Five Places I Wish I'd Taken My Kids

For sanity reasons, sometimes we don't take the kids with us when we travel.  Occasionally I like to do things with my wife without being peppered with questions.  Actually, it's more of just a trade-off of questions, as it changes from "Are we there yet?" to "Can we just stop in this store for a minute?" but any time spent with my wife is enjoyable, so it's a trade I gladly make.  Once in a while though, while we're out living that glamorous child-free lifestyle (Just last night we went to Boston Pizza without the kids.  How much more glamorous do you want?) we do something or end up somewhere that makes us really wish we had our kids with us.  Here's some of the places I wish I had taken my kids:

GMA Concert Series in Central Park New York -
I love the setting for these shows, and while my kids would definitely not like the waking hour (I think we got up at 4am to go to the Brad Paisley show) they would love the amount of space there is.  Good Morning America seems to cap the number of people that they allow in to the show at a pretty low number, so there is plenty of room to stay out of the crowd if you want.  Of course, if you want to be on TV, you've gotta be where the cameras can see you.

The Presidential Suite at Fairmont San Francisco -
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed having the night alone with my wife, but this room was plenty big enough to give the kids a section for themselves and still have lots left over for Lori and I.  Heck if we'd just closed the door to the bedroom we would have still had two giant bathtubs to ourselves. Plus, my kids really appreciate the nicer rooms when we get them - my apologies to their future spouses.

Surfing / Paddle boarding in Hawaii -
This is more of a "thing" I wish I'd done with them than a place, as the kids have been to Hawaii with us a couple of times now.  It just doesn't ever seem to work into our plans, but I think next time out we've got to make it.  I mean come on, it's Hawaii....everybody surfs in Hawaii right?

2004 Memorial Cup Final, Kelowna BC -
In small town Canada, this is as big as sporting events get.  In 2004 our home town Kelowna Rockets hosted and won the Canadian Hockey League championship (If you don't know hockey, think of it as the Final Four for hockey in Canada).  I'll grant you that my kids were pretty young, and might not have gotten the full experience out of it, but I already had the tickets for them, and whether or not they remembered everything, I'm pretty sure they would have liked to say that "they were there".

2010 Olympics, Vancouver, BC -
I kind of fumbled this one from start to finish.  We had tons of chances to go to the main events (figure skating, speed skating, and even some hockey) but I kept hesitating.  Big crowds and my kids aren't the best of combinations, and getting in and out of Vancouver was problematic at best during the Olympics.  Still, now I find myself looking at London and Brazil and considering those Olympics, when 18 months ago they were right in my own backyard.

I'm sure there's more places I would have liked my kids to see, but these are the ones that leap to mind.  Of course it's a fine line between where I want them to be, and where they probably shouldn't be.  Sometimes we can push a little too hard, so tomorrow I'm going to talk about places we most likely shouldn't have taken the kids.