School Vacation Week and Travel Thoughts

For me, the itch to travel usually flares up at the beginning of February.  By that point, I've had enough of winter and here in New England, warm weather is still months away.  I typically dream of tropical destinations.  Unfortunately, for the past several years, we haven't been able to take full advantage of the school's February or April vacation weeks because Rich is required to attend a specific meeting at work and that meeting always falls during vacation week and, yes, everyone knows it's vacation week.  This is the kind of meeting you can't just miss out on because of vacation.  Deathly ill, okay.  Vacation, nope.

This had me thinking about office culture.  Over 20+ years of my career, I worked for four different companies and I'd have to say that the culture was fairly similar when it came to employee vacation time.  It was extremely rare for anyone to take more than one week of vacation at a time.  Sure, people sometimes tacked on a day or two, but not two full weeks back to back outside of special vacations, such as honeymoons or international travel (rare.)  And, truthfully, at times it would have been impossible given my responsibilities to be gone for two weeks.

I'm mentioning all of this because people have asked why we don't go away during vacation weeks.  It's not that we don't want to get away, but that sometimes life is happening and there are big kid commitments and work schedules and sometimes vacation isn't possible at certain times.  Hawaii is a perfect example of this.  Flying to Hawaii from Boston is a looooooooong day.  I've done it twice as a younger well-rested-I-don't-yet-have-kids adult and I was exhausted both times.  I suffer from motion sickness and while I'm okay on shorter flights, a full day of flying does me in.  I learned this lesson the hard way the first time I flew to Hawaii.  My friend and I flew from Boston to California, then CA to Honolulu, then Honolulu to Maui.  I felt so sick on that flight to Honolulu.  I basically spent five hours trying not to vomit.  Now I always carry Dramamine with me.  While that helps with not feeling sick, it wipes me out.  Unfortunately, Emily gets motion sick very easily.  I'm talking a 30 minute car ride.  Thankfully, she does well with Dramamine for kids.  (Maybe I should try that out, instead of the adult version.)  

If you do Hawaii the right way (from Boston), you need more than a week.  We were waiting for the girls to be older for this trip to make it easier and more enjoyable and now that they are older, we can't just pull them out of school or have them miss dance commitments.  The last time the girls missed school for vacation, they were in the second grade and their teachers gave them packets with all the work they would be missing.  Not just homework.  All the work.  They completed it little by little - some on the flights and some during downtime in the resort rooms.  But honestly, who wants to deal with that on vacation?  Last month, both Emily and Allie each missed a day of school due to sickness.  They were legitimately ill with a fever and freaked out over missing one day of school because of having to deal with making up the work and tests/quizzes.  Teachers seem to be easier on kids who are out due to illness versus those pulled out for vacations.  At the end of the day, it wasn't a big deal for Allie and Emily but I can't imagine all the work and what would be required if they missed a week of middle school for vacation.  With everything going on right now, this hasn't been the year for Hawaii.  Soon.



We travel to Florida a lot because it's an easy direct flight lasting three, maybe three and half hours.  Hawaiian Airlines just started flying direct to Honolulu out of Boston a few weeks ago and it's about an eleven hour flight.  That's a BIG difference.

When we purchased our condo in the St. Pete Beach area last year, the thought was that we could use it for shorter periods between rentals.  (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can catch up HERE, HERE and HERE.)  Each area (and each condo association) in Florida has specific rules regarding rental periods.  Some condos we looked at were able to be rented for shorter periods, such as 7 days (we were told these had been grandfathered in), while others had longer periods, such as 30, 60 or 90 days.  For our condo, the rental period must be a minimum of 60 days.  Because our condo was not furnished, the realtor we had been working with suggested offering it for a longer term rent versus 60 day rentals.  By doing this, we wouldn't have to buy furniture and stock the kitchen, etc.  Rich and I talked it over and agreed to try this but we decided that if it wasn't rented by late November, we would furnish it and look for a last minute winter rental (the most popular.)  We did find a tenant who signed a one year lease back in October.  So, yeah, sort of a bummer that we are unable to use it right now ourselves but it's obviously much better for cash flow purposes to have it rented full time.  



