Author: Cheryl

If a week is good, ten days are even better!

Ten days:  Just a little longer

• Pros: The luxurious feel of extra days longer than a week, almost as restful as two weeks but much less expensive, ability to add a second destination, at least one day of travel not on a weekend–less crowded
• Cons: More expensive, can be hard to find a place that doesn’t rent by the week

Once we started taking nine or ten day vacations, we haven’t looked back. My slightly work-obsessed husband believes in this so strongly that it is his number one vacation tip!

Bill found that it took no more effort to take off the Thursday/Friday before a week away than just taking the week itself. I typically do laundry anyway on vacation, so that didn’t make a difference, either. And the sheer indulgence of “sneaking away” early? I can’t even tell you how thrilled we were the first time we tried it.

Those extra days can also offer time to deal with the unexpected. We’ve started leaving on Thursdays to go skiing, and we return two Sundays later. Two years ago, we got to the airport to find our perfectly-scheduled non-stop flight cancelled. We were put on a flight with one stop which left six hours later. (There went my grocery shopping time.) We arrived in Salt Lake City to find that our one-hour connection was delayed by another three hours.

We had planned to land in Bozeman around noon, eat lunch at a favorite restaurant, and then get to our house and set up to hit the slopes on Friday morning.

Instead, we got to our house after 2 in the morning (Montana time, 4 a.m. at home!). We could barely get moving the next day and still had to get the kids’ gear. In spite of the delays we still managed to get a full week of skiing in. Had we only spent a week, at least 20% of our ski time would have been gone. There is no amount of airport Uno that can make up for missing the slopes!

I’ll give some other examples of the benefits of an extra couple of days in some future posts, but since we started taking a longer vacation (I think we started back in 2008?), we have only taken one one-week vacation.

We’ve found that the best way to plan trips is to mix it up a little. We love a couple of long weekends during the year, and I try to plan for times when we might be a little tapped out and need a change of scenery. If I pick a time that is too busy, we’ll either have to cancel or we’ll spend the whole weekend exhausted.

And then, because Bill has four weeks of vacation a year, we’ll plan a trip at winter break and another in the summer. One thing that’s been surprising is how hard scheduling the summer trip has become! Sports and camp have come to dominate summer so that I have to be intentional about clawing back some family time. We may even have to go back to “just” a week, as the kids show no signs of giving up football, running, or horses for a season.

What is your favorite length vacation? Have you gotten to take TWO weeks? I think Bill will have to be retired before we try that!

 

A week has always been our default vacation length. Vacation rentals and other places seem to encourage it, and it is really easy.

One week: The typical vacation length

• Pros: Easy to schedule, long enough to get a mental break
• Cons: Not quite long enough?

Resorts often will reinforce the week-long idea, trying to book most of their arrivals and departures on the weekends and discouraging mid-week arrivals. For several years, the Tyler Place was our little bit of heaven on earth. In their eighty years of hosting family camp, they had discovered that week-long stays were exactly what they preferred. As a result, they won’t book anyone for longer than that!

All the guests arrive on Saturday after lunch, and we all depart shortly after breakfast the following Saturday. Having the uniform schedule gives the entire resort and all the guests the same rhythm. We all looked forward to Saturday’s mixer, meeting the other guests, and we all loved Friday night’s dance party, a mix of Kellerman’s (remember the movie Dirty Dancing?) and the very best college band parties.

Any other vacation length would have detracted from that intense camaraderie, and therefore from the whole vacation. We loved our week in the Vermont woods! But some families would tack on a few days in southern Vermont, or New Hampshire, and one family even took a week to drive. We always thought that sounded like fun, but couldn’t see our way to taking more than a week of vacation.

That is, we couldn’t see it until one year, a house that we had rented in the past had an extra weekend available, so we took it, making a week vacation into ten days. And so we discovered…

We’ve never had the flexibility from my husband’s job to take a truly extended vacation. It was my dream to take a year off and travel the world with the kids, but now that high school graduations are on the horizon that is a dream that goes back on the shelf.

You know what? That’s okay. We continue to have deeply satisfying vacations without leaving for a year, or even a month. It’s absolutely possible to have great trips even over long weekends.

So how do we choose a vacation length?

A long weekend

• Pros: Super-easy to schedule, less expensive, ideal for exploring just one or two attractions
• Cons: Destinations are more restricted because of limited transit time, harder to make a mental break in a short time

I’ve found that the best long weekends are centered around an event, like a football game or wedding. The event give you some structure and a dedicated time to do something together, away from technology.

