The Lindberg Bunch (Vacation Mode): The realities of traveling with my family of nine

Long car rides normally don’t bode well for my family. All nine of us loaded into a Ford Transit, drowning in bags and random pillows strewn around is far from a thrilling time. But it’s not all bad — family singalongs to “Save Your Tears” by The Weeknd or enjoying one of our many Wiggles CDs that we’ve owned since I was a baby are good bonding experiences for us all.

Of course, car rides are just the journey.

I haven’t been on a plane in five years. Trying to get through an airport without losing a bag or a person in the bunch has my parents acting like Kate and Peter McCallister in “Home Alone,” which is a strangely accurate representation of what getting my family through an airport and on a plane is like.

So, on long car rides like our annual trip to the Alabama coast, we stay overnight in a hotel on the first of two travel days, which is a perk when it comes to saving money on an already high bill of vacationing.

No matter what hotel we’re at, we go in through the side door. We avoid other guests and staff members constantly because we’re worried we might get kicked out with we have as many people as we do (plus dealing with comments and stares is something I never want to do). As an added bonus, this tactic comes in handy amidst a pandemic.

There are always at least two siblings that sleep on the floor in hotel rooms, and that’s just how it is since adjoining rooms aren’t always available. On our last trip, four people slept on the floor. We shoved the triplet boys, Beck and Foster, into the tiny “hallway” which connects the door to the room. Ellphie, the other triplet, slept on the floor in the room that my parents and Phoebe slept in. Emerson, like always, slept on the floor next to the pull-out bed his twin Stella and I claimed.

The floor-sleeping continues when we get to the condo we’re staying at. Ellphie and Emerson always sleep on the floor on little blue inflatable mattresses we bring on every trip, and this year I ended up getting kicked to the carpet for the majority of the stay because Stella got a cold, which typically takes about three weeks to make its way through the household. We used to cycle out who sleeps on the floor, but eventually we all unspokenly decided that it was easier to just keep the same layout.

Phoebe sleeps in the master bedroom closet on a foldout crib that’s as old as I am — an accommodation she’ll stay in until I graduate. She thinks it’s her own little bedroom so shh, don’t tell her anything.

Strangely, I feel like our staple trip rituals — like having half of us sleep on the floor or parking in the middle of nowhere to take nature pees instead of dealing with the hassle of gas station bathrooms — have become so normal to me that it’s shaped my personality. Taking any shortcut possible is the name of the game with my parents, and I’ve definitely picked that up from our family experiences. 

The first thing anyone says when we get to a condo is “dis a nice place,” a tradition that started way back when Beck was extremely impressed with a restaurant bathroom in Alabama. The second thing anyone says is, “That’s too loud, we’re going to get kicked out!”

Getting everyone up and ready in the morning is by far the most chaotic part of the day. People wake up at different times, half of the kids are glued to the TV, the other half are yelling at everyone to get going and once everyone is finally ready, we wait by the door for my dad to make a cup of coffee.

Learning to make our day as efficient and easy as possible has been a challenge for a while, but we have it down to a science now (kinda).

Though we go on vacation for the beach, we always end up at the indoor pool. And we absolutely take it over. Pool, hot tub, doesn’t matter. It becomes our outlet for whatever pent up chaos my siblings have in them. After all, the pool is a better spot to wrestle than on the living room floor.

The ability to play games like football and lava monster but in a pool is something we take advantage of. We always have enough people to play whatever classic beach or pool game we want. Well, sometimes not so classic.

For example, Emerson started a training camp of sorts for throwing sand. They made sand castles simply to throw sand at and try to knock down. As old couples walked by, all they would see is four children throwing sand at another pile of sand. 

Though, the most interesting comment I’ve ever gotten from a passerby happened that same day. A lady asked my mother if we did commercials. I’ve learned to have these sort of things go in one ear and out the other, and getting constant compliments like this has trained me to kind of hate getting complimented. 

Another unique situation arose this year on vacation in a pizza parlor called Rotolo’s. The manager knows our family well, we even call her Aunt Susan. There happened to be another big family with the same number of kids as us, and their father asked us if the blue Transit outside was ours. My parents said yes, and he told them they had a 15-seater. 

For about five minutes, the parents were just geeking out over the massive Ford vans from across the two tables. We had never met any other family in the same situation as us, and it was a refreshing experience to be able to share similar ideas with people like us.

Stella once made a comment about how we were like a soup in the hot tub — everyone represented something that would go in the Lindberg soup. I got stuck with carrots, so I guess I have good vision. But, you kind of need the carrots for a good soup — and that goes for all of the ingredients that we represent. Can’t have a good soup, or family, without them.