Seasonal Vacations

[low-key]

When growing up did your family only take a vacation in a certain season and do you follow that as an adult ?

When growing up we take one vacation a year and that would be in the summer, as an adult I will take a vacation during any season

 

[minneylovesmicky]

Growing up, every Christmas school holidays, my family would pack up and drive for 2 days and head down south, to my grandparents farm. We would spend our 6 weeks school holidays practically in the middle of nowhere. We had a blast.

My grandparents have both now past and farm sold, so we don’t go there anymore.

We now holiday when ever, try to do it outside of school holidays, as it is both too expensive and too busy on the roads.

 

[E&Cmom]

Growng up when we went on trips, it always the Summer as my dad was a teacher. Our trips tended to revolve around visiting family.

Now we tend to vacation whenever but now having a child in high school I tend to stick to March Break or Summer. It was easier when they were younger.

 

[ronandannette]

I came from a farm family; there was no such thing as time off during any season. We never had one, single family vacation during my childhood. Some years we would travel to other relatives for Christmas or my parents would (very rarely) get away on their own, but being away for even a day involved finding a neighbour to "do chores", which wasn't easy at all.

Over the years we often vacationed with our DS in mid-May (tagged 4 extra days onto the Victoria Day long weekend) and DH and I pretty much always go away in September to celebrate our Anniversary. I practically never take any time off work in the summer or at Christmas - I cover vacations for my staff instead.

 

[L&Lfan]

My parents never took us out of school, so our vacation was always a week in summer, usually August.

 

[RedAngie]

Growing up vacations were always during the summer when school wasn't in session. It was unheard of in those days to take a kid out of school for vacation.

When my kids were growing up, we mainly took vacations in summer, but did go twice during their spring break.

Now that the kids are grown, we rarely vacation in summer. Maybe just a long weekend, but not a full vacation.

 

[mrsheppo]

We mainly took road trips to see relatives and it was always in the summertime. Nowadays, we take vacation when we can find time off with our daughter. Early October is my favorite time.

 

[tvguy]

As a kid vacation trips usually were around the last week of June or first week of July. I don't remember any kids being taken out of school for a vacation in the 1960s. Just wasn't done.

When our kids were in school our family vacations always were worked around school....and Little League season, so often August, just before school resumed. Although, the private high school they went to did allow vacations and make up work....until the Private School had to stop that policy because whatever agency regulates private schools said the school would lose their accreditation if that policy was allowed to continue.

Now, my wife insists on taking a week off every 3 months, even if we don't have travel plans, otherwise she is afraid she might kill a co-worker.

 

[gillep]

My dad had a job that was 7 days a week with no vacation time for most of my childhood, up until he passed when I was in college, as a result we never vacationed at all. Prior to him getting that job, we would go camping on the weekends, but because we lived in Western NY we could only go in the late spring/summer/early fall. My husband and I vacation and travel as much as we can now, and we go back to NY at least a couple times a year to visit family. My husband hurt his back in January, and our dog was very ill, which caused us to have to cancel a vacation and a work trip I had, so I now feel totally cooped up and ready to get on a plane and go somewhere!

 

[Pacolovestacos]

When growing up did your family only take a vacation in a certain season and do you follow that as an adult ?

When growing up we take one vacation a year and that would be in the summer, as an adult I will take a vacation during any season

We normally did one vacation in the summer. Sometimes, we'd also do a spring break trip (Disney World or Puerto Rico) and then do a Rocky Mountains trip in the summer. If we didn't do the spring break trip, we'd normally do Disney in the summer.

And now, I always try to do trips outside of the summer time frame to avoid the crowds.

 

[Disney Doll]

Vacationed in the summer as a kid. I’ll vacation any time of the year now.

 

[PollyannaMom]

Always summer when I was growing up. And it was usually driving to visit relatives. By the time I was a teen, we also went to a ski-resort that opened in the off season for hiking and just relaxing in the mountains. My dad had discovered it at a work convention, and I loved it!

When DH and I were first married, we traveled in May, around our anniversary. Once DS was in "big school" (we did pull him out for a week in preschool) we switched to the school calendar. We usually go to Florida in either February or April, and visit family in NY in the summer.

 

[dish rag]

Growing up we only went during the summer, the rest of the year we would have been in school.

 

[Meriweather]

Growing up....one vacation in summer (school vacation)
My kids...usually one during summer (school vacation)....occasionally spring break time
Now with no kids at home, anytime and usually around 5-6 of them

 

[2forMe]

6 weeks Christmas holiday break... Wow never heard it being that long.

Growing up, every Christmas school holidays, my family would pack up and drive for 2 days and head down south, to my grandparents farm. We would spend our 6 weeks school holidays practically in the middle of nowhere. We had a blast.

My grandparents have both now past and farm sold, so we don’t go there anymore.

We now holiday when ever, try to do it outside of school holidays, as it is both too expensive and too busy on the roads.

