I don’t know about other families, but April and May get so incredibly busy for us, and it seemed to be doubly so this year. We didn’t plan to go anywhere for the boys’ spring break, but with a birthday party and a family wedding thrown into the usual mix of all the movies and outings I plan for us every couple of weeks — this spring felt like a neverending frenzy of exhausting weekends.
After last year’s successful road trip to Santa Barbara, we got ambitious and booked four days in a cabin in Lake Arrowhead for this year’s spring break. I have thoughts.
Vacations are all about time and/or money, so when you have three young kids all in some form of paid child care, you don’t have either of those things. But I put my foot down this year. We WERE going to take a vacation, even if it was a small one. I briefly considered San Diego, but the parks are crowded and expensive, and the hotels make you pay for parking. So I turned my eye north and we dipped our toes into the family vacation pool by taking a couple of days to hang in Santa Barbara — and it was perfect.
A couple of weeks ago, my family and I went out to Indio for a visit with my sisters. My older sister had been telling me for months she wanted to take the boys to the Palm Springs Air Museum, so we of course made our way there during this visit.
Every year, when my birthday rolls around, I feel its a good time for Trinity and I to take time off work. Pre-kids, it might mean a vacation — like the week we went up the coast to check out Hearst Castle and the Monterey Aquarium — but now that we have kids, it means staying home while the boys are at daycare.
My birthday happened to fall on Memorial Day this year, so we of course stayed home and fired up the barbecue. Later in the day, after the boys had napped and we had our big lunch, we went to Barnes and Noble and bought Mike some new Dr. Seuss books.