One of our long weekends that comes to mind is a trip we took to Greenville, South Carolina, a couple of years ago. I hadn’t been to Greenville in twenty years, since my grandparents had left for a North Carolina retirement.  Was I in for a surprise!

We had picked Greenville as our landing spot for the Georgia Tech-Clemson football game. We left Atlanta early Friday afternoon, enjoyed a great barbecue dinner and then wandered the very cute, revitalized downtown and park. What a gorgeous spot!

The next morning we discovered a huge street market, crowded with football fans and lots of other families out for a lovely morning. We almost never get out on a Saturday morning as a family, so it was a treat to hang out together and talk to farmers and artists in their booths. And then it was time to head to Death Valley.

Let me just tell you if you’ve never been to see a Clemson football game, you absolutely must go. We had so much fun, and the fans were amazing even though we were dressed in gold and white! It was just a fun day.

We even drove home that evening after the game. That was it, one night, two days, and we still talk about how much fun it was. We ate and laughed our way to Greenville in the car, had some good family time, and then watched Georgia Tech lose in Death Valley. It’s totally do-able!

Of course, you might want to consider more than just a long weekend every once in a while. We’ll talk about longer vacations tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

The typical questions you ask yourself when you start planning your vacation are the logistics:

• Where you stay
• How you travel to your destination
• When and how long you go
• Who you go with
• What your schedule is while you’re there

I think of the logistics as the tent poles that hold up your vacation “tent.” The richness of the vacation is inside the tent. The trick with logistics is to hold them loosely–don’t get too caught up in everything working just like you thought. You might miss some real fun.

When I was younger, my sister and I would wait out interminable airplane delays by playing “Fashion Police” and “Glamour Don’t.” I can remember laughing uncontrollably as we people-watched everywhere we went. There are still things we laugh about today, that happened years ago. If we’d gotten too caught up in the delay, we would have missed the fun right in front of us.

Here’s another, more recent airport delay story: We had a tight connection to make in the tiny Belize City airport. We had gotten our bags and found our gate, and we could even see the tiny airplane on the tarmac waiting for us. We just couldn’t see the pilot, or the gate agent. We eventually found a gate agent who confirmed we were in the right spot, so we pulled out the deck of Uno and played. And played.

Then Jack decided he needed some exercise, so he planked right there on the gate chairs. And the Paige joined in…and Darcy…and, well, you get the idea. While we were goofing off, a lanky pilot carrying a half-eaten hot dog sauntered up to the gate agent who had now made his appearance. They chatted as the pilot continued to eat his lunch. He brushed his hands off and made his way out the door, to “our” plane. Then the gate agent looked right at us and said, “You need to go! Why aren’t you on the plane yet?” What?? We grabbed our scattered bags and books and rushed out to get on the plane he had motioned at. As we got on, the hot-dog-eating pilot greeted us from the left seat. And we were the only ones on the plane!!

We arrived at our hotel several hours later than planned, but they weren’t surprised as they had cold drinks and a late lunch waiting for us. Bill and I could have been angry–and then the kids would have been mad, too–but instead we just enjoyed our card and planking time together and took it as a lesson that time in the tropics is merely a suggestion. It was a good lesson!

This didn’t happen by magic for me. Back when we first started traveling as a family I would worry myself to death about all kinds of details, most especially the hotels. But I noticed that my anxiety made the kids a lot harder to please, too. I had to be very intentional about trying to stay calm, and I still do, but it is absolutely worth the effort. And you can almost always switch rooms, or hotels, or get a cleaning crew in to fix things.

It is worth the effort.

Besides, how often do you get to plank in the Belize City airport?

How have you turned an unexpected delay into a good thing? Or do you have a story of one gone horribly wrong? Please share what you’ve learned!

I think I might have gone down a rabbit hole yesterday on the whole idea of working out various interests. Respecting each individual is important, but we’ve gone there and done that. Let’s move on.

What exactly makes a vacation truly great? We’ve found that it takes three things:

1. We’ve chosen something and somewhere that fills a need for our family’s life right now.
2. We’re taking the right attitude towards logistics: be realistic and well prepared about what we can control. The things we can’t? RELAX.
3. We’re fully present once we’re away from home. That means ditching work, turning off the technology, and being open and willing to experience new things together.

It seems like every trip offers its own challenges on each of these three fronts!

