May 19, 2024 • 51 mins
In this insightful episode of the Finding Time podcast, we delve into our family vacation experiences. We talk about everything from the anticipation, planning, and execution of our trips to how our travel dynamics changed after having children. Reflecting on our past adventures and pondering future ventures, we compare and contrast our childhood vacation experiences with our own expeditions today. This is a must-listen for families seeking to make their trips smoother and more enjoyable.
We address the challenge of long car journeys with kids and the strategies we've used to tackle them. Revisiting our past vacation experiences and future plans, we discuss the joys of spontaneous travel, and weigh up the pros and cons of having a permanent vacation home. Tune in to hear our candid thoughts on balancing family bonding with the desire for exploration.
Join us as we take you on a trip down memory lane, revisiting diverse trips, including our luxurious honeymoon and more humble, family-friendly excursions. We relive everything from our stay in an all-inclusive beach resort, unpredictable adventures at Deep Creek Lake, a few visits to Washington DC and Hershey, and our short-lived ownership of a vacation home in the Poconos. This episode is all about celebrating the unexpected, spontaneous moments that often become the most treasured memories.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:06):
Wow. Hello. We are on episode 14 of the Finding Time podcast.
Our recent venture has us talking about vacations.
Yeah, this seemed like it was a fitting enough topic coming back from a quick little impromptu trip.
So why not throw the topic in there? This was one that was kind of in the holster
(00:28):
that we had talked to some people about.
They wanted to hear a little bit just about out traveling as a family,
some vacation ideas and whatever.
So we had this one sort of on the back burner, but we are fresh off of a pretty
successful trip, I would say, and might as well talk about it.
I would say it was successful.
I actually think it went better than you think, but maybe like I had lower expectations
(00:54):
and you had higher expectations.
Yeah, I guess that's true. I expect some of the bad behaviors to drift away
a little bit while we're on vacation,
either from being distracted or, you know, preoccupied or I don't know,
grateful for having fun and all that kind of stuff.
We are not doing a very good job instilling in our older boys that they should
(01:17):
appreciate how awesome their lives are.
That is true. Like we talk about this often, but the things our boys have done already is just crazy.
Like in particular, we always have had passes now to Dorney Park,
which is this huge amusement park, wild, wild water park right by us.
(01:40):
And we had recently said that, you know, me and Dan went a couple times and
we were definitely older and it was like this huge treat.
Whereas our kids now have had season
passes since what like 2020 2021 we
got them right after covid now they're kind
(02:02):
of back to normal but like their deals were insane versus what they were so
yeah we gobbled them up thinking this is great you'll have an awesome summer
childhood things that we never got as kids but nope now that is just the norm
like oh we can go to dorney for a day or we We can pop over here for a day.
It is like experiences that kids get.
And we've been fortunate to be able to gift that to our children.
(02:26):
We just hope they are grateful for it because it really is just like another day for them.
Whereas again, when we were younger, that would be like this big event.
So I think Dan just had these high expectations because a vacation is a big event.
And we'll talk about like the prices, not necessarily like specifically to our
(02:46):
trip, But that was a whole nother thing with six of us.
But just the average amounts of vacations and what people are spending these
days are crazy, but you really can't help it. There's no way around it.
No, no, you can't. You know, I think there's plenty of deals out there to be had.
I think there's way more variety now than there is when we were growing up.
(03:10):
It seems like, you know, people are a lot more informed and there's a lot more
options, a lot of places that you might not have heard of.
Or if you didn't go or a family member or neighbor didn't go,
you kind of just didn't know about advertising is so much easier with social media.
You know, I actually just came across this person today. Her name is Scranton Mom.
(03:31):
I think she's out of Scranton, Pennsylvania, obviously, for those of you out of the area.
And she does all of these day trips. So from that area, you can get to Philadelphia,
New York City, even Baltimore, Washington pretty easily within a day, Allentown.
And she does all these trips. And I was scrolling through her thing.
She wound up at my mom's museum and did a video and has some really nice stuff
(03:52):
on there if you're in the Northeast area, but 60% of the places she was going
to, I had never heard of. And we've lived here our whole lives.
We've had, you know, kids for quite a while now. And she was going to places
that are within an hour, within 90 minutes of us that I was like,
oh, that's cool. We could definitely go there.
So it's way easier now to find new options.
(04:12):
And we were always, I think, more prone to that the last three or four years
of just doing like a staycation and finding some cool things to do versus big vacations. Yeah.
Oh boy, I see more trips on the horizon. These are day trips though, let's be fair.
That is our wheelhouse, a solid
day trip where they can sleep on the way there, sleep on the way home.
(04:33):
That is like music to my ears. For sure. I mean, mentioning that, it is crazy.
And again, every parent has struggles, but we have two one-year-olds and it
just changes like so much.
I don't know if any twin moms listen to this podcast, but the reality is I need
(04:55):
someone to talk to about it because it's so different.
I only talked to Dan about it, obviously, but the logistics of having two children
the same age we've been dealing with now since we found out we were expecting
twins has just been crazy.
And one example of that is there are six of us, so we couldn't get like a normal room.
(05:17):
We had to upgrade to a suite because maximum occupancy
is four and they're six but then
it's like we need two packet plays and we
need like double strollers it's just
so different because they are the same age and
very young yes that's the hard part they're
so young they're not quite old enough to
(05:40):
be like even free range and free roaming within
limitations they really got to to be watched they will destroy anything
at least or the the twin boy will destroy
anything he can get his hands on he'll climb on
things the boys are no angels by any means and i
think we're a little spoiled too but we are just like a bigger
family and it's funny one of the websites i was looking at and it had a like
(06:05):
two queen beds and like a not a full-on like kitchen or anything like that but
it was a decent sized room and you go to book it and i'm sure you could have
just lied or something but we're honest people here so i had two adults and four children selected.
And it literally wouldn't even let me like see the prices. It said,
you know, you're booking a reservation with six people and the max occupancy
(06:26):
is four. So please choose another room.
And again, I know you can lie and no one would question us or anything,
but we are spoiled. We like our space.
We like the babies to kind of be separate if they wake up or something we want.
And we hope the boys sleep good.
Everyone slept pretty good, I will say, during the trip, which is like a huge part of it.
If you get good overnight sleeps and naps and everything.
(06:47):
Things so our preference and i think we'll
maybe talk about this a little bit with some of the trips that we've done is
to get those extra rooms now we don't splurge on vacations by any means we'll
talk about some vacation budgets and stuff later on but that is where we like
to get what we want you know we want two bedrooms one for the boys one for us
(07:08):
a central area that we can have.
Some toys and some space for the babies and all that we really like a kitchen and then we bring food.
Like we brought our dinner and a lunch. So we save money doing that.
And that's how we justify, you know, splurging on ourselves.
I would go a little bit more and really get some cool sweets,
(07:28):
but you keep me in check for that.
Because we're not like in the room. I will say we ate out this time a little
more than we thought we would, but we really shouldn't eat out that much with
four kids under six years old.
No, the biggest problem is table size. They just, Just, you know,
and in like hotels and some restaurants, they try to cram you in.
(07:48):
And with us and four kids and the two twins, especially in high chairs,
like they want to grab at everything.
They kept grabbing like the forks and spoons off of our middle kids. And the knives.
And the knives, waving knives around. So they need, you know,
you need to be able to spread them out so they can't grab food and knock over
cups and all that kind of stuff. So we need a big table.
(08:12):
We need two high chairs, four chairs. we are an
annoying family like I think when we walk in places
for sure no one's like happy to
see us right they're like no I think people like to
watch but they're glad they're not us like this one lady she like wanted to
make a comment she had like truly her hand over her eyes I don't know why it
(08:35):
was like insinuating she's not watching us but then she took her hand down and
then she said to me, oh, they're all so cute.
So I really don't know how to take that aside from your hands are full and I'm glad it's not me.
Yeah. She's saying this looks like walking chaos, but boy, at least they're
cute, you know, and you get you more than me, but you know, everyone says your
(08:57):
hands are full, but you know, I get it. I don't need to hear that anymore.
The annoying one is the people that are like, oh, better you than me. Like.
Cool. Okay. That doesn't really help me at all. I'm sorry.
You hate families. People have funny comments when they see us.
I do a whole episode on like the comments we get.
I know when we were getting breakfast specifically on this vacation,
(09:21):
this guy wanted to help me like pour the cereal for our second boy.
And he's like, I get it. I have to this age.
And I was holding our second boy and one of
the twins and then my oldest
came running at me and I think you caught up
with the other twin and I saw like
(09:41):
his eyes just dropped to the seat I think and then obviously he didn't need
to help me so he moved on but I could imagine the things he was thinking yes
okay so back to the main topic of vacation why don't we do a brief history on
vacations past you know from from you
(10:01):
growing up for me growing up because I do think in the
topic of vacations you kind of have two realms
I think largely people older than us
for sure our parents generation and then people a little bit older than us I
think it was very traditional we go here and you were kind of like that like
this is where we go we go to Hilton Head we go to Ocean City we go to Florida
(10:22):
this is where we go this is our vacation and then you definitely have more of
a newer approach I think from you you know,
cool, hip, adventurous traveler parents.
But then also, you know, people who just like to get out more,
they just like to go somewhere different all of the time, you know,
experience different things.
So why don't we run through our backgrounds and see where our traditions kind
(10:43):
of overlap and then how we blend that into our family today.
And we should make a disclaimer. I don't feel like we travel a lot by any means.
So I know that there's parents who are probably pros at this,
even maybe with four kids who can do like airplanes planes and all the things
and we can do it, but I just don't know if we want too many times.
(11:07):
Oh yeah. That's a good point. If you're here for advice, you're in the wrong
spot. This is experience.
Learn, learn from our mistakes and our limited knowledge.
I do admire parents who travel more. I do always say, I wish we traveled more
and sometimes I hate traveling.
So those two things are, you know, combative against each other.
Our boys have never flown.
I haven't flown in a couple of years. You haven't flown in a decade or something.
(11:30):
Truly, since our honeymoon.
And I only flew twice in our life, which actually brings us to our vacation background.
Yeah. So my family owned a home in Hilton Head Island since the time I was born.
And so we literally lived there. Like, were we snowbirds? No, because of school.
(11:52):
But we lived there from June until August from the time I was.
Able, actually I was born in November and we went that summer.
So yes, we just stayed in Hilton Head Island every year, every summer from the
time I was a baby until maybe like 10 or 11,
(12:14):
because I know my parents would say I would then get into sports.
But even then from the time I was 10 and 11 and didn't always want to leave
my friends, we still went for like a good month.
So this was for 24 years of my life.
It also kind of shows, I was always saying like, oh, we go on vacation every
(12:35):
year, but we were so spoiled, which I quickly learned then planning vacations with Dan,
even before kids and now with kids, because we just had a place to go.
