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If you think taking your kids on vacation is rough . . . try 8 or 12
Sunday, July 01, 2001 By Mackenzie Carpenter, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
As the mother of eight, Mary Ann Pfleger has made it her business to know a lot of little things. Like whose socks belong on whose feet and whose turn it is to do the dishes.
But on her last vacation trip by car to the beach, she also knew one very big thing:
On Tuesdays and Sundays, cheeseburgers at McDonald's cost 39 cents.
This is the kind of vital information that parents of large families hoard like gold, in a never ending quest to make it through each day in the most cost-efficient manner while savoring the richness of life with lots of children.
When it's summer vacation season, large families face their own special challenges: from fitting into the car to surviving a trip to a restaurant without breaking the bank to keeping everyone from killing each other.
"The secret is lots and lots of Valium," joked Pfleger, 44, of Greenfield.
Actually, she said, the family now travels in two cars. "The last time we went in one, it was kind of rough."
"We can't afford junk food with eight kids," she said, noting that she usually packs vegetables and sandwiches to be eaten during a stop at a picnic area along with soda pop poured into paper cups. But the family got a fast food treat on their way back from the beach three years ago because of careful planning.
"We deliberately drove back on a day when McDonald's had its discount. We ended up ordering 32 cheeseburgers, and it took a half an hour to make them, but they brought them out to the parking lot, no problem," she said.
This coming week, an estimated 36.6 million Americans will hit the highways, combining vacations with the Fourth of July holiday. Fewer of them, though, will include large families than in the past. According to the Family Research Council in Washington, the percentage of families with four or more children declined from 11.1 percent in 1965 to 3 percent in 1998.
Still, AAA, the national auto club, dispenses plenty of advice for large families with small children: drive at night, if possible, to avoid construction and traffic; make frequent stops; play road trip games; provide plenty of snacks; and issue headsets for teen-agers to avoid arguments over music.
Built-in baby-sitters
But such rules are made to be broken, and the parents interviewed for this story had developed their own unique ways of coping with life on the road.
A relatively relaxed mother -- "I just can't get all bent out of shape if the laundry isn't done" -- Pfleger is extremely well-organized, due in large part to the fact that she has plenty of baby-sitting help -- her three oldest girls, who look after her five younger sons.
"I thank God for giving me girls first, three built-in baby-sitters," she said, noting that she relies on lists "and everyone has chores to do. My Jennifer, who's 20, loves to organize the boys' clothes [for a two-week trip, that's four outfits per boy -- shorts, a T-shirt and underwear all rolled up into a little ball and packed in a plastic container]. Megan, who's 21, will get the laundry ready. And Heather occupies the little ones while I pack."
Terri Aquilina's family is somewhat smaller than Pfleger's, but with five children ranging in age from a 12-year-old boy to a nursing infant, she also plans trips with military precision -- play lots of Al Simmons kids' tapes, take plenty of Barbies and coloring books, and rely on her older children to keep order with the younger ones.
"Rule one, when the baby's sleeping, we don't stop. Rule two, take plenty of drinks and food, but don't give it away all at once."
Rich and Kathy Fitzgerald of Squirrel Hill have their annual trip with their eight children to Bethany Beach in Delaware down to a science, albeit one that violates AAA's dictum to make frequent stops.
"We leave at 5 a.m., and once we get in the car, we don't stop," Kathy Fitzgerald said. "The less time in the car, the happier everyone is. There's no food or drink; otherwise, everyone would have to go to the bathroom. By 10, we're about an hour and a half from the beach, so we stop at this McDonald's where the kids can order food and drinks. But no one gets out of the car unless there's a major bathroom emergency. By the time we get to the beach an hour or so later, the kids can go to a public restroom and then head for the beach while we wait for our accommodations to be ready."
Each child has one small duffel bag, "although the girls always want extra stuff -- diaries, the hair things, the shoes, while my son would wear the same T-shirt for a week if we let him."
Avoiding 'Home Alone'
One disaster people may wonder about with large family trips has never happened to Pfleger.
She has never left a child behind by mistake.
"Roll call is key," she said.
Even as recently as Monday, on a trip to Kennywood, when Pfleger took count inside the car, she discovered that, sure enough, "my little Brian, who tends to stroll, was outside strolling."
