Turtle Boat Meetings

They say that looking forward to something is as good as doing it. My three daughters and I are planning a 12 day trip around Colorado and Utah this summer, and the planning meetings have so far been as enjoyable for me as I know the trip will be.

Last summer, two of my daughters and I made a 12 day road trip from Cheyenne, Wyoming down through Colorado and New Mexico and ending in El Paso, Texas. The pandemic conditions meant a lot of things were closed, and my anxiety levels were pretty high. I’m glad we did it, though, because my 18 year old daughter had just missed out on all the fun of a senior year of high school. What better things to distract her with than Mountain Ghosts and Desert Aliens, which was the theme of our trip.

This year’s theme is, somewhat inexplicably, Turtle Boat. I think it’s the name of a restaurant we have in the itinerary? Maybe. It’s definitely the name of the highly detailed Google Sheets tool we have been using to plan the trip. There’s a tab for each component of the trip, from the Attractions we want to see and do, the Places we will sleep, the Restaurants where we will eat (one is called Turtle Boat, I believe)and the Homework we have after each meeting. At one point there was a separate sheet just for deciding which Airbnb we would stay in while visiting Denver.

My oldest daughter is the author of the Google sheets document. She’s a planner and an organizer. My middle daughter keeps track of our homework assignments and our meeting dates. She also likes order and harmony. I’m probably the worst at doing my homework on time, and I’m definitely not the most organized person. My youngest has to be cajoled into paying attention in meetings by the middle child, because she’s addicted to Twitter these days, but she definitely does all her homework. Even if she found an Ice Cave for us to get excited about that has no ice in it whatsoever. 😉

We meet on FaceTime in the late afternoon/evenings for meetings that are on my calendar for an hour but generally last for 2-3. As someone who hates meetings and despises Zoom, how can I love Turtle Boat FaceTime so much?

Last summer, Ariel had planned the trip mostly herself. I loved that all I had to do was go along for the ride. As someone with way too much responsibility going on in my professional life, I really love just going with the flow in my personal life, when I can. I would ask Ariel, “what are we doing tomorrow,” and she had all the details at her fingertips. Ah, bliss. I’m really looking forward to this summer’s trip being the same.

We are wrapping up the final details (and it’s only the end of May). We’ve got all of our Airbnb’s lined up, most dinner reservations made and attractions tickets bought, flights booked, and rental car reserved.

I’m gonna have to come up with new reasons to convene Turtle Boat meetings through June and early July because the planning is almost as fun as the trip itself.