Recently I took my two boys on vacation – this was the very first week long vacation we’ve been on. and it was a real fam jam! We traveled to Florida with my parents, sister, brother in law and my nephew. We stayed in a friends 4 bedroom house. Should be a great time right??
Yeah well shoulda, woulda, coulda…..I mean it wasn’t all bad I did have a good time but with such an array of ages we all wanted to do different things while we were away. My boys are 11 and 18 and not the closest of brothers. Still I had been looking forward to this for ages. A few days before we left I got the flu 😦 . I barely made the drive to the airport and was not in a great mood. Bring in two boys with raging hormones and are afraid to fly and let the good times roll!!! You would think that they would be ecstatic to miss school for a whole week and travel to the land of fun and sun. Yeah not so much. I really had no clue if my 18 year old was even going to get on the plane until we actually took off.
Once we got to the Orlando I was in true vacation mode and nothing was going to ruin my trip. We had some great times – visiting Downtown Disney, Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios, Universal City Walk, mini golf, shopping at the outlet malls and some nice meals out. We also spent some quality family time at the rental house playing games, swimming and enjoying each others company. My 2 year old nephew was adorable!
Despite the fun times and adventures I still felt a bit stressed at times trying to make sure my boys each got to do things they enjoyed, weren’t fighting with each other and were respectful when they were doing something that wasn’t on their list. Man there were moments I just wanted to pack them up and ship them off. I couldn’t help feeling a bit embarrassed by their behaviour at times – they came across as ungrateful, spoiled or just down right miserable. I didn’t raise them to be this way and couldn’t believe how selfish they were being. Overall it was a great week but I know now I have some more parenting to do – these two need to realize how fortunate we are as a family to be able to get away together and enjoy so many great attractions.
I can’t help but question my parenting skills after this so I’m hoping I’m not alone. Besides I didn’t let them ruin my time and dragged them to all sorts of wonderful things at Disney – magic kingdom and Downtown Disney. Hopefully they learned you can still enjoy things even if they are geared towards younger kids. I mean I became a pin collector at Disney in a flash and convinced my youngest it was super fun to trade pins with the employees there. I also forced them to smile, take pictures and buy a souvenir at the Magic Kingdom (I know horrible mother). Hopefully one day they appreciate the actual time and money spent on making this a super fabulous Florida vacation.
We’ve been back now for a couple weeks and I’m still playing catch up at work and home but all in all despite the drama from the boys we had a great time with one another and really loved spending the week with the extended family!
Just Breathe Momma 