The topic for this week’s Time Travel Tuesday, created and hosted by My Life as Annie, is “Vacation Memories.” Annie asks:

We are traveling back (in our minds) to vacations… either a favorite one, or most memorable.
Do you have any special vacation memories? Where did you go? Did you camp out, or stay in a hotel?

Some of you who read here regularly will have seen a little of this in a childhood meme a few weeks ago.

I don’t remember that we actually went on vacations except to visit relatives. I don’t remember going to amusements parks as a family: my first memory of a hotel was during my high school senior trip.

When we did visit relatives, we usually went to see my father’s mother and brother who lived in LA (we lived “next door” in TX). The thing I loved about that particular uncle was that, of his 5 kids, 3 were girls close to my age and all of our birthday were in August. One was a year older than me, one was the same age I was, and the other was a year younger. I remember once we celebrated all of our birthdays at once with a big party complete with relay games. I think that was the first time I ever had a big party like that.

My father’s mother, affectionately nicknamed Nannie, had children in TX, LA, and AL and she would drive around to visit them all. We used to call her the Galloping Grandma. 🙂 There were a few times she took me with her, and I enjoyed traveling with her.

Other than that, if we went anywhere it was to the beach. I grew up in Corpus Christi, TX, and we made multitudes of excursions to Padre Island. Camp-outs, cookouts, birthday parties — a lot of that kind of thing happened there, besides just regular Saturdays at the beach. We moved from there when I was 13, and I had forgotten how much I missed it until we want back for a family reunion when I was in my early 30s.

Since being married and having kids, one of my favorite vacations was to Charleston, SC. Our kids’ Christian school’s Easter break was a different week than the public schools’ spring break (I wish it was like that ever year!!), so we didn’t encounter all kinds of other families on break. Our pastor used to live in Charleston, so we asked him about places to see and stay. He told us about a hotel right on one of the beaches. It was a little more expensive but oh-so-worth it to be able to go down to the beach any time (and going to sleep with the sound of the surf was nice). We do have modesty concerns and don’t want to go to beaches with the kinds of things people wear — especially with 3 boys — so having that area of beach almost to ourselves for a few days was wonderful. Plus we went on one of the carriage tours (only marred by someone behind us chatting on her cell phone so we couldn’t always hear the guide clearly. Grr!) and visited the Yorktown and went on a harbor tour. It was one of the loveliest vacations ever.

Another time we went down to Clearwater, FL, because my oldest son was interested in Clearwater Christian College, and we took an extra day and went to Sea World. I just loved that, especially the dolphin show.

My husband has often said that all he remembers about family vacations as a child is driving and driving and driving and then having to sit around and listen to adults talk. 🙂 Though that is a part of vacations (and we do want the kids to value getting to know their relatives and not just think vacations are all about their entertainment), we have tried to have a few family excursions like the ones to Charleston or taken an extra day here and there just to do something as a family. Even when we have gone to visit relatives, we’ve tried to take a day or afternoon to see some sights. We used to camp a lot when the two older boys were younger.

Whatever we do, it is just nice to break from routine and spend some time together apart from the usual distractions and duties.