And then from there, like, yes, we would spend the entire summer there,
but it was four hours to Disney.
So we took trips to Disney and then stayed there a week, or it was four hours to Universal Studios.
(13:01):
We did Discovery Cove. We did Savannah, Georgia.
And yes, we would pay then, not me, but my family,
we would pay them to stay there a couple of days, but it was just so much more
convenient even because I will now look at my parents and be like,
how did they drive me and my sister, which it was a smaller family,
(13:24):
but we drove 13 hours every summer there and back.
And we just did three and a half with our kids. We didn't allow screen time.
So they did have that in common with us.
But I don't think we'll be going on any drives, maybe over four or five hours,
because that is not fun. Three and a half was tough.
(13:46):
And again, if you travel with kids and you want to make fun of us or anything,
go for it. I literally could not care less.
I get it. But three and a half was tough for us.
I think we could probably do four and a half, five, if we, you know,
give them a movie or something like that, but we don't have them in our car.
We didn't want to start that giving them tablets in the car.
The babies are kind of the other issue.
(14:07):
Like, you know, when they slept a little bit, but it's not that long,
we didn't leave at like great times, you know, one time each way was like a
good nap time, but you know, it's not like we were leaving late at night or anything like that.
That might help. You could get a little bit further if you time it up with to sleep better.
But it still is like, you know, that was far enough for us.
(14:29):
And again, I can't imagine how you did that as a kid, because again,
there was there was no screens.
You know, I do remember I think somebody in your family had one of those old
school, like seven inch screen portable DVD players.
There were no chargers in the car. There is no I don't know,
podcast music was whatever you had CDs like we've talked about this, though.
(14:50):
I think kids then even myself self-included we
were just better at being bored yes and
we were better at listening so we just literally sat
there and looked out the window i know we did like a lot of like car
games too like category things and like
songs and things like that but again that would occupy our kids for maybe 10
(15:13):
50 20 minutes yeah that is a whole different animal that you just kind of that's
what i still wonder and and we talk about this a lot like kids were just different
as much as that makes it sound like old people,
you just sat in the car and you were bored and you asked, are we there yet?
But like, that was it. There were no options.
It's not like you had things that they don't today, or you had the same options.
(15:35):
It was a completely different world and you were just fine.
So whatever our parents got at least one thing, right. When it came to car time.
And I do commend like your family and your, you and your sister for dealing
with that drive. because I've done it, you know, probably what,
maybe like five times and it sucks.
It's awful. We always did it in a day. You know, one time me and your grandma
(15:59):
were vibing over an audio book.
That was at least fun. Like you can finish a whole freaking audio book on the
drive down, which you hated, but I don't know. I could deal with it.
It was a good suspenseful novel, but that drive is not fun.
Yeah. I don't know how we did it. Even now I would have to stop more because I don't.
I don't know. I don't like sitting in the car. No wonder I don't really like
(16:22):
car drives anymore because I was scarred for all those years.
Yeah. I was going to say you compared to what you were then you can't handle
like a 25 minute drive now. So that is a big difference.
So we were very much different. I don't remember all of our trips,
obviously, but we spaced out our trips more.
You know, I think we went away every year, but I kind of like can't remember
(16:44):
it as much as I got older and everything.
I know for a while we went to Seaside Heights in New Jersey and there's a hotel.
Sometimes I see it and I remember the name and now I can't remember it.
We went there for a few years and all I remember was it was on the beach. It was a hotel.
We literally slept in chairs.
(17:06):
This is, I think, before suites were as big. There was obviously seven of us in the family.
So they, I don't know, I got to ask my parents what they did.
I think they got maybe connected rooms.
We'd have like four beds, but I remember me and my brother would like sleep
on a couch or like the little chairs we would push together.
And I would just sleep in a hotel room chair on a pillow.
(17:29):
Which again is so different because our boys, literally they shared a bed, but it was a king bed.
Like it's just a different world. even for vacation.
I could never in a million years imagine going to a three-year-old pushing two
chairs together with a pillow and saying, here you go, bud, you're sleeping here.
(17:51):
So I don't know. Maybe that's why I have a bad back. But that was a fun hotel
that I remember the arcade, the pool, all that stuff. And that was fun.
And then I think me and my siblings are spaced out a lot more.
So I think the family trips got harder.
They were kind of later in high school and couldn't travel as much or college
and then kind of stopped for them. Me and my brother were spaced out a little bit.
(18:12):
And then we started doing kind of different things. We did we did a random,
you know, kind of family resort in the Poconos before the Poconos were as big as they are.
So, you know, pool trails, game room, movie theater, like that kind of stuff.
So that was like fun for whatever we were then, 8, 10, 12 years old.
Me and my brother around that time, then we always had a lot of camps like we'd
(18:34):
have basketball camps in the summer and stuff, and we'd be gone for a week at
a lot of those. So I think maybe that just kind of chewed up some of our vacations at the time.
And then we did, you know, we did the Jersey Shore a couple more times.
We did the Delaware beaches a couple of times. We did Maryland once or twice.
We did Myrtle Beach, I want to say once, you know, and so we kind of just went all over.
(18:58):
I don't even know wherever just my parents felt like something interesting seemed
like a good idea. And that was it.
We never went west. That was kind of always my biggest regret is that we never
went anywhere cool to the West.
And it is kind of hard. We live in, you know, central eastern Pennsylvania.
So you're far from anything interesting to the West, maybe Tennessee,
(19:21):
I don't know, Kentucky, something like that.
But you're far from anything that interesting going West. But I do regret that.
I think like for the most part, your family vacations look a lot like what family
vacations look like now.
It's like, especially if you're going to spend the money, you want to try different spots.
(19:42):
I know like, again, in a way we were spoiled. We had a house,
so it was really our second home there.
But on the other end of that, we didn't get to like try different places.
Like the first time I was at the Jersey Shore, I feel like was when I was a
teenager and we did a day trip with my friends.
So it is different, but it's definitely like there's some positives and negatives to each.
(20:05):
I just know with our family, we were so small and your family was so big.
So I feel like we'll probably be more like your side of the family because there
is four kids and I don't think we're buying a vacation house, but maybe we can, right?
Sure. Sure. We'll put it in the budget. If you listen to the episode about finances,
(20:28):
we will put that in the budget and figure it out.
I would, I am torn on the vacation house.
Maybe we'll do a whole separate episode on that because the part that pertains
to this, not about money or anything like that is we don't travel.
But I think in my head, I romanticize travel.
Like I want to get out and see things. We just went to Washington.
I like that because we saw something new every couple hours,
(20:52):
the couple of days we were there, we were out and seeing things.
And I think when I when I think of travel I do like that I actually don't like
the idea of having a home going there being at the pool being at the beach we
talked about this a little bit but I'm just like not a beach person really however
I love to just lay down and relax so.
(21:12):
It is a dueling mindset that I have on that because I'd love to have the home
and with the kids, especially to just have that home base to go to.
But then I would miss out on the opportunity to get out and about.
And then, you know, like you guys did, like if we had a vacation home further
away and we could get out and about to different places, that would be cool.
(21:34):
But if we have a vacation home, I'd love to just be able to get there in two
hours, three hours, you know, not, not 10 hours or seven hours,
you know, but that's something we'd have to, we'd have to think about.
I'm still very, though, I don't care about the vacation house.
And again, this might be my background, but I always say to you,
I want to have a place that we just go to, like in our, in our thing, it was Hilton Head.
(22:00):
It doesn't need to be that we own the house, but I love that every summer we
went to Hilton Head for months and months.
We knew the area, we knew how to get
there we knew our favorite restaurants we had clothes there
I mean it really was our second home so
I like that idea for just raising children because I feel like then that's how
(22:21):
you really keep the tradition of vacation alive which obviously we did and you
kind of just stated your family didn't so I would like to at least have that
place but again this is so
funny how it really comes from like our childhood experiences,
like what we're thinking.
Yeah, for sure. You know, it builds, you know, in some way or other,
(22:44):
it informs what you grow up to be as a family.
Either you try to replicate what you had or you try to give yourself the things you didn't have.
But one way or the other, I mean, that's going to influence how you are as a
parent. And we're smart enough to know that.
So you said something there about, you know, know, the money and the strategies of traveling.
I did want to quickly recap some of our favorite trips from the past couple
(23:07):
of years, because we like you said, we don't travel a lot.
We had a couple of fun trips when we do travel.
It is almost always very impromptu because I actually he just said he loves to travel.
I actually do not like to travel, which is odd. But again, I just went to my
second home. We didn't really travel.
(23:29):
So once me and Dan got together and he would like plan these vacations,
I would get so anxious and beside myself. I think because I couldn't like.
To pinpoint where we were going and where we were staying and what we were doing.
Whereas I never really had that feeling before. I always knew.
Yeah. And to give everyone a full peek behind the curtain of our,
(23:50):
you know, nine years of marriage,
plus however many years we were together doing trips in the summer as a teacher,
you were off, so you didn't really care, but I was kind of just starting out
at work and I had to put my vacation time in, you know, not for a day or two,
but for like a week, probably three, three, four months ahead of time.
And so I had to pick dates in the summer and we didn't know what we were doing,
(24:12):
but like, that was my vacation week.
The people with more seniority got first dibs and it wasn't a big deal. We didn't have kids.
You were off. So it was just, this was our week. And we would have a couple of ideas.
And I think there's at least one or two times where we wanted to do something and I didn't book it.
I think one time where I wound up canceling it a week or so ahead of time.
Cause you just were like, no, we're not, I don't want to do this. I don't want to go here.
(24:34):
It's getting pricey, whatever. You had a very skewed idea of what a vacation
was from your background, which isn't your fault.
You know, you're a kid and it didn't matter to you. But when I started saying
like, okay, we got to get a hotel and then we got to do this and we're going
to have to get dinner every night and we're going to have to drive to this place,
you know, whatever you just were like, all right, now this is getting out of hand.
(24:57):
I'm I'm not doing it. I was like, I'm not a tourist.
I know where I live or where I vacation.
But again, background. Yes. Yeah. So I don't hold that against you.
But since then, we've come around a little bit and we'll have a couple of things
in mind, just kind of floating around or see an idea.
And then if you get in a mood and like, OK, let's let's go away this Friday
(25:19):
or something, I will have all of these trips. I think I've had maybe I don't
think we've had a full week's notice to like really plan that.
Maybe I don't think that's true.
I think it's true. Even the D.C. trip was at least a week.
I think it was, but we were changing like where we were going to go.
Yes. Yeah. No, we had about a week of, Hey, let's go away this Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
(25:42):
And I had something that lined up well with work and we kind of like made it,
we made, we worked it together so I could blend work into the trip and that's fine.
But I think it was Tuesday that we finally booked where we were going.
We had like three different options in mind.
So all of these trips, we always had a couple of different options in mind.
