Ah...summer is fast approaching [with the unofficial start of summer occurring on Monday with the celebration of Memorial Day], and it's time for me to start thinking about vacations. My family [parents and sister] have taken a vacation the past two years, but I'm not sure if one is in the cards this year with my dad being overseas during our "normal" vacation time. Today's prompt got me thinking about how much vacations have changed since I became a mom.
My family pretty much quit going on vacations when my sister and I got to high school, and we were all super busy with work, school or extracurricular activities. The last vacation I went on before college was in 2004, when we went back to Hawaii to visit family - and while I was in college, we didn't go anywhere further than Texas because of summer school. Husband [then boyfriend] and I, however, took a couple of vacations on our own. One vacation was to visit his family in Maryland, DC and Florida, and the next was to Vegas after I graduated from college. Those were fun but definitely not family oriented...we just did those to have fun adult time.
The first family vacation we went on again after JJ was born was in July 2009, when we took our first of two trips to Orlando. We drove out there with my parents and sister, and JJ was 7 months old [and teething]. He did SO good though...I was pleasantly surprised at how well he handled the car ride. Sure, he got fussy and tired of sitting in a car seat the whole time, but we stopped plenty of times and stayed overnight at the halfway point to Florida so that he wasn't cooped up the entire time. We drove back last summer, and he did even better. He loves being in the car now, so he was easier to entertain and wasn't battling teeth or ear issues. We had the same routine - frequent stops and an overnight stay at the halfway point.
Both times, we stayed at a family-friendly resort and did family-friendly things [such as Universal Studios, DisneyWorld and Sea World]. My sister and I spent a lot of time on rides while my parents just enjoyed being with their grandson and took him around to the little kid exhibits and rides. I will admit that the first time we went to Florida, I was very nervous. Taking a teething seven-month-old on a week-long vacation did not seem like fun to me, and I'm not sure I could've done something like that on my own. I KNOW I couldn't have done something like that on my own. Now that JJ loves car rides and is getting older, I'm looking forward to taking him on more vacations and exposing him to different things in different places. I've obviously become more about him and his fun factor since he came into my life, so planning fun family vacations is where it's at nowadays.
Now, that doesn't mean I don't take adult vacations. I'm taking my sister to Vegas in August for her 24th birthday, and I'm planning a trip to Connecticut/NYC to visit my college roommate [who recently got married]. It's just that when I go somewhere, I want JJ to go - and I want him to have fun, no matter how little he is. It takes longer to pack, and we need more room for his things, but vacations with him are more fun than vacations without him. I'm excited about the possibilities as he gets older and can go to different places - for his 10th birthday, we've already talked about taking him to DisneyWorld.
The best part about family vacations? I get to be a kid again, too, right along with him.
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