It’s time for our fourth and final post in our travel series! If you missed the first three, you can find them here:
How We Pack for Trips
7 Tips for Navigating airports + flying with kids
Time Changes, Schedules, and Traveling with Babies
Matt and I love planning family vacations. Last year, when we got away for a night for our anniversary, we mapped out the next three years for our family and fit in trips we’d like to take based on our kids ages and schedules.
We usually try to plan for one week a year that’s a vacation just for our family. We love when we get to have our beach weeks with Matt’s family and my family, but there’s also something really sweet about getting away with just our crew, exploring a new place and making memories together.
Even before we had kids, Matt and I planned for one trip a year for just the two of us, and since I was teacher before becoming a mom, we almost always took this trip over my Spring Break in April. Since having kids, we’ve pretty much stuck to this April getaway tradition.
Make a List:
So first, I would make a list of 5 places you absolutely want to see with kids while they’re young. These years with little ones go by so much faster than we think, and the older they get, the more schedules and social calendars affect the ability to get away. So the more you prioritize family vacations now, the more likely they are to stick as your kids get older.
This list of 5 places can be big trips and short weekend trips. Is there a water park, amusement park, or fun little town within a few hours of your house? You could plan a 2-3 night getaway that’s all about exploring that one place for a few days.
For us, Chattanooga was one of these places. It’s only 1.5 hours from our house, making it completely doable for a weekend getaway. We went once 2 years ago and loved it so much, that we went again for Ryan’s birthday this year and only stayed one night, but we filled both days with tons of fun and Matt didn’t have to miss a day of work.
When you consider big trips, think about the places you’ll be sad you missed if you don’t make them a priority. For many people, this includes Disney. For us, this includes Disney plus 10+ other locations- hah! We would travel full time if we weren’t such home bodies. 😉
If you’re looking for ideas, Google “Best vacations for families with young kids,” and I assure you, the travel bug will bite.
Our list includes Hawaii, Disney, San Antonio, Switzerland, back to Italy with kids, Atlantis in the Bahamas, Yellowstone National Park, Deer Valley in Utah, Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, back to Canada with Kids, Back to San Francisco with kids, and the list goes on.
Things to Consider When Planning Future Trips:
When we’re planning for future trips, we think about our kids’ ages, the type of activities offered, flight lengths, distance from the airport to the hotel, and cost. We don’t usually consider time change because kids’ are generally more resilient than you think with this and we’d hate to miss out on opportunities to travel with them to cool places because we’re afraid of throwing off schedules for a couple of weeks.
If you’re a first time parent with a young baby, choose a place that’s a getaway for you and your spouse and bring the baby along! Our first trip with Ryan was to Turks & Caicos to a resort on the beach. This was a place that we wanted to go to and brought Ryan along for. Now, with 3 kids ages 4, 2.5, and 1, we cater our trips more to them, but still pick places we want to go. 😉
Justifying the Cost
Matt and I lived in a 900sf, one bedroom apartment for the first 3 years of our marriage. During that time, we saved half of our income for a downpayment on a house. We coupon clipped, ate just about every meal at home, and rarely bought a thing for ourselves if it wasn’t our birthdays or Christmas.
But I didn’t want our diligence in saving to take away from the opportunity for us to explore new places and make memories together before kids. So I started tutoring 2 days a week after school, which gave us $80/week, $320/month to put toward our travel fund. The rule was, that money was only allowed to be used on travel. Sometimes, we would draw from it if we found a Travelzoo deal for a one-night stay within driving distance of our house, but mostly we saved every penny of it for that one trip we took every year in April.
My point here is to not let money keep you from memories. Create a travel fund and add a little bit to it each month. I’m telling you, there is something so fun about spending that money guilt-free, knowing that it was set aside for this purpose. We have never ever taken a trip and wished we had spent that money elsewhere.
Handling the Post-Vacation Detox:
I bring this up because it’s a real thing. Especially if there is a lot of travel and time change involved. Even for adults, the Monday after a week-long vacation is rough. So consider this when you get home with your kids, and be prepared to show extra grace while you’re resetting the normal routines and boundaries.
We prepare for this reset by explaining to our kids before we leave that once we’re home, we’ll go back to our normal bedtime routines, rest-time routines, and eating routines. We usually tell them that staying up late and eating treats on vacation is a part of what makes it special, but those things wouldn’t feel special if they happened all the time. So when we get home, we’ll help them 😉 make good food choices and get back into a healthy sleeping routine.
If you’re traveling with a baby, count on a good 72 hours of a hard-core schedule reset. You might regret your trip for a minute in these 3 days, but I promise, if you can push through these days with as much patience as you can muster, you’ll realize 3 “off” days is totally worth your trip and the memories you made.
I would also try to limit big activities as much as possible the first day back. Our first day home is usually a chill day. We typically stay home, either playing outside or playing with the toys they missed inside. We might walk to the park or swim in the pool and then shoot for an earlier bedtime to help them catch up on sleep.
I’ll leave you with Natalie’s recap of our day in Disneyland while we were waiting for our flight home from San Diego back in April of this year. Sweet girl was newly 2, but I assure you she wasn’t too young to make memories there!
