Vacation Planning For Over Scheduled Families

   We all remember with fond memories of our vacations when we were kids. The annual summer road trip where we would pack up the family station wagon and head for the beach, cottage, some historical touring or an amusement park. Or your first big trip that required flying in an airplane. But for those of us who want to create vacation memories with our families now, the rules are different on how and when we can take that family vacation. Between the ever increasing demands of our careers and the growing amount of time our children's activities consume; it seems like it is hard to plan for a dinner together, much less for a family vacation. I know from personal experience that these tips can help you plan and enjoy that vacation you always wanted to take with your family.


COMMIT TO A REAL VACATION: I'm sorry, but taking the whole family to an out of town tournament for the weekend is not a real family vacation. Ask yourself, does hauling everyone from the hotel to the playing field and back allow everyone to enjoy themselves? And you didn't picture staying in a Holiday Inn Express in Buffalo as your ultimate family vacation.

THE CALENDAR IS YOUR FRIEND:  If your family is like mine, everything revolves around the school schedule. And the sooner you can get your hands on the next year the better. We have a "vacation calendar" one page that is stuck on the refrigerator. Then all the school, work, extra activities are plotted on the calendar. We use past history if we don't have the actual schedule yet and this gives us the framework to start planning from. I've always been a winter weather pessimist and usually give a week cushion after school is out just in case, we have a bad winter. Well it finally happened this year.

QUALITY NOT QUANTITY:  Who says you can't have a real family vacation unless you have a full week off. Some of our favorite trips have been when we used 4 day weekends to go to Walt Disney World, taken a 3-4 day cruise or just a long weekend skiing. But if you have a full week don't commando it, save time to just hang out and relax. Because when it comes down to it, isn't that where the memories will come from.