Late last night we pulled into our driveway after a 3,600-mile drive to the West Coast in a mini-van which, remarkably, seemed to grow smaller the longer we drove. (I’m kidding. It was a great trip, and our four kids were real sports about the long drive. Still, the van is smaller.)

We’re a fan of long road trips. We enjoy the stops and scenery along the way almost as much as we enjoy the final destination, and we feel like the time together builds unity (even if it occasionally sacrifices sanity). Even when our kids were really little, we weren’t afraid to pile in the car and drive long distances. It was sometimes challenging in those preschool days, but it also helped them learn good traveling skills from the earliest age.

When Molly wakes up at 5:30 in the morning, she gets to take a nap two hours later. I don't. I get to entertain the boy, and neither of us are entirely sure what we should be doing during this wasted morning nap time. I usually clean up breakfast, attempt to sweep the floors, eat my own breakfast and, let's face it, check my email. Maybe I check my email every three minutes. WHO KNOWS.

I'm usually quick enough to whisk Molly out of her crib before she wakes up the rest of the house, but this morning she was jabbering to herself long before I was even coherent. Jack was awake. I hoped he'd go back to sleep, but I wasn't so lucky. And that's what did it -- a poorly rested Jackson is a curse upon the entire Cheung household.

My kids hate food most of the time. They like cookies and pretzels, Red Dye #4, and sugar in any form but food is not high on their priority list. It seems like the longer it takes me to cook something and the more delicious it is to a person with tastebuds more discerning than a goat’s, the less the kids can tolerate its presence in their mouths.

Rarely am I the type of mom that pulls the “back in the day” speech, but sometimes I just cannot resist. Now that summer is in full swing, the kids are beginning to look for activities to keep them occupied -- events that are planned, cost money, or require me driving them across town. What happened to those lazy days of summer when the neighborhood was crawling with kids from dawn ‘til dusk?

When I was growing up, not only did our parents not spend their time entertaining us, they were rather irritated when we were unable to find ways to entertain ourselves.

How much stuff does a family of six need to pack in order to drive across the country?

A lot of stuff, it turns out. A LOT.

We prepared for this vacation of ours with a little too much confidence, I’m afraid. It’s our first major driving trip without a young preschooler. We don’t need pacifiers, sippy cups, diapers, diaper rash ointment, baby shampoo and playpens. And as much as I loved all the baby sweetness that came along with all that gear, I’ve been a little giddy at the thought of traveling with just my people and their clothes. I might’ve even bragged to a friend with little ones how easy it was going to be to hop in the car and just GO.

I'm turning thirty on Saturday and I'm feeling pretty good about it. None of this, "It's my second 29th birthday!" stuff for me. I spend my days looking after a husband, two children and a blog, and I'm pretty proud of those things. I own this mom body and my mini minivan and the two gray hairs I decided, for the first time, not to pull out this morning. I'm 30 and I've earned it.

It started with a canker sore. We were driving back to Seattle from Salt Lake City where we had been visiting family. I started passing around the peanut butter sandwiches and soon Magoo started bawling, “My tongue! It hurts! This peanut butter hurts my tongue!”

I love that both of my kids can at this stage and actually do on occasion use actual words from the English language to communicate the reasons behind their emotional outbursts.

The other day my daughter, Gabriella, and I were in the store casually minding our own business when we came upon a sight so terrifying it caused me to stop dead in my tracks, causing the person behind me to crash into me. What could cause such a reaction in someone who is (for the most part) able to go with the flow?

Back-to-school supplies, backpacks, and lunchboxes.

Yes, it’s true. I managed to exist for nearly 37 years without ever visiting a major water park. It just somehow kept slipping off my radar screen. My growing-up years were spent in a small rural town where our idea of sophisticated aquatic recreation involved a rope swing and a creek. As an adult, having all these babies in rapid succession led me to deduce the following:

Four young children + only two parents + large crowds + deep water + tall ladders = not a good idea.

It's taken me over ten months, but I've finally admitted to myself that my daughter has an attitude problem. I'm this close to calling it a Temper. A disposition so persnickety and demanding can hardly amount to anything else, yet I've been glossing over the obvious since her birth.

"She just knows what she wants," I'd say to my husband, whisking Molly away from his frustrated attempts to stuff a bottle into her mouth.