A lovely short trip to Miami with a lot of arguments in the car

Today we had a mini-retreat. My wife and our twins our in Orlando this weekend — there is a big tennis tournament and my daughter is playing.

I’m in the Boca Raton area with our two teenage sons, my mom, and my stepdad. It’s been three months since my Mom left Russia and came to stay with us in the US. She’s barely stepped out — we’ve been too busy and she’s been helping us around the house. So finally today we went on a short half-day trip to Miami.

On our way to Miami, my two older kids argued non-stop. My oldest son thinks New York or San Francisco are the best places in the world. My second son is pretty happy with Miami and argued that Miami is way better than the dirty San Francisco. Last year he spent time in Europe (Belgium and France) so we discussed Europe too. We all agreed that Europe is great and we all agreed there is one place that’s totally unexciting — Australia. We discussed Canada too. Is it too boring or is it a nice place? The debate about Canada was inconclusive.

We walked in Miami’s downtown

And then drove to Ocean Drive where we sat down at a nice pizza place.

On our way back we argued again. Much of our life now revolves around our daughter’s tennis so we argued about what we are doing right or not right as a family and whether it’s worth focusing so much on the tennis journey. There are sacrifices, problems, and glaring gaps in our life journeys because of our choices.

The noise in the car was spectacular and it was all left inconclusive…

It was a good day, overall. We’re noisy. We got characters. We got dreams. We try. We make a lot of mistakes too.

It’s life.

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