Road trip time!
Let's be honest, it isn't easy to be spontaneous with kids...and a dog...and home-stays who you cook
for BUT it is possible and we totally nailed it. It took a good month of planning to get hotel deals at exactly the right time. Gavin and I have learnt over the years that our best times as a family are the planned ones. As much as we love being spontaneous and just getting away with no plan except adventure, we learnt quickly that it is a terrible idea (with children) to not have any plan, us being us and our children being our children. For some families, this may be a great exercise, for us it always turned out badly. We worked out that if we plan well, we have the same expectations from the get-go and have plans and back-up plans that we can make use of as we go. It took a lot of the stress out of travelling for us and now we like to do what we called 'planned spontaneous' fun.
One of our favourite things to do is to surprise the kids. I don't know why, they're just so gullible and trusting and it's so easy to mislead them (as terrible as that sounds) and then surprise them with something fun! We were headed down to a place near Tauranga to visit fmily, so we told the kids the day before which of course they were ecstatic about! Any time out of Auckland and breaking routine is just huge fun potential. We didn't lie (of course), just carefully worded our conversations about heading to Tauranga 'for the day' which we were, which made them believe we were heading home that night again. They were so excited when we pulled up at the hotel after a day of family visits instead of going all the way back to Auckland.
Excitement quickly turned to exhaustion after they had a few jumps on the bed and had a quick explore. Within the hour we had them all fast asleep, much to our joy! Let's be honest, it's always luck of the draw whether you get a quick bedtime at a new location. We have had some wins and definitely our fair share of fails in this area. One such occasion was when the kids were younger and we took them to a holiday park in Rotorua for the night. It was a cute wooden cabin with double bunks for us all...big mistake. The kids were too excited to be sleeping all in the same room, nevermind in Rotorua, on BUNKBEDS!!! At a point of total frustration and exhaustion trying to get them all to sleep (including baby Jed who was trying to fall asleep to the loud, uncoltrollable giggles of his older siblings), we ended up taking two of them for a drive in the car to get them to fall asleep. We worked out that the age they were at, was definitely not ideal for a place with only one room.
We had such a wonderful time but I would be lying if I said it was all smooth sailing. It seemed to all turn a bit pear-shaped on the second day when we surprised the kids with a second night at a second hotel! They were obviously ecstatic and excited as Gavin parked in the valet area outside the font entrance and ran in to check us in and pick up the key. The kids thought we were just looking for pools to swim so were very excited to hear we were staying the night at a place with a pool! The drama started when Gav walked back to the car, hopped in and asked me for the key. I stared at him blankly, checked my pockets (even though I knew he hadn't given it to me) and said I didn't have it. My car key is a tiny key, the type that fits in to the black electric battery remote part (that broke a while back), so we now just use the metal part. Easy to lose. It was lost. We searched EVERYWHERE. Gav retraced his steps into the hotel and looked all over the ground. I unpacked the whole boot of the car where Gav had opened the boot before entering the hotel. Nothing. We looked in every possible place. It was 30 minutes of searching, including getting the helpful hotel staff to check the video footage to see if Gav had it visible at some point, before we made the call to a lock smith. This was a fruitless exercise on a Sunday afternoon with everyone closed and we were really on our last straw of what to do. Gavin got in the car deflated, kicking himself. He removed his cap in frustration...and there it was!!!! He had put the key IN HIS HAT!! Although this was the most unfortunate start to the next part of our family holiday, #1. We all prayed and it was AWESOME seeing the kids see an answer to prayer #2. Gav did something so totally stupid (that is usually the type of thing I do) so it was great to have a laugh and have some ammo for next time he teases me about something I do ;)
We had a good laugh, we unpacked the car, we trecked upstairs over the moon to be a few doors down from the indoor pool. The lift opens and we see the sign on the pool door. "OUT OF ORDER". The pool we had planned to relax in was out of order. Gav and I immediately exchanged looks that meant, we better make a plan B, now! Our kids had been promised a swim since the day before. They were ready to swim. Jed had refused to wear a top and carried around his spiderman towel all day because we were 'going swimming'. We had to find a pool. And we did. We picked up a picnic dinner of fruit, dips, cold meats, chips and rolls and headed to the local pools. With strict instructions to the kids NOT to drink the water, we realised once we were there that they were the public pools and not as fresh looking as we would have liked. The heated spa part held a delicate layer of white oils visibe in the sunlight streaming in from outside... A little girl ran in from one pool catching a handful of vomit as went to finish her unfortunate activity in the toilet. It was not our finest choice but the kids didn't care. So we stayed. Our plans to eat the picnic at the pools changed to leaving (slightly) earlier than planned and heading to the playground with the picnic. As we sat in the freezing wind that seemed to have picked up from somewhere, plates blowing away, kids shivering from wet hair and still dressed in short pants from the day, we knew it was time to pack up and get out of there. We paused the picnic, headed back to the hotel, made all the kids jump in the shower before enjoying a spa in our hotel room spa bath and continued picnicking on our beds in our pj's. A day that had disaster potential ended with giggles and a great family time of us teaching the kids to play Uno (actually it was called 'Chuno', hilariously, the same game, just a $2 shop version I picked up earlier in the week).
