I love getting away as a family or with just the girls…but sometimes married couples need alone time. We try to get away without our kids once a year or so. There have been times in our marriage where we couldn’t afford to get away but we at least could have our kids go stay with someone for a day or two and we could have a “stay-cation” at home. Whatever you are up for I think you will agree that making this a priority in your marriage as often as you can is worth it. We continue to be amazed at how helpful it can be because for the most part we just need time to remember why we like each other!
In general there are three types of trips that we like to take without kids:
::a run-around trip::
We had the chance to go to SEATTLE for my college reunion in 2012 and it was so fun to run around without our kids. We both graduated from the same school a year apart so we have a lot of mutual friends. We ran around like crazy people to see all our friends! We stayed up late, ate whatever we wanted, stayed in a small hotel room & basically did a ton of things that would have been impossible with the kids there. Sometimes we just need to be able to have fun and not worry about the kids. If you have the option of leaving yours for a few days to do something like this…do it. Even if it’s once ever 10 years…do it!
::a planning trip::
One of our goals is to spend time planning out our year and talking about basic family stuff that we have a hard time carving out time for in our day to day life. Kids or phone calls always seem to interrupt these conversations! We aim to discuss what we want to be doing as a family, what rules are working or not working for us, how can we develop different habits and goals to keep improving, what areas of our home need to be reevaluated {such as chores, duties, maintenance, schedule, yearly trips, outside activities, budget, etc}. Our goal is to come home feeling like we have had a business retreat or summit for the running of our family. Like our MILL VALLEY trip in 2013. It is great to get a bunch of this stuff done on our first few days so that we can relax the rest of the time. From then on we can basically sleep-in, reconnected and really just did NOTHING at all…and that is always perfect for this stage in our lives!::a relaxing trip::
For this kind of trip we like to do nothing, enjoy each others company, get romantic, don’t talk about kids or money or household issues…our goal is to just be together and relax. Like our HAWAII trip in 2012. This is one of my favorite types of trips now that I’m a busy mommy. As a kid, I remember getting to a place that we had traveled for hours to see and my parents would just want to relax.
What? RELAXXX???
“You guys are so boring…” I would say! I DID. NOT. GET. IT. I just wanted to go do something. Hadn’t we just spent hours “getting there?” But now I totally get it. Busy trips can be really fun and us Panfi’s love to travel…but once in a while we just needed some down time.
One of our goals is to spend time planning out our year and talking about basic family stuff that we have a hard time carving out time for in our day to day life. Kids or phone calls always seem to interrupt these conversations! We aim to discuss what we want to be doing as a family, what rules are working or not working for us, how can we develop different habits and goals to keep improving, what areas of our home need to be reevaluated {such as chores, duties, maintenance, schedule, yearly trips, outside activities, budget, etc}. Our goal is to come home feeling like we have had a business retreat or summit for the running of our family. Like our MILL VALLEY trip in 2013. It is great to get a bunch of this stuff done on our first few days so that we can relax the rest of the time. From then on we can basically sleep-in, reconnected and really just did NOTHING at all…and that is always perfect for this stage in our lives!::a relaxing trip::
For this kind of trip we like to do nothing, enjoy each others company, get romantic, don’t talk about kids or money or household issues…our goal is to just be together and relax. Like our HAWAII trip in 2012. This is one of my favorite types of trips now that I’m a busy mommy. As a kid, I remember getting to a place that we had traveled for hours to see and my parents would just want to relax.
What? RELAXXX???
“You guys are so boring…” I would say! I DID. NOT. GET. IT. I just wanted to go do something. Hadn’t we just spent hours “getting there?” But now I totally get it. Busy trips can be really fun and us Panfi’s love to travel…but once in a while we just needed some down time.
::for the kids::One more thing I try to do is pack little goodies for the kids to open each day while we are away. When we went on our Hawaii trip it was about 6 days and we had never been away from the kids that long. I got small $dollar$ items and wrapped one for each kid, for each day we were gone. I attached little love notes to each one also. It gave them something to look forward to each day and honestly I think they liked it so much that they did not want us to come home because the gifts would stop coming! Ha! I guess that means it worked!
So go plan a trip for you and your sweetheart soon. You will not be sorry!