I think, you know, we did Pittsburgh a while back, which was to see friends.
(26:05):
And I had, again, a work trip that kind of lined up with that.
So that was a good one to piggyback off of. What else do we have?
One of our very planned vacations.
But in a way, it was spontaneous because I can't believe I did this.
But I planned our entire honeymoon.
You just told me where you want to go. But we obviously planned it when we were
wedding planning. So it was like months in advance.
(26:28):
And that wasn't really spontaneous. spontaneous and
we loved that trip we did but obviously we
would we were young we had no kids it was our
honeymoon it was awesome i will say that was an awesome trip
we we we balled out on that one we got a suite we had the butler suite it was
all inclusive you did a great job planning that trip they gave us a cell phone
(26:49):
to contact the butler remember that which we would not use for the first two
or three days we felt so bad yeah and then we were then we didn't abuse it but But once or twice a day,
we were getting hooked up with stuff. That was that was a really cool resort.
But no, that was really fun. And what I was going to say about that is now,
I guess people who get married are smarter because they don't like leave the next day.
(27:14):
I just, I sometimes still can't believe I just got married and then left on a plane the next day.
But anyway, so Hilton Head and our honeymoon were the only places we really
went as a couple, aside from like a lot of day trips to the beach.
I think we did New York City. we would obviously do
like connecticut new hampshire because you were around
school there when you went to college but then
(27:37):
i think the farthest we went once we had kids and
we had two boy we had both two kids by then and then we went to deep creek lake
in the spring because we were expecting like hiking kind of weather and it was
raining the whole time yeah it was a really beautiful lake it's in western maryland
our middle son of the time was probably eight or nine months old.
(28:00):
Our oldest one was two or three. So that was, you know, good timing.
It was our first kind of furthest family trip. It was just over four hours,
which was a little tough.
Again, I remember being around Harrisburg and we were taking a stop because
something happened or whatever.
And you just wanted to cancel. You wanted to cancel the trip.
I called to see if we could cancel.
(28:21):
And they were both crying. And I kept having to breastfeed and we kept having to to stop.
And I was like, oh no, because I'm just thinking we also have to get home even if we do this trip.
Yeah. So that was rough, but they basically were like, nope,
you kind of have to at least pay for one night and we didn't want to waste it.
So we wound up going and it was nice. It was a nice town home kind of condo community.
(28:44):
The lake is beautiful down there. We thought we would go and have some fun outdoor
stuff because it was the off season. So it wasn't busy.
We But the lake was beautiful. The hiking we thought would be fun.
It did kind of wind up being fun. We didn't really know it, but it's in,
I think, Western Maryland, South Southwestern Maryland.
(29:07):
And it's a little more mountainy there. So it's a lake on a mountain. Beautiful.
And we didn't realize, but it was freaking snowing in like April or something.
And it totally caught us off guard. And we're like, all right,
we're four hours from home.
We're, you know, 20 minutes from the condo.
Most of the things around the lake are closed because it's the off season.
(29:30):
We're just doing this hike. Bundle up the kids. We're going to hike in the snow.
You could still see the trail and stuff. And it was one of those weird times.
It wasn't like freezing cold. It actually was kind of nice in the woods.
Once we started doing it, it wound up being a really fun hike.
And I remember our toddler, you know, our oldest at the time,
like running on the trails and there's these waterfalls.
It was a beautiful, beautiful hike. It would have been nice if it was 10 degrees
(29:53):
warmer, but whatever. That wound up really cool.
And the other memorable thing about that trip was the zoo.
For sure, the zoo, I was going to say. And maybe it was because of where we
were, but you just explained like the first day it was snowing,
but then the next day it was like 70 degrees.
I do think it was like a 45-minute drive because then we were in West Virginia.
(30:16):
I will like side note and give Dan a lot of credit because he mostly plans things
out really good, Even in the short time I give him when we're spontaneous to go on these trips.
But he like finds a lot of fun things that we can do, even just in our recent trip to D.C.
So for Deep Creek Lake, we were at Deep Creek.
(30:39):
But during a nap time, we took the drive to West Virginia to this zoo,
which, again, I think was 45 minutes away.
But we will never find a better zoo. At least maybe we will.
But this was the best zoo ever.
Like, I think me and Dan might have enjoyed it more than the kids because we
never saw something so free, should I say?
(31:02):
Yeah, I think that's the way to put it. I had to look up the name again.
It was called Hovatter's.
Wild rescue or wildlife rescue or something like that
and i think as well i'll say if you're like a big animal
enthusiast or something it can be
a little off-putting i don't want to say it was run down but it didn't look
like it had a ton of public funding money like a bigger zoo loved their animals
(31:27):
so i was good with that it was just that it was so much more personal than any
zoo we've ever found around here.
And we've been at our local one. We've been at the Philly Zoo.
We've been at the D.C. Zoo. We've been at the Hershey Zoo.
So, I mean, we're no stranger to zoos. This one was just so hands on,
(31:47):
which like almost to a scary point for our little kids.
Now, like six years old, our oldest would love it. But he was only two or three then.
Yeah. You can get super close to the animals, including wolves and bears and
tigers and stuff like that. You feed the bears through a tube, I believe.
Yep. And they sit at the bottom of the tube and they shake the tube.
They shake your hand. Like that's how just so close it is.
(32:11):
Right. But I think some people look at that as kind of sad. It's just a bear
in a small area, smacking a tube for food. That's true. I don't like that.
I know. I get it. But it's it is really cool. And I don't know.
I mean, who where else would that bear be? I look at it that way.
They had a giraffe to care about their animals.
They did because we were seeing so many like zookeepers and caretakers.
And what about the feeding that I didn't like, though?
(32:35):
Oh, oh, oh, OK. So so, yeah. So first, the giraffe is behind,
you know, and there's giraffes at the Lehigh Valley Zoo near us.
And is there one at the Philly Zoo? And they're, you know, 15, 20 feet away.
They have tall fences, but you have a good view of them.
This one was behind, I'm not joking, a four foot fence.
That's it. It was just a four foot fence. So this freaking can think and just
(32:58):
get right up on you are our younger one.
Oh yeah. We loved that. That's, I held our baby at the time and he's holding
up a carrot and this giraffe just eats it out of his hand. That part is really cool.
It's gray tongue, which surprised me. Yeah.
They're giraffe tongues can
be up to 18 inches long if anyone doesn't know. So that thing is large.
(33:18):
So that was really cool. Some of the animal feedings were cool.
Some are, you know, iffy the one that you don't feed, but we just literally
happened to be walking by at the tiger feeding time.
They had three tigers, I believe one like albino tiger or something crazy.
This guy was huge and it was a big, big animal.
(33:41):
The zookeeper pulls up on a cart with huge boxes in the back of just raw chicken
and he's thrown it in and you hear the tigers like fighting over it.
You hear the bones crunching and then the big dude rolls up and the other little
tiger is kind of like scary away and then he gets the eat and they all come
back in but of course like our oldest one wanted to watch like you know you're gonna watch.
(34:06):
Three or four tigers eat viciously in person from, I don't know, six feet away.
You didn't like it at all, but it was intense. So that was, that was just kind of dumb luck.
We just happened. They don't advertise it or anything. We just happened to be
walking by when he was doing that. So that zoo was very up close and personal.
And again, I look at trips that way where at the, in all honesty,
(34:28):
deep Creek, the trip kind of stunk, like everything was closed.
The weather was so hit or miss we couldn't go out
on the lake because the kids are young the place to get down to
the beach was closed because it was off season a lot of
the restaurants and attractions were either closed or limited hours but it was
beautiful we will remember the drive but we'll kind of forget about how bad
(34:48):
it was the hike was screwed up but actually wound up being really fun the place
we stayed was really cool the place we stayed at was cool the zoo was fun it
was there's almost no one there at this.
Condo resort community so the people at
the front desk knew us they knew the boys they were okay with them
like running or you know our older one running around a little bit so it
was fun in that way which is what i like on vacation
(35:10):
you get good memories from it for sure and i actually like looking back on that
trip even though you named like bad things i overall like anytime someone says
deep creek or we bring it up i'm like oh that was a great vacation i still tell
people like i don't know if they're thinking of it or like my sister i know
i've told because they They wanted to go the one year.
Like I would absolutely recommend it to people. It was really fun.
(35:32):
So that's my point is you make it work instead of, I don't know,
all your vacations blurring together.
Maybe we'll go again, but we'll go for like on season and see.
And maybe we won't even like it as much then. Why don't we buy a vacation house there?
How about that? Oh, now we're buying a vacation house, according to him.
So we don't need to like go into
(35:52):
detail like we just did for all the other trip. But our oldest is six.
So over the past six years, we've done DC probably three or four times. We do have...
Friends there. So we visit them. And I don't know, every time we went to DC,
I mean, four times actually sounds like a lot in six years, but we've done something
(36:13):
different. There's so much to do there.
We've done Hershey, I think twice. Yeah, I think so.
And again, my sister-in-law lives within like a half hour there.
So we kind of always try to see someone.
We never stay with them, but if we can see people, then we'll go see people
even for like an hour or two, just because it's nice to do a visit and then
(36:36):
add in all the vacation perks of the trip.
So Deep Creek, Hershey, Washington, D.C. a bunch of times.
We did a lot of like staycations and we do a lot of like small beach trips,
which we were just rethinking our beach vacation this summer because,
again, twin moms, it's just hard to keep track of two,
(36:59):
but then also restrain two, but you don't want to restrain them the whole time.
So it's hard to chase too.
Anyway, that's for a whole nother episode.
And then, oh, and then the Poconos. We've done the Poconos a bunch.
We do have family there, but we also briefly had a home there.
So that was kind of a vacation house, but it was kind of just,
(37:20):
I don't know, Dan, like I said, Dan goes through these phases.
So yes, we had a second home in the Poconos for maybe two years and it was nice,
But then we just outgrew it because we were having twins.
Yeah, we had. Yeah, which is there's no point in keeping it.
And we couldn't rent it. They were changing their restrictions up in that community.
(37:40):
So, yeah, we got rid of it. That was fun while it lasted.
The beach is definitely tricky, but not in the cards this year.
I will say if we could plug. I didn't say it wasn't in the cards.
I still want to consider it. It's not in the cards.
If we could plug any beach for people with families, we always recommend Seven
Presidents Park in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey.
It is, I think, like the furthest north beach. It is north, north Jersey,
(38:04):
you know, as far as beaches go.
So it's not what you think of as the Jersey Shore, but there's no boardwalk.
There's nothing like that.
We've seen it get kind of crowded, but never like crazy. But they have a really
cool concession pavilion.
That's it. Like nothing big to draw people to. a really beautiful walk out to the beach.
The sand is nice, but they have this massive, massive park that basically has
(38:26):
three gigantic playgrounds within it.
