Family Vacations. Are they worth the effort?
I do a few bend overs at the waist to get my back in shape again and look out at the horizon. I wonder to myself if this is really worth all the effort of packing all the suitcases (even my husband's) and packing healthy snacks, like Oreos, Twizzlers, six packs of sodas - and we can't forget my favorite Reese's peanut butter cups! Can we say sugar high for everyone in the car? I glance at the horizon and watch the smoldering sand and the dust devils twirling in the breeze. My kids walk beside and ask me what I'm looking at. I answer that I'm looking at the dirt and all the rocks wondering where they came from. They look out over the sand also and we see movement by a small rock. It's a lizard and off goes my three-year-old to investigate this. Big sister is right behind him to help him if he needs any. I stand there watching them chase the poor lizard. Let them run, let them play, we still have five long hours of car time before we reach our designated spot for the night!
We used to make reservations for one-night pit stops, but not any longer. Our trip is divided into the time we have off and the travel time we want to have. On my vacations I like to just take things as they come. Go with the flow of things and not have a set schedule. It really helps to take the stress out of traveling. We don't HAVE to get to point A by eight tonight. As long as we are at point B sometime tomorrow afternoon everything is OK. So in the meantime, if point A is still a ways down the road and we want to stop for the night, then it's OK with me. Then again, if we come to point A and the kids are doing OK and I'm still sane from the travel and the hubster feels he can truck on down the road more, we'll pass point A and be closer to point B when we stop. This takes a lot of the stress of traveling out of the travel part. It also makes traveling with kids seem bearable.
We play games on the road, like the license plate game. How many out of state plates can you find? We love the slug bug game.
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