Jeff:
We’ve got a fun topic for today, and that is Jeremy going a little bit behind-the-scenes. I don’t know if you guys follow us on Instagram or if you saw, but the family or sibling, not family actually, the sibling road trip they did, where Jeremy and April sent off Kelsey and the rest of the kids to basically have a road trip all to themselves. What’s cool is not only was the road trip itself awesome, but then, Jeremy, tell them about how they connected the dots of where they stopped, which I think gave it an extra layer of meaning and community and coolness with you guys as friends in the past. But yeah, what’d you learn or what was it and kind of talk about it a little bit more.

Jeremy:
Yeah. So yeah, in the homeroom we got the question, people wanted a little more behind-the-scenes information about what that was all about. They started seeing that on Instagram. So this was all April’s idea by the way. Shout out to April, even though she doesn’t listen to this very often. I talked to her today, and I said, “I’m going to go record some Five Minute Fatherhoods.” I said, “We’ve done over 100 now.” She’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve only listened to two or three.” I’m like, “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Jeff:
We should have done a 100th episode party.

Jeremy:
I know we should have! So anyway, April, whenever you get to this episode, you’re awesome.

Jeff:
In 2024.

Jeremy:
But one of the things throughout the entire time raising our kids, my wife has had a huge vision for sibling relationships, and her parents really did a great job of lifting the value of “This is your brother. This is your sister. You’re going to be friends for life. Love each other.” And really fighting for those relationships.

And you know, our kids are older now, 19 down to 10, we have five kids. And so April cooked up this idea of just sending our kids off in our van to drive to Washington, D.C., and then up the East coast to Northern Maine, and then back down through Niagara Falls. And then this was about a 10 day road trip.

What they were doing was they were hanging out with friends of ours that we’ve been friends with for over 20 years. So we have a bunch of different families that we’re close with and have been close with for a very long time, and so they are amazing families. Each of them really love our family, love our kids. And so, they were able just to experience all these different family cultures, all this amazing hospitality while trying to figure out how do they get along for 10 days without mom and dad in the car? So it was awesome.

And just a few of the logistical details, Kelsey planned all the logistics. She did all the emailing, calling, figuring out where to be at different times and all of that. We decided kind of at the last week to make Jackson sort of the official leader, really for training purposes. We felt like he really needed that ability, with four sisters. He was starting to tell me, “Hey dad, I’m not really looking forward to this trip. I feel like I’m going to be over-mothered.”

And I was like, “Oh, you know what would be probably a win-win is if you stepped up in the leadership.” And so he did an amazing job leading the family, leading his sisters and really figuring out how to do that whole trip. So they came back, the car’s in one piece, all of our kids survived. I was really afraid to talk about this until they got home. I was like, “Is this a good idea? I don’t know if I could recommend it.”

But it was awesome. I think our kids did great. And I just was debriefing the whole experience with Kyra, our 10 year old, our youngest. And I kept on asking her, “What was the worst part? Was it hard?” And she can’t remember anything bad at this point. She’s just like, “It was amazing. I loved it.” So, that’s good news. It was a really good time.

Jeff:
That’s awesome. There’s nothing I would add. Just because it’s fun to hear that, but I will add the one anecdote of, I think we were on the phone in the middle of them going on the road trip, and I think there was more trepidation, I think, that I assumed, that I thought. I think I was like, “How’s it going?” And you’re like, “Well, I think it’s going.”

I think you were waiting until they got home to be like, “Okay, it was a success and it was awesome. It was killer.” But no, I think that’s an amazing, amazing idea. And yeah, I think that’s so huge, and it starts young, like even with what you said with April’s parents. Siblings are for life, even more than friendships. You have to realize that, right? And so, statistically, why would you not invest more into ones that will be hopefully 100 years long, not just seasonal, which usually friendships are, even if they’re for a long period of time. A season for 10 years, a season for 20 years, even. So, I love that. And I think that’s huge.