Untamed in the Mountains with Five Little Kids
It is late on a Friday night. The van is packed, ready for a major adventure. I am alone in our living room, staring out into a dark night. Four of the kids are asleep. Becca is downstairs with baby Ben (8 weeks old). Things are not good. I go down and see, and hear, Ben screaming his mind out. This is not unusual. All summer he's been colicky. The worst we've ever seen with a baby, and that's saying something. Becca is holding him, sitting on the floor, crying. This is too much. We can't go. There's no way. But we can't stay, either. We've been stuck at home all summer. More than that, this proposed trip is not so much a vacation (ha! not at all), but a significant milestone. Ten months earlier I was facing a job loss, thanks to a draconian vaccine-mandate announcement. You know how it goes. At one point things seemed pretty hopeless. At that moment I turned to Becca and said, "I don't know how, but somehow, someway, we are going to make it to T