THE NEWS CHICK BLOG

Bill Gates family vacations

Apr 30, 2010, 2:45 AM | Updated: Mar 28, 2011, 3:46 pm

Bill and Melinda Gates have done an amazing job keeping the press away from their kids – Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe. Though I’m on the “press” side of things, I’m also a mom and I applaud them for they way they’re protecting their kids.

Family pictures are rare. This old photo of Melinda, Bill and Jennifer when she was a baby is from a Biography Channel profile of Bill Gates.

GatesBiographyChannel

We get a little insight into their 10-year-old son’s interests through a poem he wrote. Rory asked his dad if he’d publish it on his The Gates Notes website. Like a good dad, Bill posted his son’s writing.

Rory’s “light verse” is heavy with thought. Rory is a young intellectual. That’s not surprising, nor is the fact that the Gates family vacations are very different from my family’s time off. Although we have kids about the same age, our family vacations are nothing like theirs.

Bill writes, “Last year, Melinda and I tutored our kids while we all were in Europe on vacation. We visited museums and historical sites and tried to help them appreciate different cultures. I handled the science tutoring, and one of our topics was the physics of light.”

The closest I’ve gotten to science tutoring on vacation was asking my son, after he dropped a cookie on the hotel room floor, “are you sure you wanna eat that? I don’t think the Mall of America or Legoland would qualify as historical sites, but that’s the kind of thing the Thomas family does during the summer.

Ahhh, now I’m already thinking about a summer vacation. You too? If you have any family vacation traditions – physics tutoring is impressive – let me know.

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Bill Gates family vacations