Are you shocked that it doesn’t include amazing sights, or great theater, or a beautiful cathedral, or an encounter with people who touch your heart? Any of these contribute to great trips. But I’ve found that life-changing family travel is at least 75% in your approach to the trip, and less than 25% the actual destination and activities.

For the last couple of days we’ve talked about #1, the “what” you are filling.  Starting tomorrow, the logistics–or how not to make the details of travel take over your vacation.

It’s late, so I think I’ll try a list of the high points, or just things to remember, from the the week just passed:

It was homecoming week at school, which meant the kids dressed up every single day. When you wear uniforms all the time, a week of choosing your clothes was exciting! And exhausting. I’m so glad we are back to uniforms tomorrow.

I painted! These were my two choices on the garage. Each one is a darker color with a lighter one dry-brushed over it, to give it a weathered look. Thank goodness I don’t dry-brush for a living. Also we are going with the lighter one. (The house is white.)

I painted! Actually got out my watercolors and painted. It was unbelievably relaxing. I think I haven’t painted in about four years. It’s one of those things I’m not very good at but really enjoy while I’m doing it. Yay for me!

It rained. And rained. And rained. We are eagerly awaiting the completion of the covered arena. I hope we see the sun this week! Bill was the chaperon for Darcy’s Rock Eagle field trip this week, his first time on an overnight trip. Less rain there than here at home helped them have a great trip.

Matthew got his braces off. I think he looks so handsome…and more grown up. Sigh.

The football team won! And the cross-country team came in first! Matthew played a great game and Jack set yet another personal record.

Both of my high schoolers went to the Homecoming Dance. Don’t they look great? I think so. I especially love the “Blue Steel” look.

Care to share a high point in your week? Please comment!

It’s okay, really, that every single trip and activity isn’t accommodated on a vacation. Decide on your “what,” and then look for other ways to accommodate interests throughout the year. We’ve found that if we think of vacation planning holistically–all the stuff everyone in the family likes to do throughout the year–the big trips feel less make-or-break. We manage expectations and actually have a lot more fun.

Matthew loves to hike. I mean, he LOVES it. There is something in it that speaks to his soul. He’s actually making plans to do an extended portion of the Appalachian Trail next summer. Without us. (Thank God!) His overriding desire for a vacation every year is to get outside and away from everything.

When he was younger we filled in that desire with Boy Scouts, and in the last couple of years with Outward Bound. This past summer he summitted three 14,000-foot peaks over 12 days, the first seven in a nasty combination of hail/sleet/snow/rain. No, thank you. He came home positively exultant.

Frankly, the rest of us would have been miserable if we had even been there for three days. We were really fortunate to give him the time and space to do what his heart’s desire is, and then when we traveled together he didn’t even mention hiking.

The girls and I all ride horses. Specifically, the girls compete in eventing, and they love all things horse. The biggest eventing competition in the country takes place in Lexington, Kentucky, every April, and we decided to drive up to see it. The guys in our family would have rather gouged their eyes out than spend an afternoon watching dressage with a bunch of horse-crazy girls.

So we left them at home and had a great time. It was a memorable long weekend where the girls were able to overdose on all things eventing and not worry that someone else was bored. The guys all stayed home and were relieved!

Don’t forget that you can do things locally, too. A trip to the wildlife park about an hour away is a fun get-away, and a rainy afternoon is a perfect day to get a museum fix. For that matter, clearing the calendar and just spending a day by the pool is a treat in the summer. When we stop and remember all the neat things we do throughout the year, it takes the pressure off of vacation time to be perfect.

The idea here is to think of the “big trip” as just one more piece of your family’s life together. And don’t hesitate to break out into smaller groups to do some fun things. When you reconnect, you have so many stories to share.

Tomorrow, we’re talking details: how long to go? And later this week, the dreaded packing.

**Also on my blog, I write a “week in review” post just so I can keep track of what happens in our house. Feel free to join me there!**

 

It’s great if you’ve figured out your “what,” but it’s likely that everyone else’s “what” is different from yours! How to handle that? I’ll tell you what we do.

Mom and Dad decide.

Really!  When we start thinking about our next vacation, everyone chimes in. “I want to go see [insert historic site here].” “We haven’t been scuba diving in ages.” “Let’s go hiking.” “That last place was TOO HOT. We need air conditioning!” “I want to go zip-lining!”

But we, the parents, know better than anyone else what our family needs. Hopefully that goes without saying. Vacation planning, though, is a great place to practice benign dictatorship.

