It was part of a sabbatical. Mostly we were in the Netherlands, but we spent about a month each in Germany, Slovenia, and China, and visited other places. Taking that many kids (youngest was 5) to that many places, and trying to find Airbnbs for a family our size was very challenging. At one point, my 6 year old asked, "are we going to live in EVERYBODY's house?"

Trying to figure out how to feed them/cook in all these places was challenging. But it was also so awesome. Our family has memories and new traditions/aspects of family culture from all these places. It was well worth it.

We figured out that kids are pretty resilient and pretty great at going with the flow if Mom/Dad are good about it. We did have a Kindle Fire loaded with favorite movies for each kid during the traveling, and Tile geotags in their pockets in case we got separated (we never did, but it made us feel less anxious). We liked that the kids developed some great skills for navigating new places. They now feel pretty confident about getting dropped in a new city and figuring out the transit/subway on their own for example. They are used to new foods. They realize people do things differently in different places. All of these things we hope are preparing them for adulthood, missions, college, etc.

I would agree that it isn't a relaxing "vacation" with kids but it can be a fun "trip" with kids and good memories of things experienced together. It leads to things like great family inside jokes or memories.