Adventure

Day 4 memoir prompt.  You can find it here.

I love adventure.  I love going to new places.  I especially love taking my kids. Most of the time they don't appreciate it, but I take them anyway.

As a military family, we move a lot.  We have lived in Heidelberg, Germany, San Antonio, Texas, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Yelm, Washington, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and now the island of Oahu Hawaii.  Moving this much is in of itself an adventure.  But that is never enough for me.

Honestly, I usually take my kids all on my own.  Rarely is my husband along for the ride.  He is usually unable to take time off, or he's gone somewhere.  Deployment, training, something.  So I pack up my kids and we go.

On his last deployment, we had some adventures.  The benefit of living in the middle of the United States is you can drive almost anywhere within about two days. That was our summer of our first trip to Chicago.

When I was growing up, there were a lot of kids.  And not a lot of money.  The first time I had ever stayed in a motel was when I was in eighth grade.  My kids have been going to hotels since they were born.  We've lived in hotels.  So, being able to give my kids experiences that I only dreamed of as a kid, has been awesome.  So far, they don't like it.  They complain.  They don't like moving.  I force them to visit places like Mount Rushmore, and I force them to go to the beach here in Hawaii. I really really hope that eventually they will appreciate it.  That they will also force their kids to try new things and explore new places.

I love adventure.  I love not knowing what will happen or what we'll find.  (like the awesome rest stop in Iowa) or finding cool places to stop.  Trying new foods, or figuring out that something isn't as scary as we thought it was.