Family Vacation

Hubby and I have had fun at the Vail Summer Mountain Games for many years.  We ran the 5K mud run a month before we got married, we took our dog Lloyd to compete in the dock dog events several years running, and we've taken our kids the past few years.

Some years we have driven to and from Rifle, some years I've stayed in Vail with the kids while Hubby works in Rifle or does graduate school, but never have we had a family fun vacation in Vail like the one we had last week.  In fact, Hubby and I realized that never before have we had a family vacation since we've had kids like we had last week in Vail.

Hubby and I have definitely done our fair share of travel -- both before we met, and after we began our relationship and were married.  When we had Tracey, we didn't really stop traveling, she just came with us.  When we had the twins, we still traveled to see family but our recreational travel had to take a hiatus while we reached an equilibrium of normal.

All that to say, all of our traveling since we've had children consisted of visiting family, traveling somewhere for an event and then traveling home, or traveling somewhere with family.  Last October I told Hubby that I planned a little getaway for just our family of five in Colorado Springs... but he didn't know that his family was going to surprise us there... so that wasn't just the five of us anymore.

Our five days and nights in Vail was the first family vacation we have ever taken just our little family of five (and counting) and we had so much fun.  Even in past years when I've been in Vail in the same scenario, Hubby had other obligations.  We have never both arrived on the same day and spent every day as a family doing nothing but fun vacation activities.

I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over, but I really can't express enough how much FUN we had with our kids.  We were fortunate enough to be using my parents condo for our time there, so we had plenty of space and a full kitchen, so we brought plenty of food, we packed everything we would need from home -- a lot of stuff... but it paid off.  We never had to buy any meals in Vail, and we were always close enough to the condo to get the kids back for an afternoon nap.

Our days consisted of swimming, walking to parks, picnic lunches, finding parks with fountains, finding the childrens' activities at the Go Pro Mountain Games, and renting some movies.  Nobody was ready to leave when it was time to go home.

More than anything, I think it opened Hubby and my eyes to how important family vacations are just for our family.  Its so easy to live and work in Colorado and then travel to see our families with our vacation time.  We need to make sure our kids see their extended family and spend time in St. Louis and Michigan... but we also need to take a few days, a few weeks each year to dial in and take a family vacation just the Mountain Millers.