Vacation Days

One of my favorite things about my family is the fact that we have certain family traditions that we work hard to maintain. The most relaxing of these being our annual trip to the Outer Banks in the end of August for a family vacation.

My parents originally began taking my siblings and I to the Outer Banks back in 1985. The first year we went to Kitty Hawk and then we moved further down and started to spend our summers in Duck, North Carolina instead. This annual family vacation morphed over the years from one week to two weeks and we upgraded from smaller town homes further away from the beach to large sprawling houses on the beach that were so big we were all permitted to bring a friend with us on vacation.

I can't remember when exactly the vacations ended, but after about 8 or 9 years, they ceased because my older siblings left for college and came home and worked over the summer or went abroad and eventually I went away to boarding school, so late August vacations were no longer conducive to everyone's busy schedules and preparing for a new school year.

Sometime after my brother graduated college and got married he and his wife re-instituted the annual trip to the Outer Banks. They rented homes for two weeks that could accommodate everyone in the family and their spouses and we were all invited to join them. These vacations picked back up in the late 1990's- 1997 to be exact, I think. These were fabulous times. We were all older and immersed in our own lives but for one week every August we made the trek to the shores where we had spent our childhood summers. Fond memories of past summers always came flooding back and new memories were made. We lingered on the beach during the day, indulging ourselves in the luxury of uninterrupted pleasure reading. Cocktail hour usually began no later than 4pm and we all took turns cooking dinner. We would all leave the beach with a sun kissed glow and a refreshed outlook on life.

By the time we hit the new millennium, my brother and his wife had a child and my sister was engaged and I was living with the man who would later become my husband. With only one kid in the mix in 2001, things were not that different the first year or even the first two years at the beach. He was little and still slept a lot, so other than having to be a little quieter at night so that the baby could fall asleep, our family tradition of a week at the beach was not that different.

Enter 2007. By then there were three kids in the mix and 8 adults. We were all married and we were "in production" as my dad says. The houses got larger and larger every year and cocktail hour started later and later. Being on the beach no longer meant indulging in the pleasure of leisure reading (except for my husband and I who had not started reproducing yet), it involved chasing after little ones who ran around with shovels overhead as they crushed each other's sandcastles squealing with delight.

Summer 2008 marked the start of a new era at the beach. Our family vacations were complete and had come full circle. My parents were there for the week with their three grown children, their children's spouses, and their children's children-apparently I was in the early stages of my pregnancy at the beach the previous summer in August of 2007 but didn't know it until I got home and took a pregnancy test when I couldn't shake "the puking flu" that made me feel awful for weeks. The house we got this summer in Pine Island sleeps 22 people in 8 different bedrooms ( no fold out sofas here) spread out over three floors. We have a huge pool out back that is fenced in and we are less than 100 yards from the beach. There are four little monkeys, ages 6, 3, 3, and 1 running around at all times and both my sister and I are pregnant with our second and we are both having a girl. I am due around Thanksgiving and she is due around Christmas.

It is amazing to have this week together every year to regroup as a family and to see each other; plus it is nice for the little kids to grow up together and to really know their cousins. There are so many adults around and so many helpful hands on deck that everyone gets a break. The same person is not cooking dinner every night and there is always someone around to watch your kid for a few minutes so that you can take a shower. With all these wonderful things though comes rivalry. Kids are on different schedules and want different things at different times and they are forced to compromise and share which they are not necessarily used to. It is an adjustment for the adults as well. We are older and have been around each other longer and can act more maturely than the 3 year-olds can, but we too have to give in to other's whims and compromise sometimes. Maybe Dad makes the coffee a lot stronger than you are used to or your sibling does not parent their child the same way you do in similar situations, but these are all things that adults have to learn to adjust to as well as their children.

Being at a beach house can also exacerbate the situation because everyone is out of their element. Kids are not sleeping in their own beds and adults are cooking in different kitchens and having to get the lay of the land of the rental house which is never as equipped as your own home is. All of these things can make tempers flare and patience run thin. People's nerves get frayed and its easy to say things like, " Oh I would never do that" or "He would never behave like that at home, but he's on vacation...." or my personal favorite, "Oh well, I will go back to eating a healthy diet when we get back home."

What do these weeks away teach us and our children? To be patient and communicate so that we can compromise. I feel like I also gain insight, small little glimpses, into the way my siblings parent and reminders about the way my own parents raised us and I find it both reassuring (that I am doing a good job) and encouraging. It is nice to know that other parents go through some of the same battles with their kids that I do and that I am not alone.

These vacations are really a gift in so many ways and they are a reminder of how lucky I am to have a great family that I can share this time with. Yes, there will be times on vacation when I long for my own bed or get distressed because the older kid's screaming woke up my son prematurely from a nap, but it's good for me to be reminded of what it is like to have to roll with the punches and it is also good for my son to learn this lesson from my own example.