Two Night Stay at Lake George with the whole family... are we crazy?

4 hour drive. Three kids. Three days. The youngest is seven weeks old, the oldest is three. We're closing on a house in 6 short days. I just got a promotion at Starbucks, and my church is entering into it's busiest season of the year - September. We missed all the family weddings this summer due to the pregnancy, but we decided that we cannot miss this one. So we packed our bags, and headed off.

It was pretty smooth up until the curvy mountain roads, the last twenty minutes of the trip. Thus far the kids were very well behaved. Baby James slept most of the way. But suddenly, Abel starts softly crying. "I wonder if he's feeling sick," said his grandma. I doubted it, until he hurled all over himself. Lesson learned - Abel gets car sick.

We settled that night at our cabin in the town of Bolton. Beautiful scenery from our cabin window. Absolutely gorgeous. I quickly made early morning plans - I'm going to wake up at 430, take the 1.5 mile hike down the road to the lake, kayak onto the 32-mile long lake with it's 132 islands, surrounded by beautiful tree filled mountains scattered with bare cliffs, and from the middle of the lake watch the sunrise and enjoy every minute of it. I was so stoked for the morning and it's little escape.

The next morning as I'm heading out the door, Lydia wakes up. It's 4:42. "No way. This can't be happening," I thought to myself. "I just want one morning to myself. I just want the sunrise from the middle of the lake. Is that too much to ask?"

I spent the next hour and a half trying to get her not to scream and wake up the whole family in our little two bedroom kitchenette cabin. It's 6am, she's almost asleep, and I ended up falling back asleep. My plans failed.

The wedding was later that day on a 3-story boat called the Adirondack. It was a smaller wedding, but a beautiful, Christ-centered wedding. I missed the ceremony, though. Lydia, who is nearing two years old, simply cannot stand still. The ceremony was on the third level of the boat, and she wanted to run past the crowds while screaming, trying to make her way to the bride and groom. I grabbed her before her plans came through and created a disaster scenario, and let her roam the first two floors of the boat by herself. She walked like the owned the place.

Soon the ceremony was over. The kids were being tossed from one family member to another, my wife and I had a hard time connecting, and due to my male-ness, when the dance floor was open, I was more concerned about taking care of Abel and dancing with him rather than dancing with my wife. Call it a husband-cognitive failure to not think of finding a 5-minute babysitter to grab a dance with my beautiful bride of five years. Another fail.

The night was over, we stepped off the boat, and spent a while fighting with the kids about bed time, as if they've never heard of it before or experienced it before. Finally, they are crashed. "Now is my time to actually talk to my wife," I thought to myself. Baby James, who is only seven weeks old, is wide awake and refuses to be put down to sleep. If he's not held by Alexandra, he screams. And he wants to feed non-stop. With another expression of me being a male, I get frustrated, and instead of taking the best of the opportunity of two out of three kids asleep, I go to sleep in an angry slumber.

The morning comes, and we're packing our bags. Grandpa takes the kids for a little boat ride on the lake, while I assist Alexandra in packing. The ride home is smooth with no puking. Just lots of screaming and yelling, but that is OK.

We pull into our driveway. I do a final headcount to make sure the same number that left Jersey made it back. My math adds up correctly, so we enter our home, weary and tired, but thankful we made it back with no one missing.

The next morning comes, and we're packing boxes and finishing up mortgage stuff for the weekend, as we're closing on our house and moving imminently.

Moral of the story: Life with kids is always going to be crazy. I entered into this trip with no expectations. What did I learn? Parenthood with very young kids can be dominated only by the kids. They are needy at this young age. I failed to do the extra work to connect with my wife in any meaningful way the whole weekend. I got no rest, little sleep, and Alexandra got even less than I. More importantly, I also failed to connect with Jesus in any meaningful way.

It takes work to take care of a family, to connect with Jesus and with your wife, especially during a short trip like we had this weekend. Nevertheless, it's all part of learning how this whole parenting thing works. But I am a Christian first, husband second and father third. I had this almost complete backwards this weekend.

That's OK. I still have lots of learning to do in life. And thankfully, I have the most gracious and loving wife in the world. So for next time... we'll see what other lessons I learn. And who said parenting wasn't an adventure? A fun one, I may add.