One of the new things we tried with the kids after their interest in the Museum and the historical village part of Motat, was The Buried Village. I remember doing this attraction for a school trip in Year 13 and it left quite an impression on me. For one, I love history so to walk through an actual half buried early settlement and village with actual artifacts that had been dug up, all around you, it was a very amazing experience. I was thrilled that the kids were actually fascinated by the history of the place too. We were greeted by lovely ladies in costume at the front of the entrance with the bad news that they had a power cut. They kindly said, seeing as we had come the whole way there, we could do the outside village tour first and if the power hadn't come on yet by then, they would lend us some torches to view the Museum part. Seeing as we were there already we took them up on their offer and made our way through the old village. This took us twice as long because a 1/4 of the way through the kids all wanted jackets so we trecked back to the car to get them. Then another 15 minutes into the journey through they all needed the toilet so back to the start we went AGAIN. But we finally made it through, the kids entertained by a thoughtful treasure hunt set out through the place for them to follow.
Our time at the Buried Village was topped off by a bit of a walk down to view a gorgeous waterfall. I love waterfalls and it was such a great moment as a family as the kids stood in the fine spray of this powerful surge of water and got to appreciate something so gorgeous. From the waterfall lookout we could look down across the valley to where the old tour guides would walk tourists down to the water where the boats were. The boats would cart people to the Pink and White Terraces, a thermal wonder of the natural world. We looked across the lake and saw the volcanoes that erupted, splitting the mountain with powerful force into the divided mass it is today. Images of what people in that village would have seen looking at that exact same scenery that dreadful night of the eruption, played on my mind as we visualised and empathised and connected with people somehow who had once stood where we stood just a few hundred years ago. NZ's history is fairly new and although it's still moving, Gav and I spoke of how amazing it would be to tour some of the historical sites in other places in the world that date back even further!
Rotorua has to be one of our family's favourite places to explore. I don't know why because it stinks and I'd probably never visit if it were just Gav and I, but somehow, with kids, it is so enjoyable watching them stare at bubbling mud in awe and experience new and exciting things like the luge. The last time we were there was about a year back now and we did the maze, the redwood forest and the luge. This time, we changed it up. Except for the luge of course. One cannot simply visit Rotorua and not tear down the mountain in a speedy black cart. This is always the last thing we do before heading home and it is always the highlight of our trip. Maybe it's the fact that we feel on top of the world looking out on the amazing view below. Maybe it is because we are all together in one place as a family doing something fun. It sort of feels like time stands still while you're up on the mountain making a memory. The luge didn't disappoint this time either and we had the added bonus of reaching a stage where Abby could officially ride her on cart so we could all race each other! Added to the fact that we went on a Monday and it was so quiet, their were no queues, it was so great.
'
After the kids missed a day of school and got to be tourists for the weekend complete with buffet breakfasts and tours, we grabbed Mc Donalds for dinner, got everyone comfy, put on an audiobook CD and headed for Auckland at exactly 6.30pm. Within 15 minutes, with a mouthful of chicken nugget, Jed was asleep (don't worry, we woke him to get him to empty his mouth). Within the next 20 minutes, Noah was asleep. Abby and myself read in pleasant silence. Gav listened to his sport podcast. At 8.30pm Abby was snoring and Gav and I did a silent happy dance as we turned down the audio book and could have a short time of conversation that didn't involve repeating answers to kids questions. It was tiring, it was exhausting, it was fun, it was memorable, all at the same time.
Life is short. We are planning and saving for the big trips but for now, adventures can be anywhere we make them! Even stinky, smelly Rotorua. After all, it's not where we are but who we go with and the moments we take with us in our hearts.
Comments
Post a Comment