How to have a fun vacation (with kids)

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Do thoughts of vacation with kids make staying home and pulling garden weeds seem attractive?  Thinking it may be best to postpone vacation until everyone’s 18?

I know.  Tent camping with four kids in the middle of July (with one Yorkie and one million sweat bees) was anything but relaxing back in the day.  Thankfully, the fantastic memories we built far outweighed the negatives.  It was a ground-breaking effort to establish family vacation with kids.

And it stuck.

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Some of the best bonding moments occurred on family vacations.  Wave jumping, putt-putt golf, and family fights in a camper for six.  These are the stuff strong families are made of.

Now that our kids are grown, do you know what they want to do?

Go on vacation with their ole ma and pa.

Those special relationships aren’t built overnight.  They’re built over time.

Time spent with your kids just hanging out.

We just returned from family vacation in the Tennessee Smokey Mountains.  It was one of our best vacations yet!

How to have a fun vacation with kids

1.  Give up your dreams

So you wanted to hit all the antique stores in town to make your house more Magnolia Plantation-ish.  But also on the list was the zoo, theme park, and Grandma’s Pancake Barn.

Learn to make compromises and let go the perfect plans for checking all the boxes.

2.  Make memories with available resources

Can’t afford a hotel?  Take a tent.  Can’t afford to travel?  Camp in the local state park.

Wherever you stay, take advantage of the amenities – even if it’s nature!  Hike, fish, and go sight-seeing.  Instead of eating out, grill in.  Visit the pool, participate in the camp activities, and attend family movie night under the shelter. (If you’ve never attended family movie night in a camp facility, you’re missing out.  Think:  The Parent Trap or  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.)

Tip:  If you’re looking for ipad movies for kids while traveling in the car, I recently did a review on Toy Story here.

3.  Expect the crazy

When the three-year-old walks around the restaurant table secretly spitting on everyone (under the guise of giving kisses), take three deep breathes and chill out.  When he does cartwheels on the nearby fireplace but isn’t bothering anyone and he’s getting the wiggles out, chill out.  Don’t condone misbehavior – you will still have to enforce core rules (after all, you don’t want them going native on you when you get home), but consider – they aren’t in their normal element, and they will still act like kids.

4. Be crazy too

People used to wander by and turn heads at the screams emitting from inside our camper.  Those were usually mine, because I used vacation to let out alllll my crazy.   Let your hair down and enjoy your kids, and let them enjoy you too.

5. Give yourself a recovery day

Ok, someone is going to throw up at some point during vacation, just count on it (possibly from a fish allergy). Someone is going to get hurt (I once broke a finger on a beach chair and passed out cold in the sand).  Sunburns are par for the course.  Relax the schedule (and your expectations) and give everyone a rest day.

Don’t think of it as a loss – think  of it as more bonding time.  This is your fun vacation with kids, remember?  Make it fun in little ways, especially when they unexpected occurs.

We just returned from family vacation in the Tennessee Smokey Mountains. And do you know what some of our best times were?  Enjoying scenic rides, playing cards, and screaming fits of laughter in the camper.

Get brave and take the kids on vacation.  There are memories to be made!  After all – who wants to pull garden weeds when you can witness grandma falling backwards in her beach chair?  ;)

Still wondering how to survive summer with all those kids flocking around you?  Read my guest post over at Keri Lynn Snyder for My best tip for a thriving summer with active children (HINT:  this is how I survived summer with four).

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