Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Planning a Family Vacation

Brian and I have been married for 5 1/2 years and have never been on a vacation. Yes we have moved across country several times, and we do usually get to travel to visit family over the holidays - but as I've told Brian several times those are NOT vacations! So we have begun planning our FIRST ever family vacation! We are planning to go to San Diego next summer probably in June maybe July. Brian will finally be done school by then! I've been wanting to go to Sea World again forever! And lucky for me Brian served his mission in San Diego! How perfect! 

We are working on budgeting everything out so that we are sure to have enough money and actually enjoy the trip! So here is what we have covered so far, and we would love any suggestions from people who have traveled or traveled with kids on things we might be missing out on budgeting and things we may want to take into account with the children. Gwen will be almost 2 and Naomi will be 4 1/2. 

We have taken into account for travel/gas (we'll drive down), hotels, food/dining, park prices, and parking at the parks. 

We want to go to Sea World, San Diego Zoo, and Wild Animal Park. I originally got the idea because I wanted to go to Legoland really bad! However, in considering the children and exhaustion from 4 parks I've ruled that one out. It'll also save over $200! We found a 3 for 1 pass that gets us into those 3 parks for 5 consecutive days! We, of course, will also have to hit up the beach and some of Brian's mission sites. Our girls have never seen the ocean! Isn't that horrible? For two people who grew up on 2 of the countries 3 coasts - our girls have never seen it! And how funny that when they do it will be the one neither of us lived on!!

We are considering staying in a hotel that has some form of a kitchenette so we could purchase our own food and store it and cook it in the room. Its a possibility! 

So, what are we missing? And what are the things we need to take into consideration for the girls? Yay for vacations!

Some side notes not related to the main body of the post:

I am so excited to live somewhere that doesn't have all of its people having the same idea at the same time. I am speaking specifically of the library. I am tired of going to the library and checking on books that interest me and finding out that it has 261 holds on it!! I feel like I'm reading a ton of books that aren't at the top of my list and the top of my list just sits there getting longer! 

Secondly, I think having a card to Sams Club is a horrible thing!! I like walking around in there looking at everything, but the things that I purchase are horrible! I come home with a giant box of Famous Amos cookies, enormous amounts of goldfish crackers, two bags of chips (doritos and sour cream and onion), and some Quaker granola bars. I did purchase other more useful things as well, but I never buy cookies or chips, ever! So here I am with a house full of food that doesn't have to be stored in the fridge so I eat it! Horrors! I can't buy a lot of the useful stuff because we simply don' t have the room. Anyway, I think I should stop shopping there!

6 comments:

Beth said...

You are so organized! I think you have the vacation thing all figured out! :) And word to the Sam's club thing, for me it's just like Ikea, I walk in there needing one thing and suddenly find things that I never needed but MUST have now. *sigh*

Jennifer said...

We did that road trip last summer, and one thing that helped was a ticket system. It would really only be for Naomi, of course. Each day the kids got, I don't know, 5 tickets. They got one taken for acting up, and they could earn them back by acting wonderfully. At the end of the day, if they had all their tickets, they got a little wrapped present. The present was something small and cheap, like a bag of M&Ms or a dollar store toy. But they sure loved it. And I only took away 1 ticket the entire 2 weeks.

Jesse Edwards said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jesse Edwards said...

yeah, I have a costco card...it's great but we spend WAY too much money there. It's a money-sucker.

If you're going to So. Cal I think you should definitely go to Disneyland. We got the citypass which includes 3 day disney park hopper pass, 1 day at universal, 1 day at sea world, and 1 day at either san diego zoo, or wild animal park. It was great. I highly recommend Disneyland! :)

Jesse Edwards said...

yeah, I have a costco card...it's great but we spend WAY too much money there. It's a money-sucker.

If you're going to So. Cal I think you should definitely go to Disneyland. We got the citypass which includes 3 day disney park hopper pass, 1 day at universal, 1 day at sea world, and 1 day at either san diego zoo, or wild animal park. It was great. I highly recommend Disneyland! :)

Jesse Edwards said...

yeah, I have a costco card...it's great but we spend WAY too much money there. It's a money-sucker.

If you're going to So. Cal I think you should definitely go to Disneyland. We got the citypass which includes 3 day disney park hopper pass, 1 day at universal, 1 day at sea world, and 1 day at either san diego zoo, or wild animal park. It was great. I highly recommend Disneyland! :)