Vacation Vibes!

August 7, 2024

In my dreams I see myself vacationing where someone makes me all my meals and brings me pretty umbrella drinks as I lounge by a pool. However, my reality looks a little different!

When we’re lucky enough to go on vacation to the beach or a lake, we save a lot of money by renting a place with a kitchen. Yes, this means I do some cooking and cleaning, but I would rather do that than spend our money going out for all our meals. I view vacation as a time to relax, reconnect, and be together as a family. I think our money is better spent on excursions such as putt putt golf or the water park. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll go out a couple of times or order in for pizza on the beach, just not every night. Plus, we like not being too structured. We can eat in our bathing suits if we want to, or have a picnic dinner on the beach. (It’s the best time of the day on the beach!)

To ensure our vacation isn’t just “relocation” with all the same daily chores, I’ve developed a system that keeps everyone fed, happy and lets me relax too.

After we unload all the kids and our gear, I head straight to the grocery store. I load up with everything we will need for the entire week. I’ll have planned our meals and edited my grocery list so I won’t spend any extra time shopping. I want to get to the beach!

Before you leave home:

Plan ahead. This can be done from the comfort of your home or office. By planning ahead you won’t sacrifice any precious vacation time.
Find your store: It’s easy change your zip code in the DinnerTime Planner to find a store at the beach. Open the setting gear icon and click open “My Settings”. Change the zip code to the area where you will be staying. Finish by clicking the “Update” button at the bottom of the page.
Create your meal plan. Choose the store you want to shop, day you want to shop and the number of days to plan. Indicate “other plans” for those times you want to splurge on a restaurant meal.
Pick meals you know will work on vacation. Normally, I love to get recommendations for new-to-me recipes, but for vacation planning, I like to use tried and true recipes from my DinnerTime Recipe Box “favorites”. Usually, I make chicken, steak and burgers. For both the chicken and steak I’ll make double what we need, so I can repurpose the next night. Shrimp is a good choice, too. We’ll have chicken on the grill one night and then chicken wraps the next night for an on-the-beach dinner. Extra steak, chicken or shrimp make a great addition to a salad, which is just right on a hot summer night. Rock your recipe box to find just what you want.

Ready for fun:

Set your vacation house rules right away. First night I always cook. Over dinner, we talk about what we want to do for fun, like a “best sandcastle” contest. It also gives us an opportunity to remind everyone of the house vacation rules.
Outline expected shared duties. We include everyone in evening clean up after dinner. The crumbs and sand quickly multiply, so take a few minutes each evening to wipe down counter tops and give the whole first floor a nice sweep.
Communicate expected responsibilities such as making their bed every morning, hanging towels and wet suits on the line outside, adding dirty laundry to the basket in the laundry room and storing the beach toys and chairs where they belong. “Clean up as you go” is one of our favorite sayings. I’m not on vacation to clean up after others any more than necessary. Little kids can still help and when they become big kids, they’ll already know the drill.
Review the safety-first rules. Everything from making sure they apply sunscreen often to not entering the water without permission.The most important safety rule for our family and any friends we’ve included, is to know that when we say to get out of the water we mean NOW. There is no arguing, ignoring or negotiating!
Remind children to be respectful of the other folks also enjoying their vacations. Don’t kick sand, run across other people’s towels or play your music too loudly.
Put away electronics. Take a vacation from social media. We allow electronics to watch movies on rainy days, otherwise we’re all about playing board games and reading books.
Enforce a quiet time. Regardless of age, we enforce quiet time for one and half hours. The little kids sleep, and sometimes the older ones will too. Most likely they will read or play cards. It gives us parents the opportunity to not have to watch the kids in the water. Plus, we found we have fewer meltdowns from overly tired children and grumpy grownups. That makes my vacation so much nicer too.
Insist on taking a family photograph. All ages love to see their pictures over the years reminding them of all the fun they had on their family vacations. Capturing these moments in time are priceless.