It’s spring break time! Because my husband is a saint, we took a trip with my parents, sister, and our combined seven kids last year. Below are my tips for actually enjoying each other on a large family vacation.
To say we have a lot of “situations” to pile in would be an understatement. We have one family who eats organic (my sister’s) and one family who tried and lost hope and eats like they live in a vending machine. We have one strong-willed kid, one who is emotional, one who recently had surgery and had a hard time walking, one who is direct, two with soft hearts and one junior higher; one husband who is laid back, another who is not, my mom and then our dad, who randomly showed up on day two of the vacation as a surprise.
I thought I would share our best practices on our trip which could easily have been a disaster but was disastrously wonderful.
- Decide what you are eating ahead of time: when you are hitting the restaurants, how it’s being paid for, and when you are eating at your home base.
- Create a Google Doc to make your grocery list. Then you can all edit the list online to add and subtract things (so when you think you need six eggs and your sister thinks you need 60, you can end up somewhere in the middle). If there is a WalMart anywhere close, use their online ordering so you can see what brands are available. If you use the same log-in you can add to the same cart and grab your food in the drive-up lane. Starting off your vacation together in a grocery store deciding who is buying what is not my kind of fun.
- When someone else cooks, eat it and be grateful (or make yourself a sandwich and bask in the glory of not having to feed all of your kids).
- Map out your days. Stick to the plan. Review it so everyone knows the expectations and things don’t get tricky.
- When someone else makes a reservation for an activity, be grateful they did and glean all the joy that there is to take in.
- Decide it’s ok for people to have their own agenda. If your husbands want to go check out the game at the hotel while you are with the kids at the beach, let them go. They will be happier when they return.
- Chip in 110%. If everyone tries to do more rather than less, the trip will go smoothly. Pick up more than you should, fold their laundry, and pick up their kids’ shoes. It feels like a breath of fresh air to have someone fold your towels and doesn’t feel like as big of a chore to fold theirs.
- This is not the time to have a helpful word with your family member on how they could do their life better. Hug their kids and go buy them an ice cream cone. It’s vacation.
- Don’t read more into what someone is saying. Take their words at face value. They wouldn’t choose to go on vacation with you if they didn’t like you. This isn’t the time to question that.
- Keep your eyes on your people and choose to enjoy the time together.
- Less is more. Five days, two traveling and three on vacation, was perfect. The first day you are excited about the upcoming trip, the second day you are still grateful to be there together, and the final day you are sad it’s your last. It doesn’t give you time to get annoyed with each other but still gives you enough time together to feel like a vacation.
- Pray through it before you go. Pray for dynamics, plead for joy, ask for good memories, and that nothing gets broken that can’t be easily fixed, including one another’s hearts.
These tips worked for us. I hope they will work for you. Tread lightly on the hearts of the people you love the most. Give more grace than they would expect and take some time to look at your nieces and nephews in the eyes. It doesn’t need to be fancy. Have high expectations of love and low expectations of each other. Family vacations can be the best of times or the worst of times. Let’s set ourselves up for success.
HLLF,
