How do you use vacation time?

I went to Skyline Drive and it was beautiful and then I went spelunking! Ok, not real spelunking…but fake spelunking!

I went alone, with a camera and a notebook and an iPod. It was probably the best thing I could have ever done.

Oh, and I bought a corncob pipe! Just because… don’t judge me.

Travel, always travel. There’s a lot of world to see! :)

We have a couple of special places that we will go back to again & again, but it’s so much fun to experience new places & cultures. I have on occasion traveled alone, and we have also traveled w/o the kids.

Most of my time off is spent taking care of (disabled) husband. But, even without extensive travel, we have a good time.

Walt Disney World. A lot. :-)

Next month I’ll be making my fifth Disney trip this year (four to WDW, one to Disneyland in California). Granted, that’s excessive even for me.

I usually do two big (ie 1 week or greater) trips each year, and use the remaining vacation days to create several long weekends on which I take road trips or go to visit college friends I don’t see very often.

A vacation day spent at home is a vacation day wasted, in my mind.

This year I took two small vacations outside of LA with my SO (to Coronado and Big Bear). It was awesome becauase I usually spend so much time stressing out on “vacation” because I have to see family and friends. But we just decided to go someplace where we don’t know anyone, and just have a real vacation.

I just like to do nothin’!

I agree with loser – I tend to plan a lot of activities for time off, like cleaning or taking care of home projects, but the best ones are when I sit on my butt and just relax. Well, second best to traveling somewhere where I can sit on my butt and relax, that is.

A day here or there for home projects or long weekends for camping.
Then 3–4 weeks at a shot for long trips—Europe, Caribbean, Washington DC/Virginia, Florida, Cruises, Mexico, E. Europe, S.E. Asia…
We don’t take long trips to the same place twice—well, we’ve been to Venice twice, but that was ‘cause we had time. We go camping or to the beach to the same places, but those are 2–4 day trips.
With so much of the world to see, we have not found the place we’d like to go to time and time again.

I’m a mom. My vacation is spent doing my primary job, so I spend my vacation time working in an unfamiliar setting without the tools I’m used to having to do my job. I usually get to spend a really long day traveling with 2 impatient little ones and a cranky, stressed out husband in order to take my vacation. The upside is, when we get back, the three of them are well rested and relaxed so I can unpack and work at getting everyone settled back into their routines.

I don’t like vacations very much. I will when the kids are older, but right now, not so much.

mamasu
Reminds me of when we were raising our boys. Many times the ‘vacation’ was anything but for me.
As we have aged, we enjoy our time at home more. In fact, we have fixed our home as if it were a vacation home with the ammenities we would enjoy if we traveled,ie., put in a hot tub, good location so day trips are easy and worth while, etc.

@basp, I feel the same way about our home. We’re in the Metro DC area, so plenty to do. We have run out of rooms to renovate and add on. I joke that I now need a map to find the bathroom. I just don’t understand why, with the kids so young, we can’t do simple things like rent a cabin an hour away or go to the beach an hour and a half away or, heaven forbid, stay home and relax while doing day trips. Instead, we do RV trips through the west, trips to Jamaica, trips to Montana to see my family (even though they will be here for 5 months) My boys are 2 and 4, so they will soon be old enough to be more independent on vacations, but for now, it’s twice the hype for ten times the work, and I’m so frazzled and exhausted when we get home, I usually wind up getting sick. Hubby has a great time golfing, fishing, sleeping in, hiking, doing the tourist thing. I don’t get to do those things. The worst was spending 14 days stuck in a hotel room with a sick baby, no English speaking doctors, and hubby telling me we were keeping him up at night and he would be too tired to play golf. Phooey!

I keep threatening to take a long weekend just by myself. I don’t have to go far. I would be happy as a pig in shit to camp out in a cabin in the mountains for a long weekend. To be able to actually read a book, not get up 3 times a night, or sleep past 5 am would be heaven! One day, I’m handing the boys, including the 16 year old stepson who hates me, off to hubby and hitting the road for 3 whole days, all by myself.

mamasu
I hear ya. When my boys were young my inlaws would plan extravagant family vacations but none of the activities were kid friendly. Since we were the only one with children, I was seen as the party pooper because I was so busy chasing two toddlers through an inappropriate activity that I didn’t have time to have fun. And, his sisters and parents never, ever offered me a hand.
My husband was always a great amout of help except when we were around his family. In their eyes, children were women’s work.

Three reasons I became a teacher: June, July, and August. I do WHATEVER I want. Sometimes I stay up all night with my kids watching old scary movies and eating popcorn, then sleeping all day. Sometimes we wake up super early, like 4 A.M. early, just to watch the sky. Sometimes we take adventures around local parks just to check them out. Most often you can find us at the pool, lounging and having fun! Man, I love summer!! I would love to go on vacation every year, but we do it when we can.

Most often we stay home…it is where we are happiest. We may do some work around the house, or we may stay up all night and sleep all day.

We started taking family (e.g., my son, husband and I) vacations when our son was 8. We took a big trip every other year. Before that all of our vacations were trips to see the grandparents and not always terribly relaxing. We always made sure to mix up the kid stuff with the grown up stuff. I’m happy to say our son has been to a lot of places in the US, to Europe, England, Scotland, and now we are heading off to S.E. Asia. He’s 22 and I’d love to keep traveling with him whenever we can.
On the flip side, now that our parents are older and mostly retired, we have begun traveling with them, too. We try to make sure to spread out trips around so one set of parents does not feel put out if we travel with the other more often.

Travel to the US (about once every 3 years). Next trip: 2010.

@mattbrowne Look us up when you get here. :)