Claude was able to take most of this week off to enjoy a little staycation. A few days off, no packing or unpacking, regular sleep times, and some special activities made for a great week. Overall it was fun, refreshing, and inexpensive. In total we spent about $150 including three meals that we ate out, extra gas used for driving, and the cost of activities. Praise the Lord!
We kicked things off with a backyard pool party on Mother's Day.
Then we headed out to Brenham for a truly Texan experience - Blue Bell Creameries!
The forecast was for rain on Tuesday, so we planned to take the kids to their first-ever movie in a theatre. 11:00am on a weekday morning is definitely THE best time for the six and under crew to see a movie. There were only three other people in the theatre! And none of them seemed to mind Jeremiah's narration of everything he saw on the screen.
Our last couple of days were spent around the house - doing some chores and going on little outings. We rode bikes to the neighborhood park, took a quick trip to the library, got some school supplies, sprayed for weeds and bugs, and read plenty of books together.
We were planning to go out of town for a couple of days since that seemed like it would provide more of a true vacation feel. Being at home, even on days off, can sometimes just feel like a drag - the dishes and laundry are still there, the kitchen floor is getting sticky, and the kids still need discipline and correction. Oh, wait...going out of town would mean that we would dirty dishes and laundry, get the floor sticky, and throw tantrums in a different location! ;)
In the end, staying at home was a great option! Here are a few things we did to make our staycation feel a bit like a break from regular day-to-day activities:
1. We nixed the cloth diapers for the week.
2. We used paper plates for most meals to reduce kitchen clean up.
3. We ate out or ordered food in for a few meals.
4. We held loosely to our regular schedule. Since predictable routines and sleep make everything better, keeping to our schedule was a big help. But notice I said that we held loosely to the routine. This gave us structure and direction when we needed it and still allowed us to change things up when we wanted to.
All in all I think we struck the balance between rest and activity, novelty and routine which would have been more challenging had we gone away for a "real" vacation. The week was so successful that we're hoping to do it again later in the year. And, Lord willing, we will miss out on the post-staycation fallout...I guess we'll know come Monday morning. At the very least we don't have to unpack anything! ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment