Are We There Yet?

Oh it's the sound and question that most parents dread hearing from the recesses of the seats behind you, the question, "Are we there yet?"

I understand a child's inquisitive nature to such things because for them looking from their perspective of sitting in a seat sandwiched close to their sibling they have no choice sitting close to but do, and staring at the back of their parents heads for miles on end, can become somewhat boring.

Besides the occasional glance from their sibling that includes a smirk or sticking out their tongue at you to provoke a round of who can tease each other the most without mom or dad seeing us, to the point at which they begin to elbow each other harder and harder until the car begins to sway from side to side. This is usually when mom and dad notice, because when we turn and look over our shoulder, all we see is innocent smiles of heavenly angels. The only other distraction for them is the landscape that whizzes by too fast for one to actually see what is really going on.

Sometimes drivers in other cars will take pity at the passengers in yours and wave as they pass by, or make faces at one another or even the old game of trying to get the big rig to honk their horn by holding your hand out and gesturing to them by pulling your hand in the same motion.

Cheers of "Yeah!" and "OH did you see that?" come from the successful blowing of the air horn and which point dad looks over to see if he had drifted into their lane or just why he was being honked at to begin with.

However children get to the point where the question just begs to be asked and parents cringe at answering because it's only been 20 minutes since they left the house and there is still three more hours to deal with the repeated asking from the rear of the car the same question every 20-30 minutes out.

It is usually followed up by the next question of "Well, how much longer before we get there?"
Depending where you are in your journey, your skills as a mathematician come into play and you are required to figure based on your current average speed and the number of miles you estimate are remaining on your trip, calculate by the number of minutes in our hour, you mumble something out that sounds like, "Around another 2-3 hours or so."

More groans from the back seat and they now begin to count the number of hairs on the back of you head, press their faces to the windows, or tune you out completely with an electronic device of their choice Ipod or Nintendo DS. For some of us, portable DVD players work well as long as mom and dad don't have to listen to the movie, so please plug your headphones in, so they can continue to talk about the issues going on at work and why life just happens the way it does.

So today, we head out on the similar drama today as we pack up our car with beach chairs, towels, ice chest, boogie boards, and other miscellaneous stuff and head for the coast. For us, the closest beach is 2 hours south of here.

Where in, once arriving, we will unload the car, and beg children to at least carry some of what they begged so much to bring and attempt the long walk across the sand to the sound of water. It's there somewhere, we can hear it so I know we are in the right place. However once you look at the landscape, you don't see it, the beach expanse is that big before it dips down to the ocean blue waves below.

I plan on taking lots of pictures, gathering lots of sea shells, walking along the cooling waters just along the break point of the waves, and close my eyes and just take it all in. These are the days where we all wish we lived much closer to the beach so days like today would just happen more often.

The good thing is that on the way home, we don't have to hear that question, because we plan on staying late enough that they will all simply fall asleep and we will have peace and quiet to reflect on the day and just enjoy the silence.

UPDATE: In regards to the caption contest on my blog that began on Friday, the family secret picked a unanimous winner and we would like to congratulate Sharlyn at Dancin on Rainbows for her winning caption of, "Stop with the Charlie the tuna jokes, man: you're making my belly ache!". Her surprise bag will be on it's way to her this week, so stop by and congratulate her.