Our family in the Midwest likes having our kids come visit for a stretch of time in the summer. So we met my mother in-law and her sister in Ohio so the kids could go with her to Kansas for two weeks. After driving for about 12 hours each from opposite directions, we met up with them at a motel off the highway.

That night, we all piled into one motel room (hey, we're cheap, what can we say)and planned to rise early to get back on the road, again in opposite directions.

At 5 a.m., my mother in-law and her sis jumped out of bed and started running circles around us as we stood by bleary-eyed. In what seemed like mere moments later, my husband and I were left standing in the parking lot of the hotel, watching the tail lights of his mother's red sedan fade out of sight.

We stared into the distance. "What just happened?" we both wondered aloud.

"I think those two ladies just took our kids," I said.

So there we stood, kidless on the far western edge of Ohio and two days off ahead of us.

WOOOO HOOOO!

We proceeded to have a great couple of days, meandering our way back to Ballston Spa, stopping to stroll a pier on Presque Isle in Erie, Pa., and have dinner at the home of the original Buffalo wings (the Anchor Bar). We stayed at a great hotel in downtown Buffalo and did the tourist bit at Niagara Falls the next day.

Then it was back to the grind -- except the kids were still gone. It took about a week or so before I really started to miss them. And after two weeks of couple time, we were ready for the little monsters to come home. It is possible for the house to be too quiet.