Last summer we took a family vacation to New York, where most of my family lives. We had moved away from New York five years earlier, and there were quite a few family members we had not seen much, if at all, during that time. Our family had grown by five kids at that point (we left NY with our three little boys) so, there were a lot of people in my family who hadn’t gotten to meet most of my kids.

It was our first big family vacation in a few years, and our first big trip with Marcus, Mercy and Des. Everyone was excited.

We got a decent deal on plane tickets on Jet Blue, which meant our flight was a night flight. It wasn’t my first choice of itineraries and I worried about the kids sleeping on the plane (even though they are all really good travelers).

We made the three-hour drive to the airport, stopped and ate some dinner on the way and got everyone changed into comfortable clothing for the long, night flight.

We attracted a lot of attention as we lined up to board the flight. We got some smiles, some polite questions and some concerning stares.

As we started to file onto the airplane, we started to get more than our fair share of those, “Please oh please don’t let them sit by me” looks. I understand it… I do. I know that Josh and I with our eight kids under the age of 10 were the last thing that these poor passengers wanted to see on their night flight.

As we started to file into our three rows of seats, some people around us were down-right glaring. I wasn’t overly worried because I knew the kids were good travelers, but I was wishing everyone would quit staring at us.

Finally some guy broke the silence but looking up at Josh and asking, “Is this…….a family?”

To which my dear sweet husband replied loud enough for the whole plane to hear, “No sir, it’s the circus.”