Vacations

Have you ever been on a real vacation? Not the kind where you stay in a hotel when you visit your relatives, but one where you take the spouse and kids and don't know a soul besides the people you came with? Being a military family, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the kinds of vacations that have you visiting your relatives. That has always bothered me, because the rest of the family never came to see us they went off on "real vacations" to exotic places (Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii etc) and we were stuck going out to see them (grrr). So I made the big decision a few years back that we would take our children on "real" vacations- to go out and see places and do things that you see on the travel channel. Our first real family vacation was going away for Spring Break while in Texas. It was to a Mustang Island and the town was Port Aransas. We had a wonderful time! But then we got back into the rut of visiting family again. No one would take time off from work or even their exercise schedule to spend the day going some place with us or heck to spend any time with us. Meanwhile if they came out to see us, we were fully expected to bend over backwards to accommodate them. To loan them a car and to take the entire week off to chauffeur them around the area - do you see a problem here?

When we had out house for sale in Virginia (2003) I told the family (selling it by owner) if they help me to keep it clean and tidy and we get full asking price that I'll take them on a fantastic vacation. I sold it for full asking price and immediately booked us on an all inclusive cruise to the Western Bahamas. We had the best time. In 2005 I booked us on a 10 day vacation in Hawaii- we loved it! Last year (2006) we tried that military Space A travel to Europe, we went to some pretty interesting places but the trip it self was an adventure all by on it's own (and not the kind of adventure any of us want to have again). This summer (2007) while Andrew went to a military Leadership school in Louisiana Hannah and I went to California to visit my parents (her grandparents). It was the first time that Hannah and I went on a trip that was just the two of us. I loved spending one on one time Mom and daughter time with her, it was girl fun! Lots of shopping and going out to lunch :-)

So here I am, planning a family vacation and it's not to visit family either. I want to give our children wonderful vacation memories. I've been looking at the "all inclusive" kinds of vacations. Ones where you didn't have to worry about paying extra for every little thing. Ones where all of our meals are included, if we wanted to go to the gym we could and not worry about being fleeced (some places I looked at charge as much as $20 per day per person to use the gym facilities). The big issue is the cost of airfare- living smack dab in the middle of the US makes flying rather pricey, actually it's about half of the cost of the entire vacation package, LOL! I asked the kids where they'd like to go and both said "somewhere warm and tropical - but not Jamaica" (yes it's safe to say that we've been to Jamaica and we didn't like it). So I'm working on it and now will present my vacation plans to my husband and children today. I decided that I could do this on my own and not use a travel agent. I've got 3 different vacation packages for them to choose from and each of them looks good. I'll post on the vacation package that they pick out. I think that all 4 of us really need this vacation, to get away and relax...to let others do the work and for us to just have FUN!