The Caswell Traveling Circus

That's what we've become.  I love it, in a lot of ways, and I've been really surprised to discover that there is anything not to love about it.

For instance, when you travel all the time, you forget what you're supposed to do when you're home!  And, you lose quite a bit of sleep!  And, when you're still learning, you book a hotel with beds that are too small for your co-sleeping family!  (Jack now happily sleeps in his own bed, but Lily and Charlotte do not.  Four people do NOT fit comfortably in a full-sized bed!)  And, when you're away from home, you have no chores to do, but when you come home, you come home with loads of laundry to do and no energy to do it!

I really can't think of anything else.  I do really love it.

I don't love how much money it costs.  Now is where this post gets a little more personal....





I don't handle it well when Tim is gone. Well, sometimes I don't.  Sometimes I do!  But I can never tell ahead of time how well I'm going to do.  Y'all know that I'm dealing with depression; some days, some weeks, even some months are better than others.  Some days I wake up and can hardly get out of bed; some days I'm thrilled to be alive!

When we lived in California, I made some really good friends.  Yet, when Tim left on business trips, I hardly made it through.  Once I was afraid I wasn't even capable of caring for my children.  The memory of that trip still scares me and Tim.  That was a big reason for moving back to Texarkana, near Tim's mother, who is uncanny about being able to say and do things to help me out.  Tim said "Now that we live near my mom, you can stay home when I go on trips, and we can save thousands of dollars!"  My mother even moved closer to us from Dallas to be able to help out, too.

Well, we tried it.  We even had his dear sister come stay with me in my house while he was gone, to help out and just be there.  (Her youthful body is still able to handle sleepless nights holding a crying baby better than either my mom's or Tim's mom's.)  But I still felt like I was barely hanging on to my sanity.

And so after lots of discussion between me and Tim, and lots and lots of heartfelt prayers, we have decided that we will all travel together anywhere he needs to go.  We look at it as a business expense, and do our best to spend as little as comfortably possible.

I feel like such a wimp.  I think of military wives whose husbands are gone for months, even years at a time.  I think of families we hear about at General Conference that send the husband/father away to work at a more lucrative job so the family can have money to go to the temple.  I think of friends and extended family members who have survived necessary separations.  And then I remember that Jesus loves me anyway, Tim tells me he loves to have me around, and my dear friend tells me I'm not a wimp.

Then I feel like such a snob.  I have friends and family members that struggle to get by on combined incomes, and I can spend thousands of dollars on travel without batting an eye.  I try to stay within a somewhat-restrictive budget in every other category, so I can still feel like I know what it's like to have to decide between buying milk or paying the garbage bill.  I have to remember the "new bathrobe" syndrome - remember that one?  Where the man buys himself a fancy new bathrobe, then his slippers look drab so he "has" to buy some new slippers, then his rug looks worn so he "has" to buy a new rug, then his curtains look outdated so he "has" to buy new curtains, etc.  When we're in the airport and the hotel, I have to remember that just because everyone around me drops money like so much discarded waste doesn't mean I do.  (When a hotel charges $100 for a boutique bathrobe, remember, there are people who actually pay that.  Not me!)  I also have to remember that just because I can spend this much on travel does not mean I can spend as much as I want on anything that strikes my fancy.  I also have to reign in my tendency to "rescue" everyone I know who has financial difficulties.  I got a good deal on a plane ticket to send my mother-in-law to the rescue of her ailing daughter in Utah, and I feel very good about that purchase.  But when my daughter said she wanted her cousins to come to her birthday party, I wanted to buy all four of them plane tickets to come visit us for a week, and it took me a few days of staring at that $1200 total before I could admit that it wasn't a good idea.



ALL OF THAT!  Just to be able to put some context behind my current trial:  We're travelling to so many places in the next few months, that I can't go for an hour without wondering what else I need to do to prepare for our upcoming trips.  We went to South Carolina last week, we're going to France in a month, then we'll be home for a couple of weeks and go to San Francisco, then we'll be home for a few days before we'll go to the Florida coast, then we'll be home for a couple of weeks before we'll go to the San Francisco area again.   Four trips in three and a half months.  I spent an entire afternoon booking the hotel for our France trip.

What a first-world problem, huh?  "Oh poor poor pitiful me, I have to spend so much of my time booking travel for my family!"

The upside of this, is that I really appreciate a normal day at home.  When I wake up at my regular time, get up and shower and dress and feed my family and read scriptures (in English and French!), homeschool my children, exercise and feed my family, put my daughters down for their naps, read to my children, clean my home, feed my family again, clean my home some more, and put my kids to bed on time.  I appreciate it so much that I'm seriously considering staying home next time Tim travels (well, next time that isn't already planned), just to see how well we all do and pay off some debt.  (Don't tell Tim, or he'll expect me to follow through!)

But I do really like being the Caswell Traveling Circus.  Tim's field (software development) is so politically liberal, worldly, atheist, anti-family, that I almost feel like we have a duty to show them how awesome a family can be.  And who better to do that than us (we?  My grammar could use some help!)?  Our kids are SO well-behaved when we travel, b/c they love it as much as I do!  A lot of Tim's contemporaries are coming to expect us anytime Tim is scheduled to speak at or attend a conference.  A few of them are married and/or have children, and they love seeing us and playing with our kids.