Vacations with Family Are Priceless

Ever since a certain guest arrived recently, our house has been a mess. Our guest sometimes wakes us up in the middle of the night. She ignores closed doors and invades our privacy.  She fusses loudly when she doesn’t get her way and is a picky eater.

But you know what? We’re OK with it. In fact, we’re more than OK. We’re having the time of our lives. That’s because our “guest” is our two-year-old granddaughter.

We’re in the final days of a two-week summer vacation with family. One of our daughters and granddaughter spent a week at our Florida house, followed by a week at the beach with them plus our other daughter and both of our sons-in-law.

Family vacations are priceless. When the children grow up, marry and move away, getting everyone together is never easy and happens all too rarely. That makes it all the more precious.

Everyone’s family dynamics and priorities are different, but for us, scheduling family time together is a high priority. Kathy and I love to travel, but if forced to choose between a week’s vacation with family and a luxurious river cruise of Europe, we’ll choose family. That’s an easy choice for us.

Making the Most of Family Vacations

We’re still learning how to make the most of family vacations, but here are a few observations that we hope will help improve your own family times together:

•  Give everyone a voice in vacation planning. Even if you are choosing the location, let the whole family help select activities and plan the itinerary. Try creating a shared Dropbox or Google Drive folder to create vacation calendars and share articles and reviews. You can also set up a private shared board on Pinterest. If everyone has a voice, they will feel more ownership in the vacation.
• Schedule fun activities, but don’t overdo it. Sure, you may want to plan ahead for some memory-making special events, some of which may require advance reservations or ticketing. But don’t schedule too tightly. Leave ample downtime. Some of the best times for family bonding and togetherness happen during those unscheduled, lazy days on vacation. This is especially true when babies and young children are involved. One of our best vacations when the children were smaller was a trip to a resort in Tennessee where it rained nearly every day. We didn’t do the outdoor activities we hoped to do, but we had wonderful family fun together with board games, cards, and just hanging out. Thankfully, that was before the days of iPhones and iPads. When it comes to family vacations, downtime is quality time, not wasted time.
• This is admittedly a personal preference, but Kathy and I prefer to vacation in places that naturally lend themselves better to families spending more quality time together. For us, the beach is our happy place, but for other families it may be the mountains, camping, or a national park. It really doesn’t matter. At the other end of the spectrum, theme parks are fun, but if the family is at Disney or Six Flags 12 hours a day, there’s not much time or energy left for family togetherness. Besides, theme parks are one of the most expensive ways to spend a family vacation.
• It’s OK to NOT be together ALL the time. The emphasis of this blog post is about how wonderful it is to spend time together as a family, but a week can be a bit too much togetherness sometimes. Each adult or couple may need some alone time and that’s just fine. Don’t worry if one couple wants to sleep in or do their own thing for a half day or full day. Respect their wishes and welcome them back into the group when they are ready.
• No matter how much family members love one another, too much togetherness can sometimes open old wounds or generate new arguments. Try to keep conversations positive and uplifting, respect individual differences, and celebrate what binds your family together. Vacations may create unique opportunities for the patriarchs and matriarchs in the family (that’s many of us now) to offer some words of wisdom and guidance in a private and loving setting to younger family members, but don’t go into the vacation with agendas or push conversations where they are not welcome.

Time has a way of speeding up when on vacation. A Monday through Friday week at work can seem so long, but the same number of days on a family vacation is over before you know it. That’s the way we’re feeling right now. It is sad to see this special time with family come to a close, knowing it won’t be easy to make it happen again in the near future.

Soon, our house will be neat again, with no toys on the floor. No one will wake us up at night crying. No one will barge into our room unannounced. But we won’t be happy about it. We will miss that sweet little two-year-old dynamo who has caused such chaos, along with our daughters and their husbands.

Family vacations are priceless. That’s why it won’t be long before we start planning ahead for the next one. We can’t wait.