January 8, 2011

Priorities

It's been tough going for this blog lately, life just seems to be constantly intervening in my plans to write more and more frequently. What once occupied a 3-4 paragraph blog post is now condensed to a 1-2 sentence Facebook status update. Not by choice. I'd still much rather be writing blog posts than opting for the much easier/quicker FB post. I just need to figure out a way to build it back into my list of things to prioritize.

Speaking of Priorities.

A rather common response to my FB posts while traveling is (or is similar to): "How do you manage to go on so many vacations?" Well, traveling has always been a priority for my husband and I, and we always planned to maintain it as a priority once we had children. We maximize every second of my vacation time from work so that we can go on as many trips as possible. I don't spend much $ on clothing, our home is decorated with artwork carefully accumulated through swaps with other artists, and we're big fans of IKEA. We'd rather work a 60 hour work week while simultaneously completing a major project on the house and just forgo sleep than use our vacation time to complete the project on the house when we could be traveling. Some would call this nuts, but there's little we look forward to more than traveling together. So, we cram as much in to our working weeks as possible and save as much of our income as possible so that we we can be on vacation traveling together as often as possible. It's our priority.

We spent Christmas in MN and New Years in Mexico. Despite not being able to fly home to NY in between these two trips due to the epic snow storm that closed all NY airports for what felt like YEARS we were able to make both trips, on time, and in very good spirits. We had to tack on a flight to Houston and spend the night at the hotel airport, but in all honesty all this did was make Ash really happy that he'd finally been to TX - a state Daddy's been traveling to for work pretty frequently lately. And ANYTHING Daddy related is about as cool as it gets for Ash, so the stopover in Houston was just icing for him. And his little sister Leni? Champion. At the ripe old age of 6 months she's already well seasoned in the art of falling asleep the minute the landing gear touches down at our destination.

Next month we're taking them to London for a long weekend, and plans are in the making for a trip back to Ethiopia in April. There's no doubt that this year's vacation time is going to be stretched as thinly as possible.

And we wouldn't want it any other way.

How else do you end up with a story of your 3 1/2 year old dropping his bright blue van matchbox car through the cracks of the ocean-side bar only to be seen looking on in horror (or fascination) at the scene of two giant crabs quickly snatching up the opportunity to play with something new? And then the follow up conversation where said 3 1/2 year old boy insists he needs to swim out to sea to scold the crabs who stole his van. Needless to say there are now two crabs in Mexico with a sparkly new blue van to play with cause there was no way in schizzle mommy was crawling under that deck to rescue the van knowing who were the other occupants under the deck.

Just sayin.

And don't get me wrong. All 4 of us LOVED sleeping in the comfort of our own beds once we returned to snowy plow-deprived NY. But I'll be honest with you, it only took about 12 hours before we were back on kayak.com searching for the next flight.

6 comments:

Jill said...

I love that you get to travel so much and share with us! So much fun.

Ethiopia? So j.e.a.l.o.u.s. So so jealous. What are you planning to do? Sight seeing or fact finding? I have a lot of fact finding I want to do over there. And when I am able to finally go back, I plan to actually OPEN my eyes and breathe....two things I forgot to do the first time!

Christine said...

And it is a snowy time here, right? This last snow was so beautiful, it took my breath away. I admire you traveling so much, especially with the 6 month-old. It's amazing!

Anonymous said...

Jo, you should not have to justify. I think its fantastic that you guys take the kids everywhere whilst maintaining a bit of "alone" time for yourselves as well.
you teach all of us BALANCE. Work is just the way we pay the bills...not what we should be preoccupied by. FAMILY is what's important. And you are creating so many amazing memories for yours.

Gretchen said...

Yep- your travel stories make me very, very happy. I love that you go on them and share stuff with the rest of us- I can almost feel the sand on my toes.

Gamma! said...

And I LOVE living vicariously through our kids so keep it up! :)

Carol McG said...

You and Mike are building family memories whether they are at home or on vacations. You are making travel a priority instead of material possessions and your kids will grow up with a huge advantage by being exposed to so much of the world outside their back door because of it. It works for your family so keep it up and don't be concerned about justifying it to anyone else.