While she has never lost a child, "my mother had three sisters, and they each had nine children, and my aunt once left a Howard Johnson's on the Pennsylvania Turnpike only to realize she had forgotten her 4-year-old son. Of course, they raced back, and there he was. Someone was holding him."
Pat Dolan of Fox Chapel has six sons and grew up in a family of 13 children, so she knows about traveling en masse.
"My mom would drive the station wagon. My father would drive his Cadillac and a U-Haul, because he didn't really want to hear the babies screaming," she recalled. Today, the Dolans take their children with them on trips overseas, including one recent journey to Greece to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary that included in-laws and cousins, totaling 20 people, 15 of whom were of the male gender.
Everyone behaved well -- "I called them the getalong gang" -- but she was also prepared. A football and a Frisbee were packed "since boys need to expend a lot of energy." And because air travel means a lot of waiting in airports, Dolan brought a jar of peanut butter, grape jelly and a loaf of bread, "so if someone was starving, it would tide them over. Everyone likes PB&J."
Ten to Disney World
Stan and Marie Klos of Upper St. Clair might get the award for most daring journey by a large family. They decided to drive their eight children to Disney World during spring break.
"It was wonderful," Marie Klos recalled of the 10-day adventure featuring four girls and four boys between the ages of 3 and 14.
"I packed as little as possible, which wasn't too tough since the kids would be wearing summer clothes," she said. Each child carried his or her own fanny pack filled with water bottles that had been frozen the night before and bags of raisins and granola. The family crammed into a Chevrolet Suburban -- "the truck," as it's fondly called -- with three in front, four in the middle and three in back -- and headed to Florida.
"Every child always has a partner, and we've taught all of them to know the names of their hotel," she said. Since most of their children were under 12, they got to eat free, and costs were cut when the family split up into two suites: one for mom and the girls, one for dad and the boys.
In an age when the average family size includes 2.6 children, did the group get any double takes from hotel clerks?
Not really, Klos said, but, "When people ask, 'Why do you have eight kids?' my husband always says, 'Because nine was out of the question.'"
Not all trips have gone as smoothly. There was one near-disaster on a trip to the beach from the family's former residence, a farm near Wheeling, W.Va. Stan Klos thought, despite misgivings from his wife, that it would be a great idea to rent an RV and go camping.
After spending the better part of a day packing the camper, they took off, and got as far as Washington, Pa., when the transmission blew.
"And there we were, on a highway divider, in an RV with seven kids -- I was five months pregnant with our eighth, ready to puke my guts out, and the kids were saying, 'Oh, no, does this mean we don't get to go to the beach?' It was one of those moments when it was all I could do to keep from saying to my husband, 'I told you so.' "
The rental company arrived quickly with a new camper, "but it took us six hours to repack everything. That was definitely the worst."
The pre-seat-belt era
Was it always this complicated?
In the days before seat belts, traveling with lots of children meant just folding the back seats down, padding the space with pillows and blankets and letting the children sack out.
Tom McConnell, father of 10 grown children, one of them basketball star Susie McConnell Serio, said his secret was simply to limit the number of long trips. "We'd go maybe to Conneaut Lake or Lake Erie, but anything more than that would have been insane. One of us would have gone nuts, and since my wife is the calm one, it probably would have been me."
His children appear to remember those riotous excursions with some fondness. This past Father's Day, Susie McConnell Serio presented him with a card featuring all of his frequent sayings.
"It included, 'Don't make me pull this car over.' That's something I used to say a lot," he laughed.
But for the most part, traveling with a lot of children isn't the nightmare it's cracked up to be, especially because many large families have learned how to get along in close quarters, Marie Klos said.
And there's some wistfulness in her voice, because this year, for the first time, the family is splitting up. Four children are going out to Wyoming on a dinosaur dig with their father, while she takes her youngest children -- who wouldn't do well in such a setting -- and her older sons to the beach.
"I think big families don't tend to travel as much as smaller families, because it's so much more of a production. But when they do go, it's more special and the kids seem to be better behaved.
"It is a treat, and we tell them that, that this is a gift, something really special. And I think they would agree that it is, too."
For those planning trips with children, here are some Web sites that may help.
Traveling with children
Theme Parks
White House for Kids
Parent Soup
Have Children, Will Travel
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