The year I finally took a leap of faith and embarked on trying to live the life I had always wanted to live, but deep down had always been too afraid to, a wise co-worker (an engineer - go figure), asked me a question that became an important catalyst for change in my life. What was the question? A simple but profound one. He asked:
Not as in how many summers until my own journey comes to an end, but how many summers left that my sweet babies are little. He advised that it's important to make the summers count, build the memories and be fully in the moments that matter, because before you know it, your kids are 18 and on their way to their own adventures. The day he asked me how many summers the answer was 9 and 13. Now the answer is 6 and 10. As they say, time waits for no one.
I'm sad I wasted so many summers. Now don't get me wrong, we did fun things over the summers like local museums, the pool, festivals and baseball games (more than I did as a kid), but rarely did we get in the car and just go. A trip to the Indiana Dunes, an overnight hotel with a pool stay near Grandma and one Disney trip, but not often more than that. Work was often my number one focus. Looking back, I worked way too much over those early years. I was always worried about spending money on vacations, and there where always other things we should do with our tight budget because we spent money on stupid things way too much, liking eating out all the time. We were a hot mess back then. Oh who am I kidding, we're still a bit of a hot mess, but aren't we all in our own way.
Are you a little like me? Priorities in the wrong place for way too long? A hot mess in progress? Throw caution to the wind, my friend, and start making memories that will last a lifetime and savoring those summers, even on a budget. It can be done, really it can. Let me tell you how.
How many summers do you have left?
Say what?
Not as in how many summers until my own journey comes to an end, but how many summers left that my sweet babies are little. He advised that it's important to make the summers count, build the memories and be fully in the moments that matter, because before you know it, your kids are 18 and on their way to their own adventures. The day he asked me how many summers the answer was 9 and 13. Now the answer is 6 and 10. As they say, time waits for no one.
I'm sad I wasted so many summers. Now don't get me wrong, we did fun things over the summers like local museums, the pool, festivals and baseball games (more than I did as a kid), but rarely did we get in the car and just go. A trip to the Indiana Dunes, an overnight hotel with a pool stay near Grandma and one Disney trip, but not often more than that. Work was often my number one focus. Looking back, I worked way too much over those early years. I was always worried about spending money on vacations, and there where always other things we should do with our tight budget because we spent money on stupid things way too much, liking eating out all the time. We were a hot mess back then. Oh who am I kidding, we're still a bit of a hot mess, but aren't we all in our own way.
Are you a little like me? Priorities in the wrong place for way too long? A hot mess in progress? Throw caution to the wind, my friend, and start making memories that will last a lifetime and savoring those summers, even on a budget. It can be done, really it can. Let me tell you how.
Careful mindful planning. Really, its that simple. That's the secret.
So we're currently Dave Ramsey-ing it up in this household. Yes, I just said Dave Ramsey in a blog about vacationing. Stay with me.
We've been debt snowballing, and it feels so good, but we also have been taking little vacations with the kids too. Not Disney, but beautiful, relaxing and meaningful time away as a family, and really is Disney ever truly relaxing? Magical maybe, but also costly, hot and stressful at times in this mama's opinion.
With all that working way too much over those early years, we really don't have anything to show for it. Sad, peeps, so sad, and we learned painful lessons in the process.
When Coach Man and I were doing our pre-cana marriage prep, we had to take a compatibility test. The one area he and I failed? Financial. We laughed then. We even have a picture of us holding our test results with that one short bar in that one little area. Good grief, we so should have payed attention to that one small thing. We were young and idiots. We are both horrible with money. Horrible. We've made really poor decisions over our marriage, and we are where we are because of it. More on all of that in another blog.
Fast-forward to now. We are tackling all our debt and slowly making progress. Coach Man and I are okay with that. Because we are no longer comparing ourselves to those around us. We've learned comparison is a thief of happiness, and nobody sets out to be miserable, but we do sabotage ourselves along the journey. We are content now that we're our own story, we're on our path and God's timeline for our life. It's always been His timeline looking back, we were just stubborn and resisting along the way.
So what kinds of vacations do we take? Affordable ones. Ones that fit in our budget, and allow us to still pay off debt. We don't go on spring break or fall break every single year like the Joneses, but we do go places.
We live near Indianapolis and had never explored a city near the top of our state - Fort Wayne. We did an overnight one year to cap off the summer and explored the amazing zoo, Science Central, their baseball team, the Tin Caps, and delighted in a super cheap dinner at Fort Wayne's Famous Coney Island. The kids loved it. I highly recommend a Visit Fort Wayne adventure!
Our State Parks have an awesome with late winter, early spring deal for two-for-one stays at their Inns. We've hit that up and enjoyed incredible stays filled with hiking, swimming, bird-watching, unplugged fun and board games.
We've done a day trip to South Haven, Michigan to enjoy the beach and one of the quaintest small towns I've ever seen. We had a beach picnic, swam all day, took in a gorgeous sunset over pizza on the lighthouse pier and capped off the trip with local ice cream that was heavenly.
We've done the panhandle of Florida, by keeping it simple and sharing costs with another family, vacationing together and cooking most meals in the condo. The kids are just happy to be at the beach jumping the waves, and don't need tons of extras.
And our old standby, the Indiana Dunes. We even camped one year. Talk about a budget year. Plus I'm not really a camping kind of girl, but I need to get over that. The kids loved it! They still laugh over Daddy's raccoon encounter. We were dirt poor that year, but they didn't know it. They had the time of their lives camping in a tent.
I guess what I'm getting at is that the delightstruck moments that matter most and the moments that the kids will take with them are often the simple ones, where we were just together and having simple fun. Adventuring together and savoring the moments as they come. But to get to this point, this mama had to quit stressing over perfect, the right time, the perfect place, the right amount of money saved... I had capture the moments now, not wait, and plan vacations that were achievable for us with our long-term goals in mind.
So why am I writing about summer now, well because, I'm in planning mode right now. We're discussing and planning, so the summer of 2018 is full of special and moments we want to savor forever. Stay tuned and follow along at @delightstruck_jen on Instagram to see where we adventure this year.
- Jen
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