 SPOILER: Charlene and Robbie return from their trip around the  world, their mother has cooked their favorite meal. When the son and  daughter ask how she knew they would return on that particular day,  she replies that she had prepared the same meal every day since they  had left. The father mentions that she had made meatloaf for eighty  days, so that is how long it took them to circumnavigate the globe,  an obvious reference to the famous Jules Verne novel (and later the  movie) "Around the World in Eighty Days."