Months and months and months ago, I decided that Brandon and I needed to take the children to Dubai. Normally, I am not the type of person who likes to travel with children. I've always reasoned that I can stick needles into my eyeballs for free at home, so why pay good money to do it in another location? I like my children just fine, and I even love them, but taking the circus traveling is really just too much for me and the general public.
But sometime in the somewhat distant past, I decided that no, it would be a fun thing to take my children into public for an extended period of time and do things like eat around other people for multiple meals in a row. We've done this a few times, taking the children to water park hotels on each of our home leaves, and it usually was more stressful than relaxing. At least 3.5 drinks on average get spilled per meal time, 2.5 children decide that they would rather hop on and off their chairs than actually eat the food we paid money for, and 2 parents would want to murder at least half of the children. And that was just the meal times.
Let's not talk about the fun that is sleeping in a hotel room with all your children. People pay good money to buy houses large enough to not sleep with their children, so why would we want to pay extra money to sleep somewhere else with them? But no matter the historical precent and cold hard facts of being a parent of multiple young children, I decided that this time it would be a lot more fun, especially with two more children in tow. I'm not quite sure where the idea came from. But I had it.
And like all good ideas that I have, Brandon thought it was a bad idea. Probably because he is the rational one in our relationship. But, like most good ideas I have, I didn't give up on it. I whined wheedled, begged, pleaded, and bothered him enough that he finally gave in. "But don't say I didn't warn you," he warned me, "when everything goes to pieces and you wonder what you were thinking. I told you so. In advance."
And so, I booked the vacation. To make things worse, I booked one of the most expensive, high profile resorts in Dubai, Atlantis the Palm. If you're going to take your children out in public, you might as well take them out in public to places where there are Rolls Royces, Lamborghinis, Porches, and Bentleys parked in the parking lot. Because it will be really cool when your children are misbehaving in front of people who have nannies for their nannies. I almost died when I booked the rooms with a half board package. The only other time in my life I have ever dropped that much cash in one go was when we bought our car. When I told Brandon the total, he shook his head. "Well, you'd better enjoy it. Cause we're definitely not doing it twice."
We decided to surprise the children and so Wednesday morning we woke them up at 2 a.m., told them to get dressed, pulled out the suitcases we had packed in secret, and went to the airport. The children were giddy with excitement because flying is one of the most exciting things in the world. When we landed in Dubai, they thoroughly enjoyed the drive, marveling at the Burj Dubai and how everyone stayed in their lanes while driving.
As we drove up to the hotel, they lost track counting how many floors there were. And when they discovered that not only were there two pools, but also a beach, an aquarium, a water park, and the biggest buffet breakfast I've ever seen, they almost died of sheer happiness. Then they fought over who got to push the elevator buttons and whose turn it was to put the key in the room door. Because, children.
Four days later, everyone came back to Dushanbe full to the brim with good times, good memories, and good food. Because, as it turned out, we had a fantastic time. The hotel was beautiful, the food was delicious, the water park was exciting, the aquarium, was enormous, and the pools were stunning. Also, the beach had water, too. And sand.
The children behaved themselves (mostly), ate their food (buffets are awesome), only spilled twice, played hard all day long, and fell asleep before eight every night. I didn't have to make a single meal, clean up, decide what was for dinner, or even make my bed. Brandon took the children on rides, played with them in the pool, and read to them every night. It really was every bit as great as I had imagined it would be.
The only problem is that now I want to do it again.