Like one for older kids, one for, I would say like two to four year olds.
And then one that even, you know, seven to 10 year olds would be fine with. So it is a great part.
And that is like a hundred feet off the beach. So we like to do that because
we can go have a fun beach day, start getting and everyone changed.
(38:46):
Cleaned up and then let them do 30 minutes at the park or something or take
a break there before they drive home.
And again, these beach trips would always be like day trips.
And that's why having that is a nice way to split it up. It is.
And then what was that quaint one?
Oh, it was called Ocean Grove. Yeah, we stayed out of bed and breakfast, which was hilarious.
If you are 22, 23 and you know, whatever. Just married. Just married.
(39:11):
We stayed at this quaint little bed and breakfast. it was
all 70 plus year olds and they loved us
they thought it was the cutest thing ocean grove is a
cute little town however we didn't
know this quite at the time and it wasn't a big deal for us then but it's a
dry town so there's no alcohol you can't bring alcohol on the beach even though
i think i still did you can't really eat on the beach and we snuck out it is
(39:34):
a but then when you want to do that you can go right over to point pleasant
enjoy the nightlife and then sneak back
in our bed and breakfast and greet the old people in the morning.
I thought that was so cute.
It was cute. It felt like sneaking back in after a high school party.
So that was, that was a fun little trip down memory lane. I mean.
The other place, you know, we didn't mention that we went to,
(39:56):
and this was also because you had work around there, but we did go to Pittsburgh
and we really liked that too.
There were a couple of different things to do. There was that fun children's museum.
Yeah, that was a fun trip. That was, that was work-based and,
and you know, One of our closest friends is out there, so we could see her at the time.
So that had a good reason to go. There's a lot of cool stuff to do out there.
(40:18):
We were plenty entertained, I would say, for two days, I think.
I was just telling my oldest son, and again, he was maybe three for that trip.
That Dan had to work a full day.
And so I actually walked them around that city. And if you know me,
I have no idea how to navigate.
Anywhere, maybe not even where I live. And I actually walked them around that city.
(40:41):
And then they lost their crock. One of them, I think it was my youngest,
the crock must have gotten lost.
So then I had to retract my whole steps throughout the city.
And again, if you were in Pittsburgh, it's a clean city. It had waterfalls.
They had a Dunkin'. We sat and got donuts. It was really cute.
And we did find the crock. I was very happy.
(41:03):
So he thought that was the most funny thing now out me telling him that at six.
But us in D.C., I don't think I would walk there by myself.
No, no, definitely not. So you got lucky on that trip.
I had some information here that I kind of looked up because this was very kind
of personal, our experience, whatever.
And it was mainly about money. And my biggest thing with vacations and money
(41:27):
and all that is that I don't really care. You know, like we have our idea of
what a vacation should cost.
Other people have their idea. And that is one of those topics where,
you know, I'm not anyone's financial advisor.
We did a whole episode on money and there is something to be said about having
(41:48):
your main expenses worked out. your mortgage, your rent, your loans,
your car payment, your groceries, like your essentials to live, keep those in line.
And if your money is in line and you should have disposable income to have fun
and whatever, if you want to spend 10 grand on a vacation, go for it.
If you want to spend, you know, 1000 on a vacation, go for it.
So that would be a little hard. Fine. 1500.
(42:10):
But my point is, even when I was looking, this was my, was kind of my point
is there was like a charter website that at first I saw the thing was like 1800,
like, all right, 1800 for a family of four, but no, that was 1800 for a solo
traveler for a week for a family of four. It was like 7,800.
Now this is like a chart. This is like a travel agency. So they want you to
(42:31):
buy bigger trips. I assume.
Then I find an article from New York times and I was like, all right,
let's see what some reader submissions have said. And you know,
they're freaking useless.
They were the first one and they all had a title, like a quick reader submission.
It was like, Oh, surfing a hundred foot waves in Portugal, a 25 person ski outing
in Arizona, which I didn't even know there was skiing in Arizona,
(42:51):
introducing my toddler to Italy because they took suggestions from everywhere.
This guy was from the UK. So, you know, I just, it was useless trying to find
anything. I don't care about the averages.
You do you. And there is a huge difference from where we are going to the beach
is absolutely nothing. We've almost mostly done day trips.
If you live in Indiana, going to the beach is a much bigger deal,
(43:14):
you know, like, so wherever to stay there, we've noticed the prices to stay are very high.
The prices are high. But my point is, like, I remember in Ohio and a couple,
I think Nebraska, there's a couple insane water park.
I used to love those shows on the travel channel, like the water park.
I don't know what, but there's some show on the travel channel about best water
(43:35):
parks or whatever out in the middle of the country there. They have water park
resorts because you can't get to a beach.
And you have to keep someone entertained for two or three days at a water park.
It has to be huge. So I respect that they do that. My point is that I could
care less about budgets. Spend what you want on a vacation.
Make it fun. If you want to go crazy, go crazy. If you want to work on a budget,
(43:55):
work on a budget. There are so many.
Or if you want to change that up year to year, that's fine too.
Because we've talked to people who maybe have went to Disney.
Most people, again, we know don't have four kids.
But some people have spent upwards of $10,000 and they like stop there.
But others have maybe spent almost $20,000. And I'm sure you could spend even a lot more than that.
(44:20):
Yeah. My view when it comes to big vacations. And again, if you want to do a
big one every five years or something, you know, or every year,
it's up to you is my personal view is spend what you're going to be happy with and not regret.
And my spend is way more than your spend. Like, I don't want to be bothered
with anything that is that's a good transition to the trips that we wish we
(44:42):
would have taken before kids or hope to take in the future.
And I will do my I would say definitely the future.
Not I will. Yes. But I would say my anti Disney thing is I want our youngest
kid to be at least five before we go.
And that's just kind of logistical that I want that to be the case.
Don't know if we'll get it, but that's at least my stance on Disney.
(45:05):
And my thing is, when he says we can go to Disney, I'll go to Disney.
Does he want to go to Disney this summer?
There we go. I didn't go until I was, I think, like 14 or so.
So to kind of wrap this up, a couple of the trips that we didn't get done before
kids that I still bring up that I regret and wish we would have done.
And then a couple of trips we'll kind of have on the back burner for the future.
We'll kind of close out looking at that. The big one, I think,
(45:27):
was the one that we canceled.
I had time off for and then it just started getting out of hand.
And it was elaborate, but we were, you know, in our early 20s. We had no kids.
I wanted to fly to New Orleans.
And again, I love to, you know, enjoy the music. I like bourbon.
I feel like me in New Orleans in my 20s was a good fit.
(45:49):
And then I think where it got a little out of hand for you is I wanted to rent
a car and drive to Cape Canaveral, which isn't too far from there.
But I wanted to kind of knock them out altogether because we knew we want to do both trips.
And, you know, they're close enough and we had no kids.
What's a few hours in a car, a couple of flights, see some fun stuff.
(46:12):
But you are not having it. So I do wish we would have done that trip.
The trip that I wish we would have done and I would have brought it up to you a lot was Italy.
Yeah, we screwed that one up. So my brother was stationed over there for a number
of years and we couldn't quite get it done early on right away.
And then, well, I think I was pregnant when he got stationed there and then COVID happened.
(46:37):
Right. But I mean, bringing a baby to Italy wouldn't have been that bad.
Yeah. Looking back, we completely regret that we were so afraid to bring a baby.
And again, he had a son over there that that kid has traveled more than we will
ever travel in our entire lives.
That kid's a world traveler. Both of them are, but we, we, we easily could have
(46:57):
done it with one kid. And we just, unfortunately.
Did not do it. So that's a shame. This is more looking to the future.
This was never really in the cards, but I'd like to go to like the Redwood Forest.
I feel like the kids would like that just to see gigantic trees.
I looked at it once and I don't know much about Northern California geography,
but it's like really hard to get to.
I think it's like a cross country plane trip and then like a,
(47:20):
I don't know, four hour drive or something. So that's a little iffy.
Yikes. Yeah. You definitely never told me that one. The one that you did tell
me that comes to mine is your bourbon trip in Kentucky, which I don't even know
if I'll do that with you. That might be a solo one.
Yeah. When are you going to let me go solo to Kentucky again?
My other like when both boys are 21, that would be a fun little father son or all three boys are 21.
(47:46):
I'm not waiting for all three. Maybe when the first one is 21, we're going.
And then the other one you bring up and I might be okay with this,
but I think I would like to do it with the kids.
Like if you would have a bunch of days, a lot of days, a month off in a summer
is a long road trip, which is funny. I'm agreeing to that, but you bring it up.
So I'm like, why not do it with the kids? It might be more fun.
(48:09):
And kids give you excuse to like see more things in a way. Oh yeah.
I think that's something we could plan.
I think this gets back to like, that was a thing, you know, not everyone did
it, but we knew people who took road trips out to South Dakota and to Colorado
and to Nebraska and Indiana,
like Texas, you know, like we knew people that did that stuff and they took
(48:32):
long arching road trips to just see national monuments and forests and museums
and maybe family members.
Like, I think that is against getting back to romanticizing road trips.
I just can't imagine doing that with our little feral children.
Unfortunately, I blame them and I blame you when they're older.
And maybe we'll like let go of the no tablet rule in the car at that point and
(48:55):
just let them have tablets a little bit.
Yeah. If we're doing like if we're doing an 11 hour trip, they're going to have to get something.
So that's a tricky one. But that was a thing. My grandparents literally retired
like right around the same time.
And then I think they just drove for two months. like all the way out to California.
They were gone so long. Some places they stayed a couple days,
(49:18):
some they might've stayed a week, some just for a dinner, but they still talk about that trip.
And I still have like random t-shirts from different stops they took,
but that was a different time too.
If you think about it, people retired younger, they retired like what, 20 years ago now.
So that was in the nineties. It was just different.
Yeah, it was different. I think that that was a big factor. Prices were different.
(49:41):
Speaking of prices, I wanted to do a big train trip. I think that would be so much fun.
You get to see so much. I don't have to drive, but they are insanely expensive,
which is really annoying.
Do you know what's not expensive?
And we go back and forth on this all the time. Let's hear it.
My big families, because I think it makes sense, are cruises.
(50:02):
I have never been on a cruise and neither has Dan.
But I think in our situation, especially when our kids are a little bit older,
They are all two years apart, just about.
And I think a cruise would actually
be a great money-saving but experience-living kind of trip for us.
(50:24):
Yeah, and I'm completely against cruises. Here's the one caveat.
But he's never been on one likewise.
So I could also see me hating it and him loving it. So it does scare me a little bit. Yeah, probably.
I would probably like it more than you if we got there. I just have something
fundamentally wrong with me about the cruise on an ocean at night.
It bothers the heck out of me.
(50:46):
Did you watch our conspiracy theory episode?
