Vacation

For as long as Joe and I have been married (7 years on May 11th) we have never taken a real family vacation. When I mean real I mean go away from your hometown for longer than a weekend and stay somewhere other than with family. We have done tons and tons of weekend vacations/getaways, but that is not the same as your week long vacation. Once or twice we spent our alotted week's vacation at my mom's house in Panama City, then we started having children and I had to use my vacation time to help pay for my maternity leave. Last year I realized that I would be able to use my week's vacation time and that we could plan it where we could use income tax money to pay for it. So this vacation has been in the works for almost a year now. In thinking about our vacation, I got to thinking about how I have not seen my aunts and grandmother since our wedding (even longer for my cousins, they live in Pennsylvania) and how I would love to see them. I asked my mom whether she thought we might could plan a vacation at a halfway point and so we settled on Jellystone Park in Cave City, Kentucky. I am so excited. Only 68 more days to go. Not only is there stuff to do there where we will be staying, but tons and tons of stuff to do around the area. This will be the first time my aunts and grandmother will meet my youngest daughter. We are staying in a cabin that will hold us all, so we should get lots of quality time together. I am a huge list person and so today I have been working on my lists and figuring out ideas like only bringing one big bottle of stuff we will all need, or each family taking a night to cook. I am so excited and I just can't wait for the opportunity to experience this with my girls and with my family I have not seen in a while. There is so much that we will all be able to do together, as well as just chilling out there at the cabin. To me vacations are always more fun when you have other people there to experience them with. Very few times have Joe and I gone away together, we almost always go with other couples, we just find it more fun. So this trip should be really great b/c there will be plenty of us that if we want to separate and do different things, we can. I hate to wish away part of my life, but our vacation can't get here soon enough.