Are we there yet?

Most parents have heard those words uttered from their child's lips... "Are we there yet?" After driving 32 hours total to see my family last week, I've heard it all.

"How many more minutes?"
"How many more hours?"
"Are we still in Texas?"
"When are we going to eat lunch?"
"Where are we going to eat lunch?"
"Did you bring any snacks or drinks?"

The list goes on and on. And it reminded me of when I was a little girl, traveling with my three sisters and one brother and usually the dog too. We would draw imaginary lines on the car seat to mark off our territory. And of course, if anyone dared to cross our line... "Mom, she's in my space!"

I also remember having the seats folded down flat in the back of the station wagon so we could all crawl around and play. That, of course, was back in the days of no seat belt laws and no car seat laws. We made a sign that said, "You're on Candid Camera!", and we pretended to film other cars with our 8 mm movie camera. Now that was fun. We got all sorts of reactions from cars that passed us. And it also took up a lot of travel time.

And then there was the time when we finally got all packed up. Everyone was accounted for. We had spent a week at my grandparents house. We were headed back home almost to the interstate and heard someone honking their horn behind us. It was my grandfather, and he was holding up our dachshund with one hand and driving with the other hand. So my Dad pulled over to retrieve our dog, "Rudy". Now Rudy was not happy at all with us. We smothered him with hugs and told him we were so sorry for having forgotten him. But Rudy was unforgiving the whole way home. He wouldn't look at us. He did eventually get over it, since he remembered that we were the ones who feed him.

Every time I pull into the driveway after a long road trip, I say to myself, "I'm never doing this again!" And then time goes by and I start to miss my family and I get back in the the car with all the kids to head out on another adventure, and I think to myself, "Are we there yet?"