I don't trust it at all. The one caveat I will make is we mentioned about missing the boat on Italy.
No puns intended. But the one caveat I will say is this makes no sense.
But the one cruise I would consider is maybe an Alaskan cruise.
And we might have a reason to go to Alaska and then do a cruise.
(51:06):
So give that a year or two. let it simmer and maybe I'll come around,
but I don't know where he's still stuck on a boat.
So that makes no sense. And Alaska, I believe is always dark.
So I definitely would say no to that one. No, I think you get some of those
weird stretches of sunshine. Caribbean. Thanks. Bye.
Music.
(00:06):
Wow. Hello. We are on episode 14 of the Finding Time podcast.
Our recent venture has us talking about vacations.
Yeah, this seemed like it was a fitting enough topic coming back from a quick little impromptu trip.
So why not throw the topic in there? This was one that was kind of in the holster
(00:28):
that we had talked to some people about.
They wanted to hear a little bit just about out traveling as a family,
some vacation ideas and whatever.
So we had this one sort of on the back burner, but we are fresh off of a pretty
successful trip, I would say, and might as well talk about it.
I would say it was successful.
I actually think it went better than you think, but maybe like I had lower expectations
(00:54):
and you had higher expectations.
Yeah, I guess that's true. I expect some of the bad behaviors to drift away
a little bit while we're on vacation,
either from being distracted or, you know, preoccupied or I don't know,
grateful for having fun and all that kind of stuff.
We are not doing a very good job instilling in our older boys that they should
(01:17):
appreciate how awesome their lives are.
That is true. Like we talk about this often, but the things our boys have done already is just crazy.
Like in particular, we always have had passes now to Dorney Park,
which is this huge amusement park, wild, wild water park right by us.
(01:40):
And we had recently said that, you know, me and Dan went a couple times and
we were definitely older and it was like this huge treat.
Whereas our kids now have had season
passes since what like 2020 2021 we
got them right after covid now they're kind
(02:02):
of back to normal but like their deals were insane versus what they were so
yeah we gobbled them up thinking this is great you'll have an awesome summer
childhood things that we never got as kids but nope now that is just the norm
like oh we can go to dorney for a day or we We can pop over here for a day.
It is like experiences that kids get.
And we've been fortunate to be able to gift that to our children.
(02:26):
We just hope they are grateful for it because it really is just like another day for them.
Whereas again, when we were younger, that would be like this big event.
So I think Dan just had these high expectations because a vacation is a big event.
And we'll talk about like the prices, not necessarily like specifically to our
(02:46):
trip, But that was a whole nother thing with six of us.
But just the average amounts of vacations and what people are spending these
days are crazy, but you really can't help it. There's no way around it.
No, no, you can't. You know, I think there's plenty of deals out there to be had.
I think there's way more variety now than there is when we were growing up.
(03:10):
It seems like, you know, people are a lot more informed and there's a lot more
options, a lot of places that you might not have heard of.
Or if you didn't go or a family member or neighbor didn't go,
you kind of just didn't know about advertising is so much easier with social media.
You know, I actually just came across this person today. Her name is Scranton Mom.
(03:31):
I think she's out of Scranton, Pennsylvania, obviously, for those of you out of the area.
And she does all of these day trips. So from that area, you can get to Philadelphia,
New York City, even Baltimore, Washington pretty easily within a day, Allentown.
And she does all these trips. And I was scrolling through her thing.
She wound up at my mom's museum and did a video and has some really nice stuff
(03:52):
on there if you're in the Northeast area, but 60% of the places she was going
to, I had never heard of. And we've lived here our whole lives.
We've had, you know, kids for quite a while now. And she was going to places
that are within an hour, within 90 minutes of us that I was like,
oh, that's cool. We could definitely go there.
So it's way easier now to find new options.
(04:12):
And we were always, I think, more prone to that the last three or four years
of just doing like a staycation and finding some cool things to do versus big vacations. Yeah.
Oh boy, I see more trips on the horizon. These are day trips though, let's be fair.
That is our wheelhouse, a solid
day trip where they can sleep on the way there, sleep on the way home.
(04:33):
That is like music to my ears. For sure. I mean, mentioning that, it is crazy.
And again, every parent has struggles, but we have two one-year-olds and it
just changes like so much.
I don't know if any twin moms listen to this podcast, but the reality is I need
(04:55):
someone to talk to about it because it's so different.
I only talked to Dan about it, obviously, but the logistics of having two children
the same age we've been dealing with now since we found out we were expecting
twins has just been crazy.
And one example of that is there are six of us, so we couldn't get like a normal room.
(05:17):
We had to upgrade to a suite because maximum occupancy
is four and they're six but then
it's like we need two packet plays and we
need like double strollers it's just
so different because they are the same age and
very young yes that's the hard part they're
so young they're not quite old enough to
(05:40):
be like even free range and free roaming within
limitations they really got to to be watched they will destroy anything
at least or the the twin boy will destroy
anything he can get his hands on he'll climb on
things the boys are no angels by any means and i
think we're a little spoiled too but we are just like a bigger
family and it's funny one of the websites i was looking at and it had a like
(06:05):
two queen beds and like a not a full-on like kitchen or anything like that but
it was a decent sized room and you go to book it and i'm sure you could have
just lied or something but we're honest people here so i had two adults and four children selected.
And it literally wouldn't even let me like see the prices. It said,
you know, you're booking a reservation with six people and the max occupancy
(06:26):
is four. So please choose another room.
And again, I know you can lie and no one would question us or anything,
but we are spoiled. We like our space.
We like the babies to kind of be separate if they wake up or something we want.
And we hope the boys sleep good.
Everyone slept pretty good, I will say, during the trip, which is like a huge part of it.
If you get good overnight sleeps and naps and everything.
(06:47):
Things so our preference and i think we'll
maybe talk about this a little bit with some of the trips that we've done is
to get those extra rooms now we don't splurge on vacations by any means we'll
talk about some vacation budgets and stuff later on but that is where we like
to get what we want you know we want two bedrooms one for the boys one for us
(07:08):
a central area that we can have.
Some toys and some space for the babies and all that we really like a kitchen and then we bring food.
Like we brought our dinner and a lunch. So we save money doing that.
And that's how we justify, you know, splurging on ourselves.
I would go a little bit more and really get some cool sweets,
(07:28):
but you keep me in check for that.
Because we're not like in the room. I will say we ate out this time a little
more than we thought we would, but we really shouldn't eat out that much with
four kids under six years old.
No, the biggest problem is table size. They just, Just, you know,
and in like hotels and some restaurants, they try to cram you in.
(07:48):
And with us and four kids and the two twins, especially in high chairs,
like they want to grab at everything.
They kept grabbing like the forks and spoons off of our middle kids. And the knives.
And the knives, waving knives around. So they need, you know,
you need to be able to spread them out so they can't grab food and knock over
cups and all that kind of stuff. So we need a big table.
(08:12):
We need two high chairs, four chairs. we are an
annoying family like I think when we walk in places
for sure no one's like happy to
see us right they're like no I think people like to
watch but they're glad they're not us like this one lady she like wanted to
make a comment she had like truly her hand over her eyes I don't know why it
(08:35):
was like insinuating she's not watching us but then she took her hand down and
then she said to me, oh, they're all so cute.
So I really don't know how to take that aside from your hands are full and I'm glad it's not me.
Yeah. She's saying this looks like walking chaos, but boy, at least they're
cute, you know, and you get you more than me, but you know, everyone says your
(08:57):
hands are full, but you know, I get it. I don't need to hear that anymore.
The annoying one is the people that are like, oh, better you than me. Like.
Cool. Okay. That doesn't really help me at all. I'm sorry.
You hate families. People have funny comments when they see us.
I do a whole episode on like the comments we get.
I know when we were getting breakfast specifically on this vacation,
(09:21):
this guy wanted to help me like pour the cereal for our second boy.
And he's like, I get it. I have to this age.
And I was holding our second boy and one of
the twins and then my oldest
came running at me and I think you caught up
with the other twin and I saw like
(09:41):
his eyes just dropped to the seat I think and then obviously he didn't need
to help me so he moved on but I could imagine the things he was thinking yes
okay so back to the main topic of vacation why don't we do a brief history on
vacations past you know from from you
(10:01):
growing up for me growing up because I do think in the
topic of vacations you kind of have two realms
I think largely people older than us
for sure our parents generation and then people a little bit older than us I
think it was very traditional we go here and you were kind of like that like
this is where we go we go to Hilton Head we go to Ocean City we go to Florida
(10:22):
this is where we go this is our vacation and then you definitely have more of
a newer approach I think from you you know,
cool, hip, adventurous traveler parents.
But then also, you know, people who just like to get out more,
they just like to go somewhere different all of the time, you know,
experience different things.
So why don't we run through our backgrounds and see where our traditions kind
(10:43):
of overlap and then how we blend that into our family today.
And we should make a disclaimer. I don't feel like we travel a lot by any means.
So I know that there's parents who are probably pros at this,
even maybe with four kids who can do like airplanes planes and all the things
and we can do it, but I just don't know if we want too many times.
(11:07):
Oh yeah. That's a good point. If you're here for advice, you're in the wrong
spot. This is experience.
Learn, learn from our mistakes and our limited knowledge.
I do admire parents who travel more. I do always say, I wish we traveled more
and sometimes I hate traveling.
So those two things are, you know, combative against each other.
Our boys have never flown.
I haven't flown in a couple of years. You haven't flown in a decade or something.
(11:30):
Truly, since our honeymoon.
And I only flew twice in our life, which actually brings us to our vacation background.
Yeah. So my family owned a home in Hilton Head Island since the time I was born.
And so we literally lived there. Like, were we snowbirds? No, because of school.
(11:52):
But we lived there from June until August from the time I was.
Able, actually I was born in November and we went that summer.
So yes, we just stayed in Hilton Head Island every year, every summer from the
time I was a baby until maybe like 10 or 11,
(12:14):
because I know my parents would say I would then get into sports.
But even then from the time I was 10 and 11 and didn't always want to leave
my friends, we still went for like a good month.
So this was for 24 years of my life.
It also kind of shows, I was always saying like, oh, we go on vacation every
(12:35):
year, but we were so spoiled, which I quickly learned then planning vacations with Dan,
even before kids and now with kids, because we just had a place to go.
And then from there, like, yes, we would spend the entire summer there,
but it was four hours to Disney.
So we took trips to Disney and then stayed there a week, or it was four hours to Universal Studios.
(13:01):
We did Discovery Cove. We did Savannah, Georgia.
And yes, we would pay then, not me, but my family,
we would pay them to stay there a couple of days, but it was just so much more
convenient even because I will now look at my parents and be like,
how did they drive me and my sister, which it was a smaller family,
(13:24):
but we drove 13 hours every summer there and back.
And we just did three and a half with our kids. We didn't allow screen time.
