Travel with the Ricks Team

If you've ever listened to the radio show Travel with Rick Steves you'll come away with the idyllic picture of travel in your head. I mean, sure, he's honest about the harrowing experiencing of riding buses through the andes mountains or the dangers of traveling in the middle east but it still sounds exotic and appealing and adventurous. Traveling with our crew is certainly adventurous but maybe a little less exotic and appealing.

We recently traveled to Ohio by plane. For many of our boys this was the first plane ride they could remember even though they've all flown before. Really, they were pretty good. Just loud. Really loud. Benjamin especially was fond of making loud exclamations while looking at the window.
"Wow! This is amazing! We are going so high! The cars look little! Now the houses look little! We are IN the clouds! We are ABOVE the clouds! I have never seen clouds like this before! We are IN the sky!"

Tobias is super excited for his first (remembered) airplane ride.

 Then there were the interactions with cabin stewards.
"Can I get you something to drink?"
"What are the choices?"
"We have water, orange juice, apple juice, cranberry juice, tomato juice, coke, sprite, fresca or ginger ale."
"Wow. I can't decide. Sprite. No, fresca! No, sprite! Can I have sprite AND fresca mixed together?"
Bless them, they were so patient with our boys. On one of the flights the steward was trading science facts with the boys while serving them extra snacks and letting them take cans of soda for the road.
"Did you know that the human body is 70% water?"
"Yes I did, did you know that the bubbles in that drink are caused by carbon dioxide?"

Gabe and Benjamin were pretty good kids on the plane, if a little over exuberant.

The most difficult part was the layover in Minneapolis. Tobias started us off with a bang by disappearing almost as soon as we got of the plane. We had stopped while Marc and I were scanning the monitors to see where the next gate was only to look down and see Tobias' backpack and jacket on the floor with no Tobias. A quick look around located him traveling rapidly away from us. He had grabbed onto the railing of a moving walkway and lifted up his feet so that he was carried off clinging to the outside.
We caught the little monkey and we all got on the moving walkway in the direction of the tram. Of course, as soon as we stepped off of the moving walkway he broke loose and hopped back on in the opposite direction which meant that I got to sprint the length of the walkway, catch him again and ride it back a second time. Love you Tobias!

This is what it looks like when you feed five boys in an airport food court. Good times!

Thankfully, Minneapolis has a little playground area to kill some time and we fed the boys at Chick-fil-a. Finding enough seats for everyone to eat at was almost impossible. Six chairs was the most I could locate together so Marc and I took shifts eating and monitoring the five boys.
We were happy when we arrived safely in Dayton. My kind parents had to bring two vehicles to transport our big family. I guess we'll need to invest in a team bus for travel in the future.