Sunday, August 8, 2010

Get-A-Ways

I have always LOVED traveling. I am not really an overseas kind of girl, or really a flying kind of girl (the whole enclosed space, terrorist, potential of crashing thing kind of gets to me), but I do have a traveling dream. I would like to see all fifty states of our great country before I die. If I never leave this country again, that will be just fine and dandy with me, but I must see all fifty states. It is on my "bucket" list of things to do. Thankfully, Ben shares this dream. For our very first Christmas together he bought me a framed picture of the United States of America and a little box of map pegs to mark each place that we visit. This man clearly knows how to speak my love language, and I have loved pushing those little pins into the map (though I am thinking we need to get different colors to differentiate between places we have visited individually, together as a couple sans kids, and family trips).

Since Ben and I work in a "job" that is essentially 24/7, 365 days a year, our time off together as a family is precious. As it stands now, we get one weekend off a month, and two full weeks of vacation off a year. Pretty fair to me, so I am definitely not complaining, but it leaves us wondering how to spend our time off. When we used to live far away from family, all of our vacations were spent visiting relatives. We always enjoyed this, but it really did not help with fulfilling our dream of visiting all 50 states. Now we thankfully live by most all of our family, so our vacations get to be just that. Vacations!

Here was our dilemma. On one hand we wanted to go someplace entirely new each time we got the chance to travel. Making the most of every opportunity that we have. And this makes the most sense in fulfilling our family dream. On the other hand, you know I am a girl who completely hearts family traditions! I used to be so envious of people who had "summer" houses, (be it beach houses, lake houses, or a family cabin in the woods). I just think that keeping with tradition makes for great family/childhood memories. So what were we to do?

We have decided to split our time. Half of our time off will be spent exploring someplace new. This is a great, big, beautiful country and we want to see it! And I hope exploring together as a family will become a tradition and childhood memory, in and of itself. With the other half of our time off we hope to find "our" spot. Someplace that we can get away to, over and over again. We want it to be someplace close enough that we can reach easily, perhaps even on one of our weekends off. We have yet to find this special place, but we will keep searching until we find it! That is half of the fun. This coming week we are going to try a new place with the rest of our vacation days for this year (our days start over every September). Maybe it will be "our" spot? Who knows, but I sure am excited to find out. I will be sure and let you know if we fall in love :).

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