So they did have that in common with us.
But I don't think we'll be going on any drives, maybe over four or five hours,
because that is not fun. Three and a half was tough.
(13:46):
And again, if you travel with kids and you want to make fun of us or anything,
go for it. I literally could not care less.
I get it. But three and a half was tough for us.
I think we could probably do four and a half, five, if we, you know,
give them a movie or something like that, but we don't have them in our car.
We didn't want to start that giving them tablets in the car.
The babies are kind of the other issue.
(14:07):
Like, you know, when they slept a little bit, but it's not that long,
we didn't leave at like great times, you know, one time each way was like a
good nap time, but you know, it's not like we were leaving late at night or anything like that.
That might help. You could get a little bit further if you time it up with to sleep better.
But it still is like, you know, that was far enough for us.
(14:29):
And again, I can't imagine how you did that as a kid, because again,
there was there was no screens.
You know, I do remember I think somebody in your family had one of those old
school, like seven inch screen portable DVD players.
There were no chargers in the car. There is no I don't know,
podcast music was whatever you had CDs like we've talked about this, though.
(14:50):
I think kids then even myself self-included we
were just better at being bored yes and
we were better at listening so we just literally sat
there and looked out the window i know we did like a lot of like car
games too like category things and like
songs and things like that but again that would occupy our kids for maybe 10
(15:13):
50 20 minutes yeah that is a whole different animal that you just kind of that's
what i still wonder and and we talk about this a lot like kids were just different
as much as that makes it sound like old people,
you just sat in the car and you were bored and you asked, are we there yet?
But like, that was it. There were no options.
It's not like you had things that they don't today, or you had the same options.
(15:35):
It was a completely different world and you were just fine.
So whatever our parents got at least one thing, right. When it came to car time.
And I do commend like your family and your, you and your sister for dealing
with that drive. because I've done it, you know, probably what,
maybe like five times and it sucks.
It's awful. We always did it in a day. You know, one time me and your grandma
(15:59):
were vibing over an audio book.
That was at least fun. Like you can finish a whole freaking audio book on the
drive down, which you hated, but I don't know. I could deal with it.
It was a good suspenseful novel, but that drive is not fun.
Yeah. I don't know how we did it. Even now I would have to stop more because I don't.
I don't know. I don't like sitting in the car. No wonder I don't really like
(16:22):
car drives anymore because I was scarred for all those years.
Yeah. I was going to say you compared to what you were then you can't handle
like a 25 minute drive now. So that is a big difference.
So we were very much different. I don't remember all of our trips,
obviously, but we spaced out our trips more.
You know, I think we went away every year, but I kind of like can't remember
(16:44):
it as much as I got older and everything.
I know for a while we went to Seaside Heights in New Jersey and there's a hotel.
Sometimes I see it and I remember the name and now I can't remember it.
We went there for a few years and all I remember was it was on the beach. It was a hotel.
We literally slept in chairs.
(17:06):
This is, I think, before suites were as big. There was obviously seven of us in the family.
So they, I don't know, I got to ask my parents what they did.
I think they got maybe connected rooms.
We'd have like four beds, but I remember me and my brother would like sleep
on a couch or like the little chairs we would push together.
And I would just sleep in a hotel room chair on a pillow.
(17:29):
Which again is so different because our boys, literally they shared a bed, but it was a king bed.
Like it's just a different world. even for vacation.
I could never in a million years imagine going to a three-year-old pushing two
chairs together with a pillow and saying, here you go, bud, you're sleeping here.
(17:51):
So I don't know. Maybe that's why I have a bad back. But that was a fun hotel
that I remember the arcade, the pool, all that stuff. And that was fun.
And then I think me and my siblings are spaced out a lot more.
So I think the family trips got harder.
They were kind of later in high school and couldn't travel as much or college
and then kind of stopped for them. Me and my brother were spaced out a little bit.
(18:12):
And then we started doing kind of different things. We did we did a random,
you know, kind of family resort in the Poconos before the Poconos were as big as they are.
So, you know, pool trails, game room, movie theater, like that kind of stuff.
So that was like fun for whatever we were then, 8, 10, 12 years old.
Me and my brother around that time, then we always had a lot of camps like we'd
(18:34):
have basketball camps in the summer and stuff, and we'd be gone for a week at
a lot of those. So I think maybe that just kind of chewed up some of our vacations at the time.
And then we did, you know, we did the Jersey Shore a couple more times.
We did the Delaware beaches a couple of times. We did Maryland once or twice.
We did Myrtle Beach, I want to say once, you know, and so we kind of just went all over.
(18:58):
I don't even know wherever just my parents felt like something interesting seemed
like a good idea. And that was it.
We never went west. That was kind of always my biggest regret is that we never
went anywhere cool to the West.
And it is kind of hard. We live in, you know, central eastern Pennsylvania.
So you're far from anything interesting to the West, maybe Tennessee,
(19:21):
I don't know, Kentucky, something like that.
But you're far from anything that interesting going West. But I do regret that.
I think like for the most part, your family vacations look a lot like what family
vacations look like now.
It's like, especially if you're going to spend the money, you want to try different spots.
(19:42):
I know like, again, in a way we were spoiled. We had a house,
so it was really our second home there.
But on the other end of that, we didn't get to like try different places.
Like the first time I was at the Jersey Shore, I feel like was when I was a
teenager and we did a day trip with my friends.
So it is different, but it's definitely like there's some positives and negatives to each.
(20:05):
I just know with our family, we were so small and your family was so big.
So I feel like we'll probably be more like your side of the family because there
is four kids and I don't think we're buying a vacation house, but maybe we can, right?
Sure. Sure. We'll put it in the budget. If you listen to the episode about finances,
(20:28):
we will put that in the budget and figure it out.
I would, I am torn on the vacation house.
Maybe we'll do a whole separate episode on that because the part that pertains
to this, not about money or anything like that is we don't travel.
But I think in my head, I romanticize travel.
Like I want to get out and see things. We just went to Washington.
I like that because we saw something new every couple hours,
(20:52):
the couple of days we were there, we were out and seeing things.
And I think when I when I think of travel I do like that I actually don't like
the idea of having a home going there being at the pool being at the beach we
talked about this a little bit but I'm just like not a beach person really however
I love to just lay down and relax so.
(21:12):
It is a dueling mindset that I have on that because I'd love to have the home
and with the kids, especially to just have that home base to go to.
But then I would miss out on the opportunity to get out and about.
And then, you know, like you guys did, like if we had a vacation home further
away and we could get out and about to different places, that would be cool.
(21:34):
But if we have a vacation home, I'd love to just be able to get there in two
hours, three hours, you know, not, not 10 hours or seven hours,
you know, but that's something we'd have to, we'd have to think about.
I'm still very, though, I don't care about the vacation house.
And again, this might be my background, but I always say to you,
I want to have a place that we just go to, like in our, in our thing, it was Hilton Head.
(22:00):
It doesn't need to be that we own the house, but I love that every summer we
went to Hilton Head for months and months.
We knew the area, we knew how to get
there we knew our favorite restaurants we had clothes there
I mean it really was our second home so
I like that idea for just raising children because I feel like then that's how
(22:21):
you really keep the tradition of vacation alive which obviously we did and you
kind of just stated your family didn't so I would like to at least have that
place but again this is so
funny how it really comes from like our childhood experiences,
like what we're thinking.
Yeah, for sure. You know, it builds, you know, in some way or other,
(22:44):
it informs what you grow up to be as a family.
Either you try to replicate what you had or you try to give yourself the things you didn't have.
But one way or the other, I mean, that's going to influence how you are as a
parent. And we're smart enough to know that.
So you said something there about, you know, know, the money and the strategies of traveling.
I did want to quickly recap some of our favorite trips from the past couple
(23:07):
of years, because we like you said, we don't travel a lot.
We had a couple of fun trips when we do travel.
It is almost always very impromptu because I actually he just said he loves to travel.
I actually do not like to travel, which is odd. But again, I just went to my
second home. We didn't really travel.
(23:29):
So once me and Dan got together and he would like plan these vacations,
I would get so anxious and beside myself. I think because I couldn't like.
To pinpoint where we were going and where we were staying and what we were doing.
Whereas I never really had that feeling before. I always knew.
Yeah. And to give everyone a full peek behind the curtain of our,
(23:50):
you know, nine years of marriage,
plus however many years we were together doing trips in the summer as a teacher,
you were off, so you didn't really care, but I was kind of just starting out
at work and I had to put my vacation time in, you know, not for a day or two,
but for like a week, probably three, three, four months ahead of time.
And so I had to pick dates in the summer and we didn't know what we were doing,
(24:12):
but like, that was my vacation week.
The people with more seniority got first dibs and it wasn't a big deal. We didn't have kids.
You were off. So it was just, this was our week. And we would have a couple of ideas.
And I think there's at least one or two times where we wanted to do something and I didn't book it.
I think one time where I wound up canceling it a week or so ahead of time.
Cause you just were like, no, we're not, I don't want to do this. I don't want to go here.
(24:34):
It's getting pricey, whatever. You had a very skewed idea of what a vacation
was from your background, which isn't your fault.
You know, you're a kid and it didn't matter to you. But when I started saying
like, okay, we got to get a hotel and then we got to do this and we're going
to have to get dinner every night and we're going to have to drive to this place,
you know, whatever you just were like, all right, now this is getting out of hand.
(24:57):
I'm I'm not doing it. I was like, I'm not a tourist.
I know where I live or where I vacation.
But again, background. Yes. Yeah. So I don't hold that against you.
But since then, we've come around a little bit and we'll have a couple of things
in mind, just kind of floating around or see an idea.
And then if you get in a mood and like, OK, let's let's go away this Friday
(25:19):
or something, I will have all of these trips. I think I've had maybe I don't
think we've had a full week's notice to like really plan that.
Maybe I don't think that's true.
I think it's true. Even the D.C. trip was at least a week.
I think it was, but we were changing like where we were going to go.
Yes. Yeah. No, we had about a week of, Hey, let's go away this Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
(25:42):
And I had something that lined up well with work and we kind of like made it,
we made, we worked it together so I could blend work into the trip and that's fine.
But I think it was Tuesday that we finally booked where we were going.
We had like three different options in mind.
So all of these trips, we always had a couple of different options in mind.
I think, you know, we did Pittsburgh a while back, which was to see friends.
(26:05):
And I had, again, a work trip that kind of lined up with that.
So that was a good one to piggyback off of. What else do we have?
One of our very planned vacations.
But in a way, it was spontaneous because I can't believe I did this.
But I planned our entire honeymoon.
You just told me where you want to go. But we obviously planned it when we were
wedding planning. So it was like months in advance.
