The videos, he explained, said things like: “‘They might not remember it, but then you will, and they’ll grow so much, and it will be the most special thing.’ And so we were like, ‘Hey, why not? It’s not that bad.’”
“It was pretty bad,” Tina chimed in with a chuckle. “It was very difficult, but we made it work.”
“I think in the end it was definitely worth it,” she added.
The Nguyen family went to Lisbon’s Parque Tejo for the World Youth Day prayer vigil, which had an estimated attendance of 1.5 million Catholics, before heading back to their vacation rental to sleep. They flew back to Seattle on Aug. 6 after a week in the Portuguese capital.
They said the key to making World Youth Day work with a young child is “taking it really, really easy” and not planning to do everything. Pick, they advised, just one or two things you do not want to miss and let anything else you do be “extra.”
The couple, who celebrated their second wedding anniversary the week of World Youth Day, said they were happy to have made it to the gathering’s main events, including an opening ceremony with Pope Francis.