As I think back on our vacations, this idea is a lot more important now than when the kids were little. Real opinions seem to have kicked in around 8-10 years old with each one. That’s why this idea of balancing competing interests is on my mind so much now! When you have all littles, or only one big, the idea of balance is really more about keeping kids happier in the moment. I’ll write about that in another post.

But here I have people who are on their way to adulthood, with legitimate interests. Trips represent such great opportunities for growth and learning that we really do want to maximize that for each member of the family.

A couple of years ago our “what” was an adventure. We wanted to do something kind of exotic and off-the-beaten-path. Bill and the boys were interested in scuba diving. However, I have no interest in sitting on a beach all week.  I’m too fair for that, and I would feel like a slug after about a day and a half. The idea of breathing underwater also gives me the willies! Also, islands are not my favorite. They make me claustrophobic. That is weird but I am owning it.

Both girls wanted to be around animals, especially horses to do a little riding. Paige wanted time for beach reading, and Darcy wanted a pool, not a beach. Matthew was also interested in hiking. Bill thought we needed some history built in. And weather–no hurricanes, please, and no rain and not humid. We live in Georgia and we are well acquainted with humidity, thank you very much.

The boys got scuba-certified in the fall, so they were absolutely determined to pick a great scuba spot.

That year we decided on a resort in Belize. We managed to accommodate the scuba diving (and the girls and I snorkeled, very cool), hiking, and animals. We added zip-lining as one of our favorite things to do! We didn’t get to ride horses, but Belize is full of amazing wildlife and we saw monkeys, alligators, toucans, and leaf-cutter ants.

I didn’t have to sit on the beach all the time because there were lots of other activities, like kayaking and bird-watching (surprisingly fun even though I’m not 83 years old). The resort had a lovely pool so Darcy, not crazy about sand, swam there. The beach wasn’t great because of the resort’s proximity to a river, but there was sand and surf.

We had a very, very tiny bit of history by visiting Mayan ruins one day. But our trade-off was getting to know and love Belizean culture much more than we expected.

The weather was, well, the tropics in July. Hot, hot, hot, and super humid. We bathed in DEET every day to fend off the bugs. But we picked a resort known for its delicious local cuisine. It isn’t surprising that Paige still talks about the food and our sweet waitress and bartender (smoothies only for her, of course!).

Bill and I also knew we needed some good family time and an extended break from technology. Our resort had no televisions and no wifi in the rooms which gave the kids withdrawal symptoms on the first couple of days. Instead, we played cards and sat and talked and read together. We also played so hard during the day that we were all exhausted by 9 at night. It was such a sweet time!

There are other times you impose your will, and still others where the kids pick most of the trip. A couple of years ago we took a trip to New England, as far north as Ogunquit, Maine, and then down to Cape Cod. That was an “impose our will” vacation, because we felt like a great way to soak up some history. But we did build in beach time and we sought out great restaurants.

My boys made a school trip to Boston last spring, and it was gratifying that they remembered that vacation fondly as they saw familiar sights on the Freedom Trail.

This year we are trying to let the kids, especially Matthew, really pick the trip. Like I said earlier, this may be his last regular summer vacation with us, and we want it to be somewhere really special to him. He is getting a taste of what it’s like to balance all these interests, though, as the other kids lobby him to their favorite idea.

There are other ways to balance out these interests, too, and I’m going to talk about an alternate method tomorrow…See you then!

We used to say that all the time–“Where are we going this year?” But in fact, the real first question is “What?” As in:

• What do we want to do?
• What’s been going on at home?
• What do we need a break from?
• What do we want to EAT? (seriously. We ask that.)

Here’s a great example of how important the “what” is. A couple of years ago, we decided to go to Walt Disney World as a surprise trip at Christmas for the kids. In fact, that WAS their Christmas present that year. Our fall had been pretty quiet and we were up for the craziness that is Disney at Christmas. (By the way, that was a really fun time. More on that another day.)

But the next year was grueling. In the spring we had bought our horse farm. And then the fall just got insane. It was Matthew’s first year of high school, both boys were playing fall sports, and Darcy had just moved to a new campus. But more than anything, Bill’s work was changing and required day after day of stressful negotiations and evenings filled with discussions and planning. We knew that his work stress would ease around Thanksgiving, so we started planning a short (four day) getaway after Christmas.

A Disney vacation that year would have been a nightmare. We needed rest. We needed time together. We needed quiet.