(26:28):
And that wasn't really spontaneous. spontaneous and
we loved that trip we did but obviously we
would we were young we had no kids it was our
honeymoon it was awesome i will say that was an awesome trip
we we we balled out on that one we got a suite we had the butler suite it was
all inclusive you did a great job planning that trip they gave us a cell phone
(26:49):
to contact the butler remember that which we would not use for the first two
or three days we felt so bad yeah and then we were then we didn't abuse it but But once or twice a day,
we were getting hooked up with stuff. That was that was a really cool resort.
But no, that was really fun. And what I was going to say about that is now,
I guess people who get married are smarter because they don't like leave the next day.
(27:14):
I just, I sometimes still can't believe I just got married and then left on a plane the next day.
But anyway, so Hilton Head and our honeymoon were the only places we really
went as a couple, aside from like a lot of day trips to the beach.
I think we did New York City. we would obviously do
like connecticut new hampshire because you were around
school there when you went to college but then
(27:37):
i think the farthest we went once we had kids and
we had two boy we had both two kids by then and then we went to deep creek lake
in the spring because we were expecting like hiking kind of weather and it was
raining the whole time yeah it was a really beautiful lake it's in western maryland
our middle son of the time was probably eight or nine months old.
(28:00):
Our oldest one was two or three. So that was, you know, good timing.
It was our first kind of furthest family trip. It was just over four hours,
which was a little tough.
Again, I remember being around Harrisburg and we were taking a stop because
something happened or whatever.
And you just wanted to cancel. You wanted to cancel the trip.
I called to see if we could cancel.
(28:21):
And they were both crying. And I kept having to breastfeed and we kept having to to stop.
And I was like, oh no, because I'm just thinking we also have to get home even if we do this trip.
Yeah. So that was rough, but they basically were like, nope,
you kind of have to at least pay for one night and we didn't want to waste it.
So we wound up going and it was nice. It was a nice town home kind of condo community.
(28:44):
The lake is beautiful down there. We thought we would go and have some fun outdoor
stuff because it was the off season. So it wasn't busy.
We But the lake was beautiful. The hiking we thought would be fun.
It did kind of wind up being fun. We didn't really know it, but it's in,
I think, Western Maryland, South Southwestern Maryland.
(29:07):
And it's a little more mountainy there. So it's a lake on a mountain. Beautiful.
And we didn't realize, but it was freaking snowing in like April or something.
And it totally caught us off guard. And we're like, all right,
we're four hours from home.
We're, you know, 20 minutes from the condo.
Most of the things around the lake are closed because it's the off season.
(29:30):
We're just doing this hike. Bundle up the kids. We're going to hike in the snow.
You could still see the trail and stuff. And it was one of those weird times.
It wasn't like freezing cold. It actually was kind of nice in the woods.
Once we started doing it, it wound up being a really fun hike.
And I remember our toddler, you know, our oldest at the time,
like running on the trails and there's these waterfalls.
It was a beautiful, beautiful hike. It would have been nice if it was 10 degrees
(29:53):
warmer, but whatever. That wound up really cool.
And the other memorable thing about that trip was the zoo.
For sure, the zoo, I was going to say. And maybe it was because of where we
were, but you just explained like the first day it was snowing,
but then the next day it was like 70 degrees.
I do think it was like a 45-minute drive because then we were in West Virginia.
(30:16):
I will like side note and give Dan a lot of credit because he mostly plans things
out really good, Even in the short time I give him when we're spontaneous to go on these trips.
But he like finds a lot of fun things that we can do, even just in our recent trip to D.C.
So for Deep Creek Lake, we were at Deep Creek.
(30:39):
But during a nap time, we took the drive to West Virginia to this zoo,
which, again, I think was 45 minutes away.
But we will never find a better zoo. At least maybe we will.
But this was the best zoo ever.
Like, I think me and Dan might have enjoyed it more than the kids because we
never saw something so free, should I say?
(31:02):
Yeah, I think that's the way to put it. I had to look up the name again.
It was called Hovatter's.
Wild rescue or wildlife rescue or something like that
and i think as well i'll say if you're like a big animal
enthusiast or something it can be
a little off-putting i don't want to say it was run down but it didn't look
like it had a ton of public funding money like a bigger zoo loved their animals
(31:27):
so i was good with that it was just that it was so much more personal than any
zoo we've ever found around here.
And we've been at our local one. We've been at the Philly Zoo.
We've been at the D.C. Zoo. We've been at the Hershey Zoo.
So, I mean, we're no stranger to zoos. This one was just so hands on,
(31:47):
which like almost to a scary point for our little kids.
Now, like six years old, our oldest would love it. But he was only two or three then.
Yeah. You can get super close to the animals, including wolves and bears and
tigers and stuff like that. You feed the bears through a tube, I believe.
Yep. And they sit at the bottom of the tube and they shake the tube.
They shake your hand. Like that's how just so close it is.
(32:11):
Right. But I think some people look at that as kind of sad. It's just a bear
in a small area, smacking a tube for food. That's true. I don't like that.
I know. I get it. But it's it is really cool. And I don't know.
I mean, who where else would that bear be? I look at it that way.
They had a giraffe to care about their animals.
They did because we were seeing so many like zookeepers and caretakers.
And what about the feeding that I didn't like, though?
(32:35):
Oh, oh, oh, OK. So so, yeah. So first, the giraffe is behind,
you know, and there's giraffes at the Lehigh Valley Zoo near us.
And is there one at the Philly Zoo? And they're, you know, 15, 20 feet away.
They have tall fences, but you have a good view of them.
This one was behind, I'm not joking, a four foot fence.
That's it. It was just a four foot fence. So this freaking can think and just
(32:58):
get right up on you are our younger one.
Oh yeah. We loved that. That's, I held our baby at the time and he's holding
up a carrot and this giraffe just eats it out of his hand. That part is really cool.
It's gray tongue, which surprised me. Yeah.
They're giraffe tongues can
be up to 18 inches long if anyone doesn't know. So that thing is large.
(33:18):
So that was really cool. Some of the animal feedings were cool.
Some are, you know, iffy the one that you don't feed, but we just literally
happened to be walking by at the tiger feeding time.
They had three tigers, I believe one like albino tiger or something crazy.
This guy was huge and it was a big, big animal.
(33:41):
The zookeeper pulls up on a cart with huge boxes in the back of just raw chicken
and he's thrown it in and you hear the tigers like fighting over it.
You hear the bones crunching and then the big dude rolls up and the other little
tiger is kind of like scary away and then he gets the eat and they all come
back in but of course like our oldest one wanted to watch like you know you're gonna watch.
(34:06):
Three or four tigers eat viciously in person from, I don't know, six feet away.
You didn't like it at all, but it was intense. So that was, that was just kind of dumb luck.
We just happened. They don't advertise it or anything. We just happened to be
walking by when he was doing that. So that zoo was very up close and personal.
And again, I look at trips that way where at the, in all honesty,
(34:28):
deep Creek, the trip kind of stunk, like everything was closed.
The weather was so hit or miss we couldn't go out
on the lake because the kids are young the place to get down to
the beach was closed because it was off season a lot of
the restaurants and attractions were either closed or limited hours but it was
beautiful we will remember the drive but we'll kind of forget about how bad
(34:48):
it was the hike was screwed up but actually wound up being really fun the place
we stayed was really cool the place we stayed at was cool the zoo was fun it
was there's almost no one there at this.
Condo resort community so the people at
the front desk knew us they knew the boys they were okay with them
like running or you know our older one running around a little bit so it
was fun in that way which is what i like on vacation
(35:10):
you get good memories from it for sure and i actually like looking back on that
trip even though you named like bad things i overall like anytime someone says
deep creek or we bring it up i'm like oh that was a great vacation i still tell
people like i don't know if they're thinking of it or like my sister i know
i've told because they They wanted to go the one year.
Like I would absolutely recommend it to people. It was really fun.
(35:32):
So that's my point is you make it work instead of, I don't know,
all your vacations blurring together.
Maybe we'll go again, but we'll go for like on season and see.
And maybe we won't even like it as much then. Why don't we buy a vacation house there?
How about that? Oh, now we're buying a vacation house, according to him.
So we don't need to like go into
(35:52):
detail like we just did for all the other trip. But our oldest is six.
So over the past six years, we've done DC probably three or four times. We do have...
Friends there. So we visit them. And I don't know, every time we went to DC,
I mean, four times actually sounds like a lot in six years, but we've done something
(36:13):
different. There's so much to do there.
We've done Hershey, I think twice. Yeah, I think so.
And again, my sister-in-law lives within like a half hour there.
So we kind of always try to see someone.
We never stay with them, but if we can see people, then we'll go see people
even for like an hour or two, just because it's nice to do a visit and then
(36:36):
add in all the vacation perks of the trip.
So Deep Creek, Hershey, Washington, D.C. a bunch of times.
We did a lot of like staycations and we do a lot of like small beach trips,
which we were just rethinking our beach vacation this summer because,
again, twin moms, it's just hard to keep track of two,
(36:59):
but then also restrain two, but you don't want to restrain them the whole time.
So it's hard to chase too.
Anyway, that's for a whole nother episode.
And then, oh, and then the Poconos. We've done the Poconos a bunch.
We do have family there, but we also briefly had a home there.
So that was kind of a vacation house, but it was kind of just,
(37:20):
I don't know, Dan, like I said, Dan goes through these phases.
So yes, we had a second home in the Poconos for maybe two years and it was nice,
But then we just outgrew it because we were having twins.
Yeah, we had. Yeah, which is there's no point in keeping it.
And we couldn't rent it. They were changing their restrictions up in that community.
(37:40):
So, yeah, we got rid of it. That was fun while it lasted.
The beach is definitely tricky, but not in the cards this year.
I will say if we could plug. I didn't say it wasn't in the cards.
I still want to consider it. It's not in the cards.
If we could plug any beach for people with families, we always recommend Seven
Presidents Park in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey.
It is, I think, like the furthest north beach. It is north, north Jersey,
(38:04):
you know, as far as beaches go.
So it's not what you think of as the Jersey Shore, but there's no boardwalk.
There's nothing like that.
We've seen it get kind of crowded, but never like crazy. But they have a really
cool concession pavilion.
That's it. Like nothing big to draw people to. a really beautiful walk out to the beach.
The sand is nice, but they have this massive, massive park that basically has
(38:26):
three gigantic playgrounds within it.
Like one for older kids, one for, I would say like two to four year olds.
And then one that even, you know, seven to 10 year olds would be fine with. So it is a great part.
And that is like a hundred feet off the beach. So we like to do that because
we can go have a fun beach day, start getting and everyone changed.
(38:46):
Cleaned up and then let them do 30 minutes at the park or something or take
a break there before they drive home.
And again, these beach trips would always be like day trips.
And that's why having that is a nice way to split it up. It is.
And then what was that quaint one?
Oh, it was called Ocean Grove. Yeah, we stayed out of bed and breakfast, which was hilarious.
