shalom
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2010
So, are we crazy?
To be honest, feedback indicates we’ve always been a little off. Maybe we are crazy to go on a vacation when hubby’s losing a job – my mother certainly thinks so! And of course some part of it is just that we’ve been to Orlando twice now, doing stuff Geek dad and the kids wanted to do, and it’s my turn, doggone it!
But mostly it’s that we’ve long seen this trip as the last, and in some senses, first, big vacation we’re going to be able to take as a family. When the kids were young, we simply didn’t vacation; hubby’s vacation time was used visiting family with a few days here doing projects on the house or helping friends or just taking the kids to a Big City museum on a weekday. There were a lot of reasons for that, but one big one is that we don’t live in the same state as any of our relatives, and we wanted the kids to know their grandparents!
And we don’t regret that. Life is short, family is important. OTOH, we really enjoy vacationing with all five kids, which is a totally different experience than visiting relatives with them, and we really didn’t start doing that until a few years ago.
Also I remember how it worked when I was a kid --- oldest kid hits their late teens, and that’s it for visiting distant relatives as a whole family for some years, let alone vacationing, because it’s just about impossible to coordinate when you’re working around all the projects and events and part time jobs/new career. Ballet Girl has already missed one vacation before because things came up, and this past week she got an opportunity to go somewhere she doesn’t want to pass up, but she’ll only have the “excused from ballet days” she needs if she doesn’t go with us, so she’s going to miss our next vacation, as well! Plus a lot of our vacations we enjoy ourselves muchly, but they’re kind of laid back and similar to stuff we take the occasional day off to do at home and thus blend a bit in the brain, while Ballet Girl sees the other stuff as one time opportunities (which the current one probably is). And I can see her point.
So our thinking is, if we want to have our last, big, blow out vacation where everyone gets to come and create Special Memories of Family Fun, this is it. It’s not going to get any easier, especially if Geek dad is going to be job hunting and going back to “new job” type vacation time right along with the older two!
Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe our older two will still be lounging around the house two, three, five years from now, with plenty of free time to vacation with us. Supposedly 85% of graduating college kids move back in with their parents, and there are tons of people still living “at home with mom” when they’re in their thirties, so who knows?
I’m thinking not, though. Geek dad would get a job delivering pizzas before he’d stay home living with his mom, and I think Mr. Cool is a chip off the old block in that department. Actually, I can see the Hermit still being here in five years if we don’t give her a boot , but Mr. Cool is going to be on his own a.s.a.p., and vacationing with his siblings is not going to be a priority with him again until he has kids of his own and wants the cousins to get to know each other!
So I say, if we can swing it without going into debt or biting into that severance package, we are going to Disney World. I sometimes suspect hubby is only good with that because he knows the last Orlando vacation I didn’t get to WDW because I was indulging his interests, but whatever his motive, he’s good with it.
On the upside, if future WDW vacations don't involve all the kids, we might get down to what we consider a DVC-sized family! Always a silver lining.
To be honest, feedback indicates we’ve always been a little off. Maybe we are crazy to go on a vacation when hubby’s losing a job – my mother certainly thinks so! And of course some part of it is just that we’ve been to Orlando twice now, doing stuff Geek dad and the kids wanted to do, and it’s my turn, doggone it!
But mostly it’s that we’ve long seen this trip as the last, and in some senses, first, big vacation we’re going to be able to take as a family. When the kids were young, we simply didn’t vacation; hubby’s vacation time was used visiting family with a few days here doing projects on the house or helping friends or just taking the kids to a Big City museum on a weekday. There were a lot of reasons for that, but one big one is that we don’t live in the same state as any of our relatives, and we wanted the kids to know their grandparents!
And we don’t regret that. Life is short, family is important. OTOH, we really enjoy vacationing with all five kids, which is a totally different experience than visiting relatives with them, and we really didn’t start doing that until a few years ago.
Also I remember how it worked when I was a kid --- oldest kid hits their late teens, and that’s it for visiting distant relatives as a whole family for some years, let alone vacationing, because it’s just about impossible to coordinate when you’re working around all the projects and events and part time jobs/new career. Ballet Girl has already missed one vacation before because things came up, and this past week she got an opportunity to go somewhere she doesn’t want to pass up, but she’ll only have the “excused from ballet days” she needs if she doesn’t go with us, so she’s going to miss our next vacation, as well! Plus a lot of our vacations we enjoy ourselves muchly, but they’re kind of laid back and similar to stuff we take the occasional day off to do at home and thus blend a bit in the brain, while Ballet Girl sees the other stuff as one time opportunities (which the current one probably is). And I can see her point.
So our thinking is, if we want to have our last, big, blow out vacation where everyone gets to come and create Special Memories of Family Fun, this is it. It’s not going to get any easier, especially if Geek dad is going to be job hunting and going back to “new job” type vacation time right along with the older two!
Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe our older two will still be lounging around the house two, three, five years from now, with plenty of free time to vacation with us. Supposedly 85% of graduating college kids move back in with their parents, and there are tons of people still living “at home with mom” when they’re in their thirties, so who knows?
I’m thinking not, though. Geek dad would get a job delivering pizzas before he’d stay home living with his mom, and I think Mr. Cool is a chip off the old block in that department. Actually, I can see the Hermit still being here in five years if we don’t give her a boot , but Mr. Cool is going to be on his own a.s.a.p., and vacationing with his siblings is not going to be a priority with him again until he has kids of his own and wants the cousins to get to know each other!
So I say, if we can swing it without going into debt or biting into that severance package, we are going to Disney World. I sometimes suspect hubby is only good with that because he knows the last Orlando vacation I didn’t get to WDW because I was indulging his interests, but whatever his motive, he’s good with it.
On the upside, if future WDW vacations don't involve all the kids, we might get down to what we consider a DVC-sized family! Always a silver lining.