My husband is in sales and usually “earns” two great trips per year. I use the quotation marks because we always spend a considerable amount of money on these “free” trips and we receive a 1099 for the value of the trip, which we then pay taxes on. Still, it’s a great way to have subsidized travel.
Normally, during January or February, we go to a relaxing winter destination. Some of places we’ve been include Phoenix, San Diego, Cancun, Las Vegas, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa/St. Petersburg. We usually use these as adult getaways and time together as a couple.
Getting away from the day to day-ness of life with kids is important to us. Sometimes we don’t especially feel like we need it and I’ll wonder if the effort to get out of town for a few days is even worth it. Then the trip will roll around and we find ourselves relaxing and re-connecting. It’s always worth it!
During the summer months the company sends us on a longer trip and we often take the kids on these. Through his job we’ve been able to take the kids to Orlando (twice), Maui, San Antonio, Washington DC, San Diego, and New York City. We’ve also gone alone to Montreal, Atlantis in the Bahamas, San Francisco, and Vancouver (British Columbia).
For these trips our hotel room and our two airfares are usually paid for so when we take the kids we pay just the cost of extra airfare and meals, etc. for them. It’s a great, great perk of his job and I especially enjoy being able to expose the kids to so much travel at an early age. The family time is great too.
The more I travel with the kids, the more I want to. We’ve been able to sneak in some trips on our own to Chicago, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and the Gulf Coast. And the list of places I’d like to take them just keeps growing and growing. Recently my daughter called home from a church youth group trip to Colorado and said, “Mom, this place is just so beautiful.” I realized she’d never seen the mountains before and I added that to our list as a place to go as a family.
Just getting away from home and seeing other parts of the country expands their horizons so much and give them (and us) a bigger view of the world. And we’ve only traveled in the US and Canada…I can only imagine the experience of foreign travel.
On our recent trip to NY we toured the UN, including the Security Council chambers, and when we returned to our hotel room and turned on the news we learned an important UN resolution regarding the conflict in the Middle East had been passed that very day. The timing was fortunate and our kids made the kind of connection they could have never made otherwise.
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It sounds like you have been some beautiful places. With two kids under four, we have been trying to do mini-getaways to smaller locations. We did bigger stuff when we were single (living in Boston, hitting Chicago, traveling from IN to Seattle, from Boston to IN, etc..) and now we are exploring Michigan and places that are closer to home. It is manageable and affordable for us and someday (when the kids are grown) we will be doing some solo trips again. There is still so much that I want to see!
Yes, we’ve really been blessed, Amy. Traveling with small kids can be a challenge. We took our kids to Hawaii when they were 6 and 3, however, and it went surprisingly well.
I can’t tell you how much I enjoy traveling with the kids.