Taking vacations with kids is what summer is all about!
Whenever summer comes I think camping and airplanes and laughter and hotel rooms and bugs.
And it’s awesome.
My youngest daughter turned 20 last week, so I have no more teenagers. But we still try to take family vacations once a year, because they meant so much to us as the kids grew up.
Last week I was talking about how sometimes vacations with kids need to be the priority–even beyond couple time. We need that time to bond as a family!
Tomorrow I’m leaving on vacation–though with my mom, rather than with my kids. So I don’t have a lot of time to write a post this week. But I wrote one last year about vacationing with kids that I just love, and I thought I would run it today to encourage all of you to get outside, sit in a hammock with a book, explore some historical areas in your town–or just laugh with your kids. It’s time that you will always, always cherish!
Here’s what I wrote last year: Top 10 reasons family vacations rock.
1. Vacations don’t have to be expensive
We started going camping in a tent trailer with the kids when they were little. Nothing could be cheaper–about $30 a night for the site, and then we make our own food. And we went with friends, so the kids created these vacation traditions. We adults had a great time together, too!
2001–Bon Echo Park, Ontario
Now, we’ve also taken some expensive vacations–we took the kids and my mom on a Baltic cruise this year, for instance. But just because you don’t have a lot of money doesn’t mean that you can’t take a vacation! We even found renting an RV when we went to the Grand Canyon wasn’t that expensive, because we didn’t have to rent a car, and we could prepare all of our own food (since food is often what drives the price of vacations up!).
(And if you want to go the RV route, here are 10 things we learned last year about living in an RV while hubby & I were on the road!)
2. Kids learn about nature
We’ve always loved going places where nature is one of the big attractions–the Grand Canyon, the Bay of Fundy, even just camping. Wherever we go we like to take hikes and explore. My kids love being outdoors, and I think being up close and personal with nature teaches you so much about life and about God–and vacations are one of the best times to experience this.
2009–Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick (in our tent trailer!)
3. Kids learn about history and the rest of the world
When we’re driving, we always take detours whenever there’s something historical. I remember driving through Massachusetts once and coming upon a sign for the Louisa May Alcott home. That was cool, because we had just finished reading Little Women! And I find that kids naturally like museums, if you start them young. They enjoy discovering things. Even if you’re going to have a “stay-cation” near your home, it’s amazing how many things there likely are right around you to discover when you go looking for them.
2004–Scotland
4. You create so many memories
We tend to remember things that are out of the ordinary. That’s why taking a week or two out of our normal busy-ness and doing something completely different can be so precious for the family. And we tend to remember things more when we laugh as well! And laughter is much easier when you’re away from work, away from stress, and even away from the phone!
2010–The Grand Canyon
5. You have a shared experience
Vacations aren’t ONLY about creating memories–they’re about sharing something. When we went on our Baltic cruise we had two days in St. Petersburg, visiting the Hermitage and several palaces. But I think what made the whole thing even more special was the time we spent around the table at dinner debriefing and processing everything we had seen. The stark contrast between the immense wealth in the palaces and the buildings that were crumbling down all around us was jarring. And the feeling in the air was something I couldn’t really explain.
But as we all talked about it together, and shared what we had each thought, it crystallized more.
2016–St. Petersburg
Then there are the shared experiences when you accomplish something–like getting through the random searches in security or dealing with a crazy tour guide. You feel more like you’ve accomplished something together, sort of like you’re a victorious team!
Sometimes the accomplishment is a simple one–“Mommy and Daddy didn’t kill each other trying to put up the dining tent this year!” (seriously, that was a big accomplishment). But it’s good to celebrate these victories.
2001–Bon Echo, Ontario
6. You forge a new unit
One of the reasons we went on the cruise this summer was because we have a new member in our family, and we wanted to cement us as a NEW family unit. We wanted some family memories and experiences that we made together that included Connor, since all of our family shorthand and memories are totally new to him. And since Keith and I have never lived in the same city as Connor, it gave us a chance to get to know him better by spending two weeks straight with him.
2016–St. Petersburg
Whenever there’s a new member of the family, I think you need that time to make new memories, so that they’re not always feeling left out, and so that you have a chance to feel more like a team all together!
7. You get away from screens
At home we’re constantly wired. We watch Netflix, we check social media, we answer emails. On vacation we often deliberately don’t have access to wifi 24/7. When camping there often aren’t signals! And on the cruise internet is super expensive, so we only used it sporadically in cafes. So you get to actually enjoy being together and play games together, rather than just spend time with screens.
(Although, of course, we all had our phones with us this year. Katie still had to instagram!)
2016–Copenhagen
8. Kids spend time with each other, not with friends
When you’re on vacation as a family, you have to spend time together. Kids have to entertain themselves together, and not with friends. And if your kids are in different classes at school and different activities after school and have different groups of friends, vacations can be one of the times that they actually learn how to relate as siblings again!
2010–Grand Canyon
9. You can catch up on hobbies and reading
I get most of my novel reading done on vacations. If I read a novel at home, I can’t stop, and then I don’t get any work done. But when there’s no work to do? It’s bliss! And my kids have always loved knitting and reading on vacations, too.
