Vacation By The Gulf

My family isn’t really a ‘vacation’ family. With my conferences and my husband’s conferences and my family being over a thousand miles away, most of the time when we travel it’s work or family related. Plus, my husband tends to not take time off (seriously, even after our vacation he still has three weeks worth of paid vacation available). But last spring my father in-law told us he wanted to go see the sea.

He’s getting up there in age and, even though we only live four hours from the gulf, he isn’t able to drive long distances. So we agreed to our first honest to goodness vacation in probably fifteen years. As the months went by, I started having second thoughts. It was going to be expensive. We were going to have to find someone to care for our dogs. Our boys were going to have to miss some school. I’m in the middle of planning an event for our neighborhood and in the middle of edits for two books. But we’d promised to take my in-laws to the sea and I believe firmly in keeping promises.

So…we got back from the gulf Tuesday afternoon. We were there for four nights. We rented a condo

in Port Aransas. And? It was expensive, I worried about our dogs, the boys are busy catching up at school, and I’m still crazy busy with the event (happens next Saturday) and edits. But it was worth it. It’d been so long since we’d gotten away without to just relax for a bit that I’d actually forgotten how wonderful and fun it can be.

We played with our kids in the surf every day we were there. We laughed more than I thought possible. We discovered that if there are jellyfish on the beach, don’t get into the water. A little late but no one was stung so still a success. My kids ate calamari for the first time (and they loved it!). We saw dolphins in the marina. But, most importantly, we remembered what it was like to actually slow down and just live. We stopped and smelled the salt water in the air. And we’ve already started planning our next trip. Not sure if it’ll be to the gulf, but we’ve learned that having fun is every bit as important as working.