If you are 22, 23 and you know, whatever. Just married. Just married.
(39:11):
We stayed at this quaint little bed and breakfast. it was
all 70 plus year olds and they loved us
they thought it was the cutest thing ocean grove is a
cute little town however we didn't
know this quite at the time and it wasn't a big deal for us then but it's a
dry town so there's no alcohol you can't bring alcohol on the beach even though
i think i still did you can't really eat on the beach and we snuck out it is
(39:34):
a but then when you want to do that you can go right over to point pleasant
enjoy the nightlife and then sneak back
in our bed and breakfast and greet the old people in the morning.
I thought that was so cute.
It was cute. It felt like sneaking back in after a high school party.
So that was, that was a fun little trip down memory lane. I mean.
The other place, you know, we didn't mention that we went to,
(39:56):
and this was also because you had work around there, but we did go to Pittsburgh
and we really liked that too.
There were a couple of different things to do. There was that fun children's museum.
Yeah, that was a fun trip. That was, that was work-based and,
and you know, One of our closest friends is out there, so we could see her at the time.
So that had a good reason to go. There's a lot of cool stuff to do out there.
(40:18):
We were plenty entertained, I would say, for two days, I think.
I was just telling my oldest son, and again, he was maybe three for that trip.
That Dan had to work a full day.
And so I actually walked them around that city. And if you know me,
I have no idea how to navigate.
Anywhere, maybe not even where I live. And I actually walked them around that city.
(40:41):
And then they lost their crock. One of them, I think it was my youngest,
the crock must have gotten lost.
So then I had to retract my whole steps throughout the city.
And again, if you were in Pittsburgh, it's a clean city. It had waterfalls.
They had a Dunkin'. We sat and got donuts. It was really cute.
And we did find the crock. I was very happy.
(41:03):
So he thought that was the most funny thing now out me telling him that at six.
But us in D.C., I don't think I would walk there by myself.
No, no, definitely not. So you got lucky on that trip.
I had some information here that I kind of looked up because this was very kind
of personal, our experience, whatever.
And it was mainly about money. And my biggest thing with vacations and money
(41:27):
and all that is that I don't really care. You know, like we have our idea of
what a vacation should cost.
Other people have their idea. And that is one of those topics where,
you know, I'm not anyone's financial advisor.
We did a whole episode on money and there is something to be said about having
(41:48):
your main expenses worked out. your mortgage, your rent, your loans,
your car payment, your groceries, like your essentials to live, keep those in line.
And if your money is in line and you should have disposable income to have fun
and whatever, if you want to spend 10 grand on a vacation, go for it.
If you want to spend, you know, 1000 on a vacation, go for it.
So that would be a little hard. Fine. 1500.
(42:10):
But my point is, even when I was looking, this was my, was kind of my point
is there was like a charter website that at first I saw the thing was like 1800,
like, all right, 1800 for a family of four, but no, that was 1800 for a solo
traveler for a week for a family of four. It was like 7,800.
Now this is like a chart. This is like a travel agency. So they want you to
(42:31):
buy bigger trips. I assume.
Then I find an article from New York times and I was like, all right,
let's see what some reader submissions have said. And you know,
they're freaking useless.
They were the first one and they all had a title, like a quick reader submission.
It was like, Oh, surfing a hundred foot waves in Portugal, a 25 person ski outing
in Arizona, which I didn't even know there was skiing in Arizona,
(42:51):
introducing my toddler to Italy because they took suggestions from everywhere.
This guy was from the UK. So, you know, I just, it was useless trying to find
anything. I don't care about the averages.
You do you. And there is a huge difference from where we are going to the beach
is absolutely nothing. We've almost mostly done day trips.
If you live in Indiana, going to the beach is a much bigger deal,
(43:14):
you know, like, so wherever to stay there, we've noticed the prices to stay are very high.
The prices are high. But my point is, like, I remember in Ohio and a couple,
I think Nebraska, there's a couple insane water park.
I used to love those shows on the travel channel, like the water park.
I don't know what, but there's some show on the travel channel about best water
(43:35):
parks or whatever out in the middle of the country there. They have water park
resorts because you can't get to a beach.
And you have to keep someone entertained for two or three days at a water park.
It has to be huge. So I respect that they do that. My point is that I could
care less about budgets. Spend what you want on a vacation.
Make it fun. If you want to go crazy, go crazy. If you want to work on a budget,
(43:55):
work on a budget. There are so many.
Or if you want to change that up year to year, that's fine too.
Because we've talked to people who maybe have went to Disney.
Most people, again, we know don't have four kids.
But some people have spent upwards of $10,000 and they like stop there.
But others have maybe spent almost $20,000. And I'm sure you could spend even a lot more than that.
(44:20):
Yeah. My view when it comes to big vacations. And again, if you want to do a
big one every five years or something, you know, or every year,
it's up to you is my personal view is spend what you're going to be happy with and not regret.
And my spend is way more than your spend. Like, I don't want to be bothered
with anything that is that's a good transition to the trips that we wish we
(44:42):
would have taken before kids or hope to take in the future.
And I will do my I would say definitely the future.
Not I will. Yes. But I would say my anti Disney thing is I want our youngest
kid to be at least five before we go.
And that's just kind of logistical that I want that to be the case.
Don't know if we'll get it, but that's at least my stance on Disney.
(45:05):
And my thing is, when he says we can go to Disney, I'll go to Disney.
Does he want to go to Disney this summer?
There we go. I didn't go until I was, I think, like 14 or so.
So to kind of wrap this up, a couple of the trips that we didn't get done before
kids that I still bring up that I regret and wish we would have done.
And then a couple of trips we'll kind of have on the back burner for the future.
We'll kind of close out looking at that. The big one, I think,
(45:27):
was the one that we canceled.
I had time off for and then it just started getting out of hand.
And it was elaborate, but we were, you know, in our early 20s. We had no kids.
I wanted to fly to New Orleans.
And again, I love to, you know, enjoy the music. I like bourbon.
I feel like me in New Orleans in my 20s was a good fit.
(45:49):
And then I think where it got a little out of hand for you is I wanted to rent
a car and drive to Cape Canaveral, which isn't too far from there.
But I wanted to kind of knock them out altogether because we knew we want to do both trips.
And, you know, they're close enough and we had no kids.
What's a few hours in a car, a couple of flights, see some fun stuff.
(46:12):
But you are not having it. So I do wish we would have done that trip.
The trip that I wish we would have done and I would have brought it up to you a lot was Italy.
Yeah, we screwed that one up. So my brother was stationed over there for a number
of years and we couldn't quite get it done early on right away.
And then, well, I think I was pregnant when he got stationed there and then COVID happened.
(46:37):
Right. But I mean, bringing a baby to Italy wouldn't have been that bad.
Yeah. Looking back, we completely regret that we were so afraid to bring a baby.
And again, he had a son over there that that kid has traveled more than we will
ever travel in our entire lives.
That kid's a world traveler. Both of them are, but we, we, we easily could have
(46:57):
done it with one kid. And we just, unfortunately.
Did not do it. So that's a shame. This is more looking to the future.
This was never really in the cards, but I'd like to go to like the Redwood Forest.
I feel like the kids would like that just to see gigantic trees.
I looked at it once and I don't know much about Northern California geography,
but it's like really hard to get to.
I think it's like a cross country plane trip and then like a,
(47:20):
I don't know, four hour drive or something. So that's a little iffy.
Yikes. Yeah. You definitely never told me that one. The one that you did tell
me that comes to mine is your bourbon trip in Kentucky, which I don't even know
if I'll do that with you. That might be a solo one.
Yeah. When are you going to let me go solo to Kentucky again?
My other like when both boys are 21, that would be a fun little father son or all three boys are 21.
(47:46):
I'm not waiting for all three. Maybe when the first one is 21, we're going.
And then the other one you bring up and I might be okay with this,
but I think I would like to do it with the kids.
Like if you would have a bunch of days, a lot of days, a month off in a summer
is a long road trip, which is funny. I'm agreeing to that, but you bring it up.
So I'm like, why not do it with the kids? It might be more fun.
(48:09):
And kids give you excuse to like see more things in a way. Oh yeah.
I think that's something we could plan.
I think this gets back to like, that was a thing, you know, not everyone did
it, but we knew people who took road trips out to South Dakota and to Colorado
and to Nebraska and Indiana,
like Texas, you know, like we knew people that did that stuff and they took
(48:32):
long arching road trips to just see national monuments and forests and museums
and maybe family members.
Like, I think that is against getting back to romanticizing road trips.
I just can't imagine doing that with our little feral children.
Unfortunately, I blame them and I blame you when they're older.
And maybe we'll like let go of the no tablet rule in the car at that point and
(48:55):
just let them have tablets a little bit.
Yeah. If we're doing like if we're doing an 11 hour trip, they're going to have to get something.
So that's a tricky one. But that was a thing. My grandparents literally retired
like right around the same time.
And then I think they just drove for two months. like all the way out to California.
They were gone so long. Some places they stayed a couple days,
(49:18):
some they might've stayed a week, some just for a dinner, but they still talk about that trip.
And I still have like random t-shirts from different stops they took,
but that was a different time too.
If you think about it, people retired younger, they retired like what, 20 years ago now.
So that was in the nineties. It was just different.
Yeah, it was different. I think that that was a big factor. Prices were different.
(49:41):
Speaking of prices, I wanted to do a big train trip. I think that would be so much fun.
You get to see so much. I don't have to drive, but they are insanely expensive,
which is really annoying.
Do you know what's not expensive?
And we go back and forth on this all the time. Let's hear it.
My big families, because I think it makes sense, are cruises.
(50:02):
I have never been on a cruise and neither has Dan.
But I think in our situation, especially when our kids are a little bit older,
They are all two years apart, just about.
And I think a cruise would actually
be a great money-saving but experience-living kind of trip for us.
(50:24):
Yeah, and I'm completely against cruises. Here's the one caveat.
But he's never been on one likewise.
So I could also see me hating it and him loving it. So it does scare me a little bit. Yeah, probably.
I would probably like it more than you if we got there. I just have something
fundamentally wrong with me about the cruise on an ocean at night.
It bothers the heck out of me.
(50:46):
Did you watch our conspiracy theory episode?
I don't trust it at all. The one caveat I will make is we mentioned about missing the boat on Italy.
No puns intended. But the one caveat I will say is this makes no sense.
But the one cruise I would consider is maybe an Alaskan cruise.
And we might have a reason to go to Alaska and then do a cruise.
(51:06):
So give that a year or two. let it simmer and maybe I'll come around,
but I don't know where he's still stuck on a boat.
So that makes no sense. And Alaska, I believe is always dark.
So I definitely would say no to that one. No, I think you get some of those
weird stretches of sunshine. Caribbean. Thanks. Bye.
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