If ever there were lessons in humility (and possibly humiliation) to be learned in this lifetime, they would be found in the art of traveling with one's own children - especially children aged three and under. My husband and I made our yearly visit with our two kids (aged 3 ½ and 19 months) to San Diego to visit his family for the week of Thanksgiving. It's been over a week since our return and I'm still recovering and also trying to come to terms with the notion that a "vacation" with the kids is no vacation at all.

I've been going to San Diego every year for over 10 years since my husband and I first started dating. It used to be that we could pack a week's worth of clothes in a day pack and carry it on the plane to be stored in the overhead bins. And we would even scoff at the idea of ever checking luggage. Fast forward a decade and we are no longer the cool DINKs (Double Income No Kids) couple with one small carryon each, but rather the SIKs (Single Income with Kids) couple with the following items: one large rolling suitcase, one smaller rolling suitcase, one diaper bag, one kid's backpack, another rolling bag/backpack stuffed with toys and portable DVD player for the airplane, two gigantic car seats, one stroller, and two children. How we managed to nearly quadruple our luggage while only doubling the number of people is one of life's biggest mysteries, but this is our new reality.

It had been a year since our last airplane ride, and as our kids get older, there are a multitude of variables to prepare for in the unpredictable world of plane travel - namely what the kids will do when the inevitable boredom and restlessness set in. We packed as if planning to open our own accredited day care on the airplane and our carryon bag consisted of gallon Ziploc bags full of play-doh, markers, crayons, coloring books, stickers, plastic farm animals, and of course, the portable DVD player and life-saving Sesame Street DVD "What's the Name of that Song?"

But really, what our husband and I failed to see coming turned out not to be a meltdown/tantrum on the airplane (our kids were angels on both flights), but rather a full-blown meltdown/tantrum at the most inopportune place to throw a fit - at airport security. We did tell our son that he would have to remove his backpack and shoes when going through security, but as a child who wants to dictate every aspect of his life, he decided handing over his backpack and shoes was a non-negotiable. So, after my husband peeled the aforementioned items from his body, our son pulled out all the stops with the crying, screaming, stomping of the feet, and yelling things like "NO, PEOPLE!! DON'T TAKE MY BACKPACK!! IT'S NOT NICE!!" And even when we quickly retrieved his belongings on the other side of the metal detector, he had already passed the point of no return that it took him several "time outs" and a good 20 minutes to regain some semblance of composure. And this was just the beginning, a definite sign of things to come.

As a parent of little ones, my sanity relies on the predictability and stability of routines. And really, I've realized that my children's sanities rely on those same routines. On most days, I take the kids on an outing in the morning, we have lunch, my daughter takes a 2-3 hour nap, my son goes to preschool twice a week and he naps or has quiet time in the afternoon, my husband comes home from work, we eat dinner, the kids take baths, and they go to bed. On vacation, all bets were off with The Routine. We stayed at my father-in-law's house which is a wonderful home away from home, but when you're on vacation, nothing is really home except home. For the most part, the kids slept well when they slept, but there were no naps, bedtime was at least an hour or two later than at home and both kids were waking up at least an hour earlier than they do at home. Suffice it to say, the kids had entered their own boot camp.

And what adds to the struggles of a self-imposed boot camp, but a persistent state of low blood sugar. My son seemed to be constantly distracted playing with his cousins and his sister that he never seemed to eat more than three bites of food at any given meal. It was as if he was unconsciously starving himself and running on fumes. That combined with the lack of sleep and a high level of new stimuli sent him into an unrelenting state of grumpiness. In short, the kid was a beast, or as my sister-in-law so neatly summed it - "he was in rare form."

We made it home in one piece even after my daughter came down with a fever the day we left San Diego, and while my son managed to make it through security with the utmost of composure, the trek to baggage claim was a whole other story. I'm right there with Dorothy when she proclaimed that "there's no place like home." I love visiting my husband's family and we're always sad to say 'good-bye' to my father-in-law and especially my brother-in-law and his wife who, like us, are parents of young children. And in the long-run, it will all be worth the effort as our kids learn about the world beyond their little home in Denver, and as traveling becomes (hopefully) a little easier. But these days, traveling with the kids is still a huge helping of humble pie and frankly, it's starting to taste a little stale.