What I Did On My Winter Vacation

I am under no delusions.  I know most of you read this blog to hear about the kids.  And I’ve been slacking in that department lately.  Today is no exception.  You get to hear how I spent my break.

I am lucky enough to work for a company who has a shut-down every year between Christmas and the New Year.  This is paid time off in addition to my regular weeks of vacation (currently 3 weeks per year).  Not too shabby.  This year I decided to also take the 3 days before Christmas.  Mr. Brown works for a company that does not allow you to roll vacation days from one year to the next.  It’s a use it or lose it policy.  So he decided to use it.  We both had off from December 19 – Jan 3.  Not too shabby.

Now, this next bit may cause some of you to want us to wear scarlet letters of BP (bad parent) on our shirts.  And that’s fine with me if it’s not your cup of tea but it was perfect for us.  For 6 of the 16 days we were on vacation we sent the kids to daycare.  That’s right.  We were not chomping at the bit to squeeze out every last ounce of quality family time we could.  We had a great time with them the other 10 days but for 6 wonderful days we got to be adults unbridled by 2 toddlers who argue over toys, demand naps and insist on feedings on a regular basis of food more substantial than popcorn.

What did we do with our wonderful days together?  We saw a lot of movies.  I was fortunate enough to have received some movie passes from work and we had some coupons from our movie watcher card that allowed us to see several movies (including snacks) for next to nothing.  One day we managed to get 2 tickets, 2 small popcorns and 1 large drink for the outrageous price of $1.  Yep, just one George Washington. 

My review of the movies we saw in order of their awesomeness (or lack thereof)

1. The Blind Side – a must see
2. Sherlock Holmes
3. It’s Complicated
4. Up In The Air
5. Did You Hear About The Morgans – wait for video
6. John Tucker Must Die – a library pick 
7. Paul Blart – Mall Cop – yes, we did watch this.  Mr. Brown checked it out of the library.  I’m glad we didn’t pay money to see it.

In addition to seeing movies we went to lunch – a lot. It’s rare these days that we get to dine alone.  So we took full advantage of it and had Italian, pizza, Thai, fish & chips, baby back ribs and bagels.  This was a bit out of our budget but we made great use of our Entertainment Book coupons and got several things for ½ price.

Among the rest of the time we finished our Christmas shopping, wrapped presents, bought/built shelves for our basement that was in desperate need of some organizational help and of course spent quality time together just hanging out.  We spent surprisingly little time doing nothing.   But everything we did was enjoyable for us.

It was wonderful!  I highly recommend this kind of stay-cation to any parents out there who need a little break.  It was a nice change of pace from the usual holiday insanity.   There were no visiting relatives so we didn’t need to worry about keeping spic & span house.  And it was much more relaxing than a vacation to visit anyone else – no planes, no airport delays, no traveling with toddlers, no staying in a hotel or another person’s home, no rental cars, no packing or unpacking, no keeping the kids from destroying a non-toddler-proofed house.  Just a chance to reconnect with one another and enjoy our life.