I need a vacation, not a trip

In the eight years that I've been a mom, I've taken countless trips with my family.  I've flown and driven, had great times and near-disastrous times.  I've cleaned barf off of a near-naked kid in a cold parking lot and pulled a lite-brite peg out of a nose with tweezers at the side of the highway in the rain.  I've laughed at BBQ sauce smeared on a cute toddler face only to realize with horror that it wasn't BBQ sauce. I've celebrated birthdays on the road and hauled Christmas gifts across state lines.

And yet, except for four glorious days at HersheyPark a couple years ago, all of those trips had one thing in common: they were all visits to grandparents.  It's something I never realized I would be dealing with.  I thought that we'd be taking family vacations to Disney World and exotic beaches and fun historical sites.  Sure, they'd have to be kid-friendly, but we'd have fun as a family, relax, connect, and get away from it all for a while.  It just hasn't happened.  The grandparents are scattered all over the country, in Florida, Kansas, and upstate New York.  By the time we visit them all a couple times a year, my husband is out of vacation time and we're out of travel money.

If I were to say this to my parents, I'm sure they would feel guilty and tell us to go take a vacation next time instead of visiting them.  But that's not what I want, either!  I like taking my kids to visit their grandparents.  I want them to grow up knowing their grandparents and I don't want to stop taking those trips.  But geography has created this weird problem that I don't know how to get around.

But I have some ideas.  I'm going to "pitch" my husband on combining some grandparent trips with vacations this year.  If he's already taking the kids to Florida to see his parents, we can make a side trip to Orlando.  If I'm taking the kids to see my dad in Kansas we can head up to Mount Rushmore or down to Texas.  And if we're visiting my mom in Buffalo, well, I never did learn how to ski, so maybe a family ski trip would be a good plan.  My point is, once we've spent money and time getting to a different part of the country, tacking on another close-by destination will save time and money over two separate trips.  It's not ideal, but it will help our kids to grow up knowing their grandparents while letting us get away as a family.

Of course, if any of them should happen to move to Hawaii, that would really help my plan.

This is an original post to NYC Moms Blog. This is a TravelingMom dedicated post.  Amy also edits the NYC section of Famplosion, blogs about parenting in Brooklyn while keeping herself sane and comfortable at Selfish Mom, and attempts to keep one step ahead of the stalkers and paparazzi at Filming in Brooklyn and Examiner.com.