Since I’m going to be vacationing over the next few days, I felt it made sense to speak on some of the things I’ve been experiencing leading up to coming on vacation. Aside from the downfall of foolishness with the house (microwave and dryer quit working) and van, packing consumed a lot of my time. I planned to start packing on Thursday for a trip that wasn’t taking place until Monday, but because of life I didn’t get to start until Sunday night. So yeah….here’s some tips I’ll share and hopefully they help you before you take your next trip.
- Make lists early of EVERYTHING you want to bring on the trip. I forgot a few things because I didn’t write them down on any of the lists I made. I wanted paper towels for the van ride, my sugar free creamer (because I am not a fan of half and half that I’m using right now), and even the third child’s toothbrush. Yes, I had a list with getting toothbrushes and toothpaste but I guess I forgot I’m responsible for hers. Staying in a resort means they have tons of offerings, but they come at premium prices. Thankfully we are near a Walmart and most of these can be resolved easily.
- Prep days in advance so you don’t have to prolong your leave time. Our van was having issues last week. We were able to get that resolved and thankfully it was an inexpensive fix, but only a few days out it felt as if the air was not getting as cold as usual. Now listen, living it Texas air should not be considered optional. There was no way we would be willing to driving a few hours without the air being at its best. I made several mentions about this to the hubby but of course it was just one more thing that was going to “get done”. This is an area I’ve discussed in a previous post on having a good man, but I should have just taken the horns on this one and made it happen. If my world wasn’t falling apart and I didn’t need to manage everything else involving the other household members with packing, I’m sure I would have. We left nearly 2 hours later than intended because of this one little thing..Murphy’s Law can and will happen.
- Make sure you know what’s offered versus what you need. We are staying at a resort that will cover everything. This reminds me so much of being on a cruise except instead of a card that connects everything, it’s connected to your wristband. You can charge everything to said wristband. Did we do this?!? Heck no!! There’s a daily hold of $200.00 on your card per day. We gladly decided that we will pay as we play and even though that means we have to stand in line for a little bit, the kids haven’t noticed one bit. We purposefully chose to downgrade the room choice (we prefer suites with separate spaces) so that we can spend that towards fun and food. This trip we purposefully spent less on the front end so that they can have almost unlimited choices (I said almost because we aren’t rich rich yet), but there are definitely trips that we will choose upgraded accommodations instead.
- Plan for “fun” down time in the room. We made the choice of getting vaxed like many others, but our children don’t have that option yet. Yes, we are making certain that anytime we are outside of our room we wear our masks…but that is not the majority of the good folks out here. I’m not sure if everyone really is so comfortable as if the “Vid” just up and disappeared, but we aren’t about that life and have no intentions of doing so. The only time we will not being wearing masks is in the water park because it just doesn’t make sense. With that being said, there will be times we are just in our room. Of course we have plenty of devices and the hotel television, but we brought puzzles and books. This is family time and we want to make certain that our kids know that they matter to us, but we will not be in folks faces all day everyday.
What types of things do you find helpful when prepping for vacation?