Our expat family consists of two adults, one six year-old boy, one four year-old girl, and various animals (who don’t travel with us on vacations, but really should qualify for their own frequent flier
miles). The children did not live in the US until this year and the standard question when we said we were going somewhere, was, “How many planes?” We made it a practice to return to the US once a year, usually
either dropping the kids off for a month with grandparents, or picking them up afterward. This allowed us to remain on our doctor’s and dentist’s radar, and allowed us to take a vacation (versus visit) trip at another time of the year. We were moving back to the US and wanted to do one more international trip before we got to this hemisphere.