Post-Vacation Blues

I am good at going on vacation. I'm not good at being on vacation and staying home. I like to go places, experience new things, get the heck out of town....you get the picture. When I plan, I like to plan way ahead. I enjoy making packing lists and I'm notorious for visiting the $1 travel toiletry aisle in Target and purchasing way too many items that I know I don't need. When we have reached our destination, I try to enjoy each and every moment and not worry about having to pack up again to leave. I'm rarely that person that says, "Okay, it's been great but I'm ready to go home and get back to a routine." Nope, I'm typically the person that cries and tries to figure out how we can possibly extend our trip. I drag my feet and pout. I let out big sighs and annoy people around me.

I wish I could say it ends there, but for me, it can last weeks after a vacation. I'll look at the time and say to myself, "This time last week we were enjoying dinner outside / at the beach / watching a parade, etc." And then I start to feel sad and immediately start planning our next trip, even if it's an entire year away. Some of my favorite memories from childhood were the many vacations we took as a family. This year, we initially kept our trip to Disneyland a secret from the kids. We tricked ourselves and said we wanted to surprise them. But, I soon realized it wasn't really about surprising them (although I love to do that too). Deep down, I didn't want to deal with them nagging me and asking me millions of questions about the trip, "When do we leave again?" "How long will we be there?" "Does the hotel have a pool?" "Can we leave NOW?"

I recalled my childhood and remembered the excitement in just being able to look forward to a trip. I remember daydreaming about all the fun things we would get to do. I remember making lists at a very young age of the items I needed to bring with me. I remember staying up with my sister talking about our upcoming vacation. And I realized I didn't want to rob my children of having those same feelings of excitement and anticipation. So, we shared with them. And they jumped up and down, and had tons of questions, and couldn't contain their excitement when we talked about it.

I love the memories we create with each trip we take and I hope their memories of our journeys will be as treasured as mine are. It makes the post-vacation blues and exhaustion sooooo worth it.