be taxing on our nerves so we tried to plan the best we could since it would also be their first time flying as well. What I didn’t expect was that William would get strep throat, Charlotte would only ride 2 or 3 rides the whole trip, and would refuse to ride It’s a Small World due to the clock face being scary.

When the time came to head home, I just wanted to get home, but AJ was freaking out about the flight since he had a lot of ear pressure on the flight down.  He made it clear to us that he was not to fly and wanted us to drive back. To make matters worse, he became fixated on a stuffy his brother got at Animal Kingdom and wanted us to get one, which by that time was to late. By the time we were getting through security, he was in a full meltdown, and I had to carry him screaming and kicking (and biting me on the shoulder.)

Even after we got through security, I kept thinking how we had two hours to our flight and I didn’t know how were going to make it but our son, Rhys handed him his stuffy he got from Animal Kingdom and instantly Xander calmed down and we were able to make it home. By the time we got home, I decided I was done traveling and ready to stay around town until they were 18, but it wasn’t too long until I was planning out another trip.

Since then, we have been creative and done some trips with just one kid and some family trips to a cabin or water park and things are still challenging, but there have been plenty of great memories too. As I like to say, traveling with kids might be a little crazy but it’s crazy home too so it’s just a different type of crazy.

The main thing I learned from that trip is to just enjoy the good moments and be thankful for the little things. For me, that is summed up by our big lunch on their birthday at Cinderella’s Royal Table. What was supposed to be the highlight of our trip was just a series of near meltdowns and I ended up having to drag AJ out of the building.

As we left the building, they had complimentary plastic swords, which he liked.  After getting the sword, he calmed down almost immediately, and instead of heading back to our room as we had planned, we rode Seven Dwarf’s Mine Train, which was their favorite ride, and we would have missed It except for a sword.

When you run into issues on a trip, it’s easy to look around and see other people having fun doing the things you wanted to do without issues and wonder why everything must be so difficult. Even with so much going wrong, there were still so many amazing memories and times I won’t forget.

Maybe you can relate to our story or maybe you have had different experiences but either way, everyone is dealing with something, and each trip has its challenges but if you can, get out and explore anyway since you only have kids for so long. There is no perfect time or age to travel, whether to Disney World or anywhere but each trip will bring its memories and those are the things you take with you all your life.