At a friend’s suggestion, we headed to Naples, Florida, and had a completely wonderful few days. We came back feeling rested and more connected. The weather, cold and dreary at home, had been delightful in southwest Florida. It was one of the best uses of our limited vacation time that we could have come up with.

Our “what” that year was rest. The “where” could have been a lot of places, although I have to say we fell in love with Naples and have returned a couple of times since then.

Sometimes we want a physically active vacation. We live in Georgia, where winters are often gray, rainy, and just kind of miserable. It’s not too cold, but it isn’t the kind of weather that you want to go outside in very much. The result is a bunch of kids who are feeling very cooped-up by the end of February. Cooped-up mom and dad, too!

The antidote, at least for us, is a week out west skiing. We embrace the cold and wear ourselves out. The story of how we started skiing is pretty funny but needs to wait for another day. But we discovered that we love the sport, and each one of us can ski (or, ahem, snowboard) well enough to have a great time.

So our “what” in the winter is a ton of physical activity and outdoor time, as well as time for Monopoly and cards before the onslaught of a busy spring. We also know that our “what to eat” will include some great Western wild game or fish! The “where” has been several different places out west.

Right now we are just starting to think about next summer’s vacation. Our “what” is definitely good time together, possibly with some college visits, and with a special nod to Matthew because it might be his last vacation with us for a while. (SOB) But our “what” probably includes some outdoor time as opposed to a city-based trip. There are a lot of fun places to think about!

Do you have a “what” for your next trip? Have you ever gotten it wrong–where you thought you needed relaxation and ended up antsy, or the opposite? Please share!

 

Who doesn’t love a vacation? When I think of our favorite family memories, a ton of them seem to be made away from home. We’ve taken some great, and some less great, trips over the years and we have learned a LOT about how to make a good vacation great.

For this series, I want to share some of our vacation “lessons” that have helped us over the years. The idea here is to spark some thinking for your own awesome trips–and hopefully save you some trouble, too! Along the way I’ll share some of our favorite destinations, but travel is really about so much more than simply the place you go. It’s a way to reconnect and grow family legends, to relax and get out of your day-to-day routine, to learn and grow and eat great food. And it’s FUN–maybe not every single minute (Philadelphia spend-the-night, I’m looking at you!) but the highs make up for it.

Let me introduce you to my family, so you have an idea of the crew I love and manage:

Of course I’ll introduce my husband Bill first. Years ago, I did virtually all of the planning, but Bill has started taking charge of this in many ways because he discovered that he loves it. He aims a little higher than I do, and many of the things we’ve done lately are due to his adventurous spirit. His work is very intense, and so when we vacation now he wants a true break. He has a love for museums and a great knowledge of history, especially Greek and Roman history, and that knowledge has made some of our trips even better. And as you can see, we are terrible about getting pictures together. More on that another day.

What do I like? I love a good restaurant, and my priority is honestly a great bathroom wherever we stay. Much to my sons’ regret, I do not want to spend the night without a shower available. That is not fun to me. But beyond that, I’m pretty much open for anything. I tend to be the artsy one, always happy to linger in a museum or cathedral.

Matthew is 17, and he loves to do anything outdoors. At home he plays football, wrestles, and is on the Quiz Bowl team.  He enjoys hiking and everything history, and he loves museums.Jack is 15. He’s my cross-country runner, pole vaulter, and trombone player. (Actually he can play any instrument he picks up–it’s kind of amazing.) He’s my scuba and beach kid, happiest in or on the waves.

Paige, 14, is also outdoorsy, a big reader and art lover. She’s also utterly devoted to her pony Bailey. Paige is athletic and loves to just go–zip-lining, skiing, boating, she’s good. While she likes museums, she loves a good restaurant.

Darcy is turning 12 during this challenge. She’s my shopping buddy when we are on vacation, but at home she is all about horses (like her mare Lucy) and Harry Potter. She is happy to go anywhere, but of all the kids she is definitely the one who likes her downtime.

I’m sure you see at least some of your family’s interests here. It can be tough balancing all the interests of this crew with the sheer logistics of travel and home schedules.

This month I’ll share some of our methods, along with several destinations we have especially loved. I hope you will join me!

A note about the budgets–we all have them. Our circumstances have varied widely over our family’s life, and we have taken small and big vacations over the years. I’m going to talk about a lot of types of vacations, but I’m not going to talk budgets just because that’s such an individual thing, even year-to-year, and prices have changed so much over the years. I am firmly convinced that many of our lessons apply everywhere!