2008–Charleston Lake Park, Ontario
10. Something always go wrong–and that’s funny!
Finally, some of our best memories and the things that we laugh about the most are when things go wrong while you’re on vacation. Daddy takes a wrong turn and we end up on a detour with the GPS to telling us to drive straight into a lake. We head camping for a week and it rains the majority of the time, so we teach someone how to play chess.
The weather wasn’t the best on our cruise this summer, but that’s okay. We just went with it! And sometimes it’s those less than perfect moments when you have to improvise and just choose to laugh anyway that end up sticking with you.
2016–Helsinki
We all need time to destress, and to laugh, and to just experience things together. And vacations are great times to do that!
You know, I appreciate you all taking the time and comment over the weekend and on last week’s post on what you think of family vacations. I like feeling like this blog is a little bit of a conversation–it’s not just me speaking, it’s you all speaking, too. That’s why I like the reader questions on Mondays so much, because I get to address what you all are asking. And I like it when we can talk about things, too.
So let’s talk about this more: why do you love family vacations? And best of all, any tips on doing it cheaply? Leave those tips and thoughts in the comments and let’s help each other!
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Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 29 years and happily married for 24! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 7 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
We just got back from 3 nights in a tent. It was great – we did a museum and a beach on each day, and even the “I hate camping” kid had a pretty good time.
What I learned from it, though, is that it doesn’t have to be a long time to be enough. Three nights left us refreshed, reconnected, and ready for August (when my kids are staff at a church camp and basically nobody sees each other for the month – strange, but such an important part of their lives and I love hearing the stories later).
We are hoping to do a couple of weekend getaways as a family through the fall and winter, now that we know how amazing just a short time can be.
So fun, Emily! My husband and I are doing weekends camping this month, too. And we’re taking everyone (even youngest daughter’s boyfriend) on a big trip for Labour Day weekend!
I love the idea of taking your kid’s SOs with you on vacation! The more connections between kids and their lives and families, the better, I think. Within reason. I say this as someone who drug her boyfriend home from college every holiday and a lot of weekends for pretty much three years.
We did a lot of camping when our kids were younger, too. One thing we did was look for off-the-beaten path campsites and state parks that were not as popular tourist attractions. Lots of reservation land has uber cheap camping, although amenities (water, legal places to build fires) may be lacking. We camped places where we had to haul in our water more than once. Also camping in the off-season can sometimes help with cost. I remember camping trips where we went to sleep in a summery climate and woke up in a tent covered in snow. Awesome sauce. Camping does make for some of the most colorful memories!
Before kids we always stayed in motel rooms or camped. Now, with young kids, I’m finding it easier to rent a house for a few days, even if it’s only 1-2 hours drive away. The different environment makes it fun, giving new places to explore; it’s usually much cheaper than hiring a family motel room (and you can cook meals if you want to save money!); and you still have space for kids to play so you can lie down with a book in the afternoons!
House sitting! You just need to sign up to a house sitting website and start negotiating with home owners. It does require a bit of flexibility and effort to co-ordinate, but it is sooo worth it. We’ve done a total of 4 house sits as part of our family vacations in the last two years, and I highly recommend it. It enables you to go and live like a local somewhere fabulous and usually completely free! You just have to be willing to look after someone else’s home and pets. It’s a great way to travel with kids – suddenly family holidays have become cheap and cheerful for us.
On one of our family trips, we went to Sea World and were on this ride that had waterfalls. The only one in the boat who actually cared about how she looked was me and guess who went DIRECTLY under the waterfall?? We’ve found that the “things that go wrong” make for the best memories indeed if we can learn to laugh at ourselves!
When i was a kid my parents took the family camping a lot during the summer.
While i understand that there are a lot of good experiences that can come from camping i think that it’s important to understand what’s important/helpful and what’s not.
Spending a couple hours putting up multiple tents (six people) in the dark when we finally got to the campsite was an unpleasant experience for me. Even a small pop-up i think would have made the whole experience more palatable.
And there’s a lot to be said for a kid’s personality. While spending time together as a family is great it is important to let everyone vacation as he/she sees fit. If dad wants to fish and brother wants to read and sister wants to go find some new friends to play with then there really does need to be openness and flexibility to do that.
Thank you for sharing this post! Such a good read. Yes, a family vacation is a must for at least once a year. It is important for the family for the bond to get stronger and it is the only time where in you can rest from the exhausting work and just have a pure time, pure bonding moments, and create a wonderful memories that can be treasured and be reminisced as we grow old. Again, thanks for sharing this wonderful article of yours about the importance of spending vacation with the family.
Hello, Sheila! You have a lovely family! I love the tips you have and I can relate on every single word that you said. It’s true, family vacations need not be expensive. We sometimes conduct outreach programs to far-flung areas in Asia to help poor families. I wish to inculcate in my children’s mind various virtues to make them the kids God wanted them to be. Xoxo.
I personally don’t enjoy family vacation because I don’t get any “down time,” and I come home to deal with a mountain of laundry and kids who don’t want to get back to routine chores.
However, the rest of the family has fun, and the kids get to see new things. We’re blessed to live in Ecuador, South America, where beaches, jungles, mountains and cities are each within a day’s drive.
This year I convinced my husband to sneak out of the cabin after the kids were asleep for sex on the beach. That was so fun & exciting!
Great tips, Thank you for sharing the experience.