Last week was our April school vacation week.  We kicked it off by celebrating the girls' twelfth birthday.  This year, their birthday fell on the last day of school before the start of vacation.  They opened gifts before school but because they and their friends had dance that evening and I had dance that night, we didn't do anything big.  Rich picked up take-out - pizza, pasta, fries and my order of garlic bread, which why is it that my food order, no matter how basic gets messed up or forgotten? - and then we all went out for frozen yogurt after my tap class.  That weekend, the girls' friends met them at the nail salon and they all got manicures.  Then everyone came back to our house for cupcakes and to hang out.  It's nice when they can entertain themselves without parental involvement.

A former student from the girls' dance studio (she also teaches some dance classes at the studio now) is graduating from college and the dance teams all went to watch her perform in a dance showcase.

While we didn't have the most exciting week in school vacation history, we kept busy.  I had thought about taking the girls into Boston for a day or seeing if my brother was going to bring his kids in and we could meet up but the weather did not look too promising.

(If you're ever thinking of traveling to Boston, please know that the weather in April can be hit or miss.  It can be 70 and sunny or 45 with a bitterly cold rain.  You can read my Boston Tour Guide by a Bostonian HERE and  Where to stay in Boston post HERE.  And if you're curious about Cape Cod, my travel guide is HERE.)



Here's a rundown of our week:

Monday - Marathon Monday, and Patriots' Day, here in Boston.  I was awakened by what sounded like buckets of water hitting my windows.  The wind was so strong, I thought there was a train running through the yard.  Anna came running in my bedroom at 7:15.  "The rain and wind are freaking me out!"  I love how the girls, unprompted by me, watched the marathon on television that morning.  In the afternoon, the girls and I visited my parents and helped them out with some things.  The WWI Memorial Park is on the way home so I told the girls we would stop by and check out the animals since the skies had cleared up.  Of course, as soon as we got in the van, raindrops started falling again.  It wasn't too bad so we stopped by for a quick walk through.

Tuesday - The girls had a two hour tap class in the afternoon so we really didn't do much else.  Laundry.

Wednesday - My brother had his kids for the week and needed to go into work for a day so I told him I would keep an eye on the kids.  The girls really enjoy hanging out with their cousins so it worked out well.





I brought them all to the beach and it was freezing.  We live about a half hour away (my brother lives a 3 minute ride away) it was more than 10 degrees warmer at my home than here.  Also, with the wind blowing, the real feel temp was ridiculous.


At high tide during storms, waves crash over this wall.


Look at how rocks brought up by winter storm waves have taken over the bottom of the ramp.


Girl pack.

Thursday - Emily's BFF, who is also good friends with Allie and Anna, came over for the afternoon.  We're friends with her parents and all met up for ice cream that night after dinner.

Friday - The girls' 12 year well visits were scheduled for this morning.  I really like our pediatrician and his office for many reasons but also because I'm able to schedule the girls' appointments one right after the other without issue.  I've heard from other triplet parents that there are doctors who do not allow more than two back to back appointments.  We've actually run into this with the orthodontist we've been going to.  You can only schedule two sibling appointments back to back.  The office is fairly close by and it's only come up once so not really an issue.  Plus, the girls are in slightly different places with their ortho work and usually don't all need appointments at the same time.

Friday afternoon we went to my parents' house again and headed out for Easter groceries.  That was mayhem.  Stop and Shop employees had been on strike all week, pushing shoppers to other stores, which lead to an extremely crowded shopping situation.

We hosted Easter this year so Saturday was mainly spent getting ready.  We went to church Easter morning and then everyone came over for a late lunch.  Fun was had by all.  Thankfully, the rain moved out so the kids were able to enjoy an outdoor egg hunt.



The girls picked out these dresses (well, technically, Anna's is a romper) from Target.  I love how they'll be able to wear them all summer.  I feel like Target has been hit or miss for us lately but I was pleasantly surprised with the selection of dresses they had out for Easter.  We are finally moving up to size 10-12 and I need to replace a lot of their warmer weather clothing.  I just pulled out a bunch of size 6x shorts Emily wore last summer and told her they had to go away.

This week, we're back to business.