Another Year of Stay-cationing

As much as I wish I could say that life is finally settling down, it's been another long day at the end of another long week.  At moments like this my mind wanders off to better times, vacation times.

These photos are from our trip last year, which is the first vacation we've ever taken without our kids.  There were some scheduling conflicts and also some interest conflicts, mainly the kids had zero interest in going to the beach, and so it was either go without them or don't go at all.  Well, you can see from the photos which I chose.

After all the years I spent begging my parents to take us to the beach and hearing that we couldn't afford it, I was more than a little disappointed that my children take the privilege of going on a beachy vacation for granted.

Growing up, we never took a single family vacation, so when it wasn't something upon which I placed much importance when I had a family of my own, but over time, most especially as my girls have gotten older and I see how short our time living together is, I really value each and every time we took a trip and had an adventure as a family.

As much as I wished for a family vacation during my childhood, we did spend a lot of time driving all over the country, and even though we never once got out to look around, we did see a lot of great sites out the windows and more importantly, we made a lot of great memories just being together as a family, and that's way better than any beach vacation.

Unfortunately we won't be going to the ocean this year.  With gas prices so high, I think we'll just have to take this year off from vacationing and try again next year, but who knows, maybe the extra time will give me the opportunity to save up for some place really amazing and perhaps, just perhaps, the absence of a vacation two years in a row will make the idea of going back to the beach all the more enticing for the more difficult to persuade members of my family.