With summer officially here, another official season has begun: The family road trip.

A road trip can bring to mind memories of joy or pangs of dread, depending upon the number of the times the vehicle is allowed to stop along the way.

This is where disputes can arise.

Some believe the purpose of getting in the vehicle is to get from Point A to Point B, with as few stops as needed along the way. Only gas stops, combined with potty breaks, are allowed.

If the drive is a regularly traveled route, you routinely try to "beat your time." You know how far you can get on a tank of gas and will not stop at any other gas station before that point. And the question, "Has everyone gone?," is asked three times before you pull out of the driveway.

Others take stoppage to an extreme, stopping at every convenience store, nook-and-cranny museum, fruit stand or tourist trap ever conceived.

I like to think I'm somewhere in the middle. While I have made the boys in my family use the road-side restrooms, in other words, the ditch, I also like to stop along the way to stretch my legs and let little legs run off some steam.

It's just trying to find the proper balance, especially if everything falls into place.

On a recent return trip through Missouri, everything fell into place.

We had the time, since the only destination for the day was a motel. We had the right number of people, since the littlest children were following a day later in another vehicle. We found a destination that interested everyone in the vehicle. (The toddler didn't care where we stopped as long as he could run.)

And we kept seeing sign after sign for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, so it became inevitable that we would stop.

I should note that my first impulse was to just keep on cruising down the highway, but for what? To get to the motel room so we could flip through 30 kid-inappropriate channels sooner rather than later?

I reasoned that my family and I would likely never drive on this particular road again, passing by this particular museum again. But even more importantly, we were minus the little boys who wouldn't know "Little House on the Prairie" from "Bear in the Big Blue House."

(The stop turned out to be interesting and informative for myself and my daughter. We learned that Ingalls-Wilder was on the shorter-side, only 4-feet 11 inches and her husband stood all of 5-1. Their shorter stature was reflected in their custom-built house. All the counter-tops and cabinets were a good foot lower than today's standard height.

The only problem throughout the tour was that every time I glanced at a picture of Laura, my mind said, "That's not Melissa Gilbert. And she wasn't that short."

Fortunately, my daughter has never seen an episode of the series and just thought the short cabinets were cute.)

As my family unloads from one road trip and prepares for the next, I'm finalizing a new vehicle rule which will affect our number of stops: No eating allowed in the vehicle unless the child can prove he or she is on the verge of dying from starvation.

Anyone who has traveled with small children knows that more food ends up on the floor and in the carseat than in the child's mouth. By the end of the trip, you are able to reassemble three or four Happy Meals just from the remnants on the floor and between the seats.

Of course, I am allowing for some flexibility in this new rule. Water bottles with squeeze tops will be permitted and Cheerios will serve as the trip snack -- dispersed one at a time from the front-seat passenger, me.

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Road trips mean vacations and time away from home and the computer. Despite five children, my family and I take quite a few vacations while school is out. Even when we're on the road, I try to have my weekly column written and ready to go.

Since I took on this column nearly 10 years ago, I've never missed a week, unless I was on maternity leave. While those leaves do add up to a substantial amount, I finally missed a regular column last week. For the record, I simply couldn't find the time to write the column -- between packing and chasing kids -- not because of the other assumed reason: A maternity leave is not in the near future.

-- Ronda Graff is taking off on a 16-hour road trip with her entire family next week. She's hoping her sanity returns with her.