My vacation plans are always bigger then my pocketbook. Every week, I dream of places I’d like to visit. Soon. This year. How about for Spring Break? My list of dream destinations is long, but my savings account is very small.
And I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a job with a lot of vacation time and a salary that makes it possible to take myself and my son on at least two big trips a year. I think of all the people I know who have lost their job or are barely making enough money to make ends meet, and I feel blessed to travel as much as I do. So I’m not going to whine and pout too much this Monday. Just enough to get it out of my system. I promise.
It’s just that lately my wanderlust has been mighty strong. It has been a few months since our last big trip and I’m ready to hit the open road again. I get tempted to pull out that credit card. I search for online deals. I contemplate taking time off work, so I can score some of those better prices on hotels and flights. I see that darned Disney commercial, with all the happy kids and Christmas decorations, and I think: what if I just drive down to Anaheim for a couple of days? Then I take out my calculator, crunch those magical numbers and realize that a two-day trip will cost me at least $600 for two people. As a single mom, that’s six hundred dollars that I can’t afford to spend. Even when I take the amusement park out of the equation, the price of a long weekend getaway can easily drain my very tight travel budget. And believe me, I know how to be a frugal traveler.
So I have to save and be patient. Soon enough, I will be packing for a trip. In the meantime, my son and I sit around dreaming of places we’d like to visit. Some days we actually lay out a map at bedtime and plan out routes instead of reading a bedtime story. Truthfully, all the dreaming and planning is half the fun.
Who needs the money tree anyway? I have a couple of paper maps to keep me busy for now. I also have lots of great travel posts around the blogosphere to keep me dreaming, starting with Mother of all Trips’ Monday Dreaming.
…are my favorite. The weekdays are full with work, errands, and homework, so that by the time Friday comes around, I feel like a deflated balloon. That’s when I need to take a weekend trip, and head outdoors to get my vitamin D, sunshine fix. It turns out that these weekend mini-trips are also good for my kid. He needs to catch his breath and reflect on the difficulties on being a third grader (which is not an easy job these days).
Life is not always in focus, and neither is this photo. I’ve gotten pretty good at snapping pictures of my quick-moving son, but there are times when I just can’t capture every moment in its perfect state. Photography with kids is sometimes challenging. I’m usually clicking away on my camera and also talking, walking or barking directions at the same time. Even so, I often find little photographic nuggets of awesome, amongst the hundreds of photo discards.
Snorkeling with a young child for the first time is hardly a peaceful experience. My son went for his first underwater excursion in the clear waters of Maui, at the age of 5. In the weeks before our trip, I tried to get him ready for the new experience. We searched for the perfect snorkel mask and I let him practice in his grandma’s pool. He spent a few afternoons swallowing chlorine water-and whining about it-until he got comfortable enough.
I didn’t become a family travel goddess without a little help. Even before I became a mom, I had years of family travel experience behind me. What I’m really trying to say is that many of the tips I write about, I learned from my mom. Now that the secret is out, I’m giving credit, where credit is due.
We emigrated to California, from Argentina, when I was seven years old. My mom was a teacher in Argentina, and went through all her schooling again, to become a teacher in California. Teachers have this habit of trying to make everything educational. While it seemed funny (and a bit excruciating) to my teenage self, to spend countless summers exploring the wonders of fish spawning, I now realize that I really learned through our family’s travels. My mom’s goal was for my sister and I to experience the world by taking us out to see it.
