We are learning the hard way today.

We are tired and have been traveling quite a bit, and we aren’t quite done yet. In Holland, they have these four day weekends twice during the month of May and we want to take advantage of the extra days off to explore Europe while we can.

But the trouble is we’ve been playing hard since April and the kids are burned out and I’ve been sick. So what would you do? I know the logical thing to do would be to stop traveling but that doesn’t feel right either.

So we pushed through all the complaints and reasons not to go and decided to go anyway. But then once we got on the highway, our engine light and TCS light turned on before we even got to Abcoude. Luckily the Honda Dealer was just around the corner and I called to tell them we were on our way and could they please see us right away!! The good news is that it was 4:30 pm and they were still open. The bad news is we have a problem with our transmission and our minivan has to stay overnight for several days!!

The Honda dealer doesn’t sell or rent minivans or anything close to as big, and ours was loaded down with five suitcases, snacks, DVDs, pillows, blankets and personal backpacks for everyone. How were we going to get out of there? Luckily they were able to get the biggest possible car from an outside agency and we were able to cram everything in, kids too.

Right before this all happened, I learned that the four or five hour drive I was expecting tonight was really a 7+ hour drive. Needless to say, I wasn’t happy already. Now we were hugely delayed! What to do?

We drove back home, ate the sandwiches we had packed and reloaded the car dropping off extra stuff so we’d be more comfy in our now cozier vehicle packed side by side! We worked hard through a family struggle to decide whether to go or not go and when to go, tonight or tomorrow. It wasn’t easy, but we decided to cancel our reservation for tonight and made a new reservation half way closer.

We decided we couldn’t give up the fight to get there to see and experience Normandy, despite the struggles.

Normandy, here we come.