Two of my kids are in theater camp this week. The 13-year-old is enjoying her last summer at a local camp where she’s done shows for the past 5 years or so (the program ends at 8th grade, but she might come back as a CIT). This year she was Scuttle the seagull in the Little Mermaid. We watched her perform last night and she did excellent on her solo number “Human Stuff.” The 5-year-old got to watch her for the dress rehearsal during the day, since he is also in the “mini” camp (pre-K) for the same theater. He performs this afternoon (just a musical medley type thing, not a whole memorized show). So that will be exciting too.
In the meantime, my brain has been filled with two things this week. First, book edits! I have been going through the manuscript of Big Time and making some changes. In particular I’ve been reworking the introduction and I think I have something that works. This took some serious time to ponder, and I came back to it several times. I’m excited to get this book out into the world next spring. I will let people know as soon as it’s available for pre-order!
The second thing? Trip planning. In particular, I’ve been pondering where to take the crew over Christmas break this year. That seems like a long time from now, and it is! But one destination where I was looking (Costa Rica) seems to be almost completely booked up! (At least the hotels, though to be honest, we don’t really fit in hotels anyway). Traveling with 7 people is hard. The school calendar is also such that if I pulled the kids out of school for 2 days we could actually be gone from the evening of Friday December 19 all the way to January 4th. That means if we wanted to do some truly far-flung destination — Australia? — we could. If I only had my older kids, that might be the answer. But I was on a 10-hour flight to/from Hawaii with the 5-year-old this spring, and I’m still a little traumatized from the experience. So then I’m thinking closer, but then I feel bad that maybe the older kids won’t get the bigger travel experience, and while the 18-year-old will travel with us this year I don’t know for sure about the future…
First world problems for sure. (I should note here that I don’t have an unlimited travel budget, but one of the few upsides of my husband’s frequent work travel is that we have used miles for a lot of our family travel over the years, which at least takes that cost down.) I’m a big fan of outsourcing travel planning but usually agents at least want to know where you’re going. And I don’t have buy in from the family about a hotter destination, or colder (Iceland? That could be fun, and the flight is short-ish). Making decisions with 7 people is also hard.
Anyway…this week’s content: If you didn’t get a chance to listen to this week’s Best of Both Worlds episode with CNN’s Kristen Holmes, please check it out! She talks about the logistics of work and life with an unpredictable job, and her experience covering the presidential campaign on-air while visibly pregnant.
This week for the Before Breakfast podcast, I interviewed Anna Dearmon Kornick, a time management expert who looks at how personality affects our schedules. Except for the introversion/extroversion part, she and I have fairly similar Myers-Briggs personality types! In the short episodes, I talked about how “You’re paying for the experience, not the duration.” No need to spend a long time on something just to get your money’s worth! I also suggested looking at “Who’s interrupting you?” While some external interruptions are inevitable, we occasionally interrupt ourselves — and those can be minimized more easily.
Over at Vanderhacks, my Substack newsletter, I wrote about how “None feels different from one.” Even a single event changes a day’s schedule. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes it’s not, but knowing that can allow you to schedule wisely. I also suggested that you “Make your invitations specific.” This vastly increases the chances that get-togethers happen! Behind the paywall I wrote about “One way to make life administration easier” — making tedious tasks a little less tedious. I also suggested asking “What does it cost to be you?” This question — shared by financial expert Bobbi Rebell — helps frame money as a tool. Please consider either a free or paid subscription.
Thanks so much for supporting me and my work!
We have a similar winter break schedule this year and decided to go to Antarctica/ Patagonia with our son. This is unusual for us – we love just being home and enjoying the holidays and the snow, but some destinations require long travels and can only be done well during certain months, so we are going for it and are getting very excited. Looking forward to hearing where you end up going!
@Karin – oh wow, that will be an amazing trip! Yes, the two weeks over Christmas to the southern hemisphere thing is tempting. And the calendars don’t allow for that all the time…
I hope you find a destination that works for all of you with a direct flight. Your older kids have done a lot of cool trips so I can’t imagine they will ever feel short-changed! I mean, I did not get on a flight until I was 19 since my parents didn’t have the resources to fly with 5 kids (we were very middle class) and I don’t have any hard feelings about not traveling as a child.
If it was a different times of the year, you could split up and do different things w/ the youngers and the olders, but that would be tough to do for Christmas! I’m sure you’ll figure it out, though!
I love having memberships to zoos/museum as it’s easier to focus on the experience and not the duration. We used to take very short trips to the zoo when the kids were young – often just 1.5 hours. With the membership, the price/visit was quite low so I really relaxed my standards on how long we needed to be there. Now that the boys are heartier, we can go for longer stretches of time since we don’t have naps and energy limitations to contend with!
@Lisa – true that they’ve done some cool stuff. My first “real” international trip was in college (we lived in Scotland when I was 2 so I was abroad then but have no memory of it). So they’ve definitely got me beat there. I’m sure we’ll figure something out! And yes, memberships are totally a win in that regard. You can leave if you need to and not feel like you’ve wasted $$.
I am with Lisa on this one. I traveled in the US on planes as a kid, but my first international trip was with my husband (then boyfriend) when I was 24 years old. My kids have traveled internationally essentially from birth. We did plan a big bucket list trip for when we knew our oldest son would be able to travel with us. That said, he has zero room to complain if he isn’t able to travel with us in the future. He has taken some amazing trips!