 

[loves to dive]

We rarely took a real vacation so to speak when we were young, there were 6 kids in my family (5 boys, 1 girl) and we were pretty strapped for money. We would take drives just about every Sunday and travel around the state we lived in or anywhere within a 3 hour drive distance and have picnics and explore. After I got around 12 or so, we started camping. That is camping with a tent and sleeping bags out in the middle of nowhere with no facilities using a rock to hide behind to go to the bathroom, a campfire to cook on and a river/stream or lake for cooking water, washing the dishes, bathing and water for coffee. We had a huge tent that actually had sort of two rooms, Mama and Daddy slept in one room with cots (lucky them) and we kids slept in the other in sleeping bags on the ground, there was sort of vinyl cover that covered the ground. My two oldest brother's had little pup tents they would pitch beside the big one. Then we would go camping on weekends, long breaks from school and a week or so in the summer. Daddy worked for the state highway so had access to places that other people couldn't go so we got to camp in some pretty untamed places. We even took one trip one summer for two months, drove the old VW van from NM across to California, up the coast to San Franciso, across the mountains and back down, camping the whole way. Sometimes we would just pull over on the side of the road, sometimes Daddy would just take off on some access road, we camped on the beach a lot. Only stayed in a park once, Donner Park (noone got eaten by any other members of the group).

After I got in high school my brother's were grown and moved out, we had a little more money and moved to Saudi Arabia. We vacationed in Rome, Switzerland and England then. After I had a kid (single mom) he and I would take long weekend trips during his school breaks and go places within driving distance and started going to Disney every other year. I tried to take him somewhere for a week in the summer on the off Disneyyear just around Georgia, SC, Florida and TN.

 

[PollyannaMom]

6 weeks Christmas holiday break... Wow never heard it being that long.

I think that poster is from the southern hemisphere? If so, Christmas falls during the longer summer break.

 

[pigletto]

When I was little my grandparents had a small winter home just outside of Clearwater and we would go down to see them for a week or two every winter. That started my love of Disney as we would do day trips from Clearwater.
We also would drive to the Rockies to visit my Aunt in Alberta in the summer. Sometime around 5th grade my grandparents sold the winter place, but my parents bought a cottage in Northern Ontario and that was what we did for vacation for many years.
As I got older my parents had 5 more kids and really dedicated their lives to their careers and there simply wasn’t time or money for all of us to travel. It’s harder to arrange anything with 6 kids . I was the oldest by 10 years and they travelled a lot more after I moved out. Everyone was older by then and money was better.

We’ve done summer and winter travelling. Climate wise I prefer cottage or a road trip in the summer, and to go somewhere warm in the winter. My kids are in high school and college and when you add in work schedules its becoming almost impossible to find a week that works for everyone. My kids don’t get the same school breaks except Christmas. I will squeak something into next winter though.. I really value that time together.

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

Growing up we vacationed for at least a week or two during the summer and over our Spring Break, which was always the week after Easter. My dad was a Forest Ranger, and my mom was a school teacher. Our trips weren't fancy. When we 4 kids were really little, we tent camped in National Parks and at State Beach campgrounds. Occasionally we got a cabin at Lake Tahoe that was owned by the US Forest Service. We moved up from a tent to a travel trailer when my little brothers started walking. It was easier for my mom to corral us all and keep an eye on everyone with a trailer. We went all over the place - drove down into Mexico (Ensenada) and across the USA, visited the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion, Mt Hood, Oregon, many beaches up and down California, WDW, NYC (stayed at a campground in New Jersey), Delaware beaches. It was super fun! When I was in college, my parents bought their first resort timeshare and stopped trailer camping. My brothers, sister, and I still try to vacation together with them, our spouses and the grandkids every two or three years. We've done San Diego; Williamsburg; Puerto Penasco, Mexico; Lake Tahoe; Grand Canyon and Hawaii (3 times). As you can see, we wanted to re-visit many of the places with our own kids that my parents took us to as children.

With our own children, DH and I vacationed for 1 or 2 weeks each summer. Once they hit school age, we also went away for Spring Break. I'm a teacher like my mom, so we are still limited to school breaks. Now that my kids are both in college, our Spring Breaks are at different times. DH and I still vacation then, but the kids can't come with us. They either come home to rest or go somewhere with their friends. Summer vacations are hard for my kids now too due to their summer jobs and internships. They will usually join DH and me for a long weekend during our summer trip to the beach. So now we've started going away for a few days over Christmas Break as a family. We've done 3 days in Colonial Williamsburg and the Great Wolf Lodge one year, and 4 days in the Poconos the following year. Over Christmas Break 2018, we are going on a 5 day cruise to the Bahamas. Christmas Break has become our new family vacation time.

 

[scrhsa]

Every other summer we would go to family in NC. Occasionally we would go over Christmas. I did not stick to that. My husband being military and with us homeschooling early on, vacation was whenever he got leave