If you are ever in an airport with your children and want to have some fun, find a gate where a very long flight is departing and pretend like your family is going to be getting on the plane. It's even better if you can find an overnight flight that is heading over an ocean.

Thanks to frequent flier tickets, our family recently found ourselves in the Dallas airport getting ready to board a flight to Maui. As we walked up to the gate, I could see everyone looking at us and silently hoping (or not so silently as I saw several people turn to their traveling companion and whisper) that they would not be sitting next to us. Eight hours later when we landed in Maui, I commented to my husband that the flight had been a lot less stressful than most of my trips to Target with the kids.

After a surviving many airplane flights with my kids (several of them by myself with two children under three) I have become an expert at packing snacks, games and movies. Most importantly, I’ve learned how to stay calm when things aren’t going perfectly by telling myself that the plane will land at some point and that I will probably never see any of the people in the cabin again.

Many of my friends told me that they would have passed on the vacation to Hawaii or gone with just their husband instead of enduring a long plane ride with two kids in tow. The joy of traveling with my kids outweighs the extra stress involved. If I hadn’t carted the kids across the Pacific Ocean this fall, I would have missed snorkeling with sea turtles alongside my daughter and walking across a lava-filled beach with my son. To me, seeing the looks on their faces as they experience something new makes it worth the trip.

Jennifer appears Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom.