Why We Choose to Vacation with Family
Every year, we make it a point to spend at least a few days, if not a week, on vacation with each of my daughters and their families. It comes at some expense, which we embrace. It comes at some inconvenience, which we push aside as insignificant. It means we don’t have as many “couple” vacations as other couples our age might, and that’s exactly how we want it.
Going on vacation with each of my daughters and their families has become precious to my husband and I in more ways than I can count. I love to bless the little ones with new experiences; whether we are going a beach vacation, or to a lake-side retreat. Depending on the family and on the ages of the children, we go to butterfly farms, aquariums, science museums, ropes courses. We go kayaking and hiking. We have ice cream in the afternoon or picnics and pizza on the beach. We pack ham and cheese sandwiches for a moonlight dinner watching waves, or hit a restaurant and enjoy whatever treat their hearts desire.
On these vacations, I’ve taught my grandchildren how to play solitaire, or search for the perfect shell. We’ve taken them to playgrounds and pushed them on swings, and caught them on slides, and accompanied them on their first (and thus scariest) zip line adventure. We’ve stayed with our grandchildren in the evening so our daughters and their husbands get to have a “date night” while we do crazy things with our grandchildren - never revealing the secrets of our antics to their parents.
During these weeks, we build memories. And that’s important to us. We live 90 minutes away from one daughter; 5 hours away from another. Making a time and a space to spend focused time with our daughters and their families has become a highlight of each year; where we go, what we do, how we’ll do it. It means engineering trips around time off for all the adults, or figuring out how to deal with school schedules and vacation schedules. But it doesn’t matter. Each year, we have magical times where we get to hang out for an entire week (or five days, or six days - whatever we can grab!) and focus only on these precious people in our lives. We get to be Memere and Pop Pop to the most precious people in our lives. We consider it an honor to bless them with rest, a nice place to stay, good food, and good memories.
But more than memories, these vacations are about leaving a legacy to our grandchildren. Our daughters already know the value of a family vacation. When they were growing up, family vacations were a priority. The money for a family vacation was necessarily a part of the budget, as important as the mortgage or food. Each year, we’d spend one, and often two weeks away, and almost always at a beach. Cape Cod and Nantucket were two favorite destinations, and our archives of photos and videos from those years is a testament to the joy-filled times we spent as a family.
Time spent vacationing with children and family allows us to forget about the “should do’s, must do’s, and cannot do’s” and give our grandchildren a chance to spend some dedicated time with us. Not beholden to schedules, we are free to be silly, extravagant, playful and simply a bit crazy as we love on them, and shower them with all the affection we can muster. Free of our every-day expectations, we break out into song, do silly dances, eat silly food, read crazy stories, and play and swim and “be”. Just for them.
And in the silliness and good times, we hope to impart some wisdom to our grandchildren; the joy of family, the beauty of our world, the peace of God and how He cares for us, the importance of relationship with loved ones. We long to impart to them the value of family-love, and want them to reap the benefits of that love, not only when they are with us, but long into their lives as adults, parents and grandparents. Teaching them how to love is part of our legacy, and we intend to have fun while we do it!