Family Vacation = An Adventure!

Vacationing has always been a bit of an adventure for Jared and I.  Jared is very spontaneous and likes to have “experiences” while I’m usually content with simplicity and familiarity.  Last year, we added 5 children to our typical vacation adventures and it quickly turned into vacation insanity.  A good insanity though…sometimes!

There’s something wonderful about getting out of the town you live in for a while.  We may simply be going from one tourist town to another but for me, it is always a refreshing change of perspective.  Almost like a chance to re-set and I feel that when I get home, I can start over new.  I tell myself that when I get home I will… 

• Cook every night
• Do yoga
• Start vlogging
• Have quiet time at night before bed
• Pray more
• Eat healthier
• Etc.
• Etc.
• Etc.

It’s so easy to set the stresses of every day life aside on vacation.  It is easier to forget about the stresses of work, childcare (and the lack there-of), and all of the day-to-day mumbo jumbo that gets heavier and heavier as time goes by.  

Let’s be serious…I’ve never been able to keep a New Year’s resolution.  I know that I won’t do these things for long.  In addition, when I looked over my list, I realized that these things added at least 3 hours to my day not including the etceteras.  Three hours to an already packed and exhausting life.

It was with all these things in mind that I went to church this morning.  At one point during the sermon, the guest speaker quoted from the book Essentialism by Greg Mckeown and it stopped me in my tracks.  It was so powerful and relevant to all of the things rolling around in my brain that I later looked the entire quote up:

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s.  It was singular.  It meant the very first or prior thing.  It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.  Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.  Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality.  Somehow we would now be able to have multiple “first things”.

I was trying to order my “priorities” when that word shouldn’t even exist.  When I shifted my focus to establishing one priority, everything else on my list seemed manageable.  I know that somehow everything else will fall into place.

This year, instead of taking mostly pictures, we tried to take lots of videos of our adventures.  I love to write and plan to continue to do so, however, we know that there is power in video.  When you watch videos, you feel like you are a part of what you are watching so we plan to begin adding vlogs to our list of communications.  This is something we have felt like we should start doing for a while now but to be honest, we have struggled with differing artistic views and a limitation of skills.  That is code talk for lots of arguing and wasted hours.  This is a very strange and new world for us and sometimes we feel silly for even thinking that our small pebble could cause a big enough ripple to make a difference.  Among many other things, I pray this prayer for our family:

Lord, do something unpredictable and uncontrollable.
The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson

It is a scary thing to pray, but so great is my desire that God use our family somehow.  I’m ready for the scary.

I’ve learned a few things about traveling with kids.  I’m looking forward to sharing with you a few of these in a vlog very soon.