Sometime in the summer of 2010, my husband made a suggestion that I initially laughed off as completely impossible and absolutely absurd.  His suggestion?  ”Let’s go to the cabin in the mountains for the week after Christmas!”

To provide some background – we found a cabin in the mountains of PA, about 4 hours from our home, where it doesn’t cost to take our 3 kids or our 2 small dogs.  It’s close enough that it’s not a long trip, but far enough away that we feel like we’ve actually gone away.  It has 2 bedrooms, a bathroom with a shower, all bedding and dishes and cookware is provided.  We just take ourselves, our clothes and our food.  It has heat, there’s a lovely gas fireplace to sit and enjoy at night, and a place to make a campfire outside.  My favorite thing is to sit on the porch swing and enjoy the fire outdoors.  We’ve gone up a few times as a summer getaway, but the idea of a getaway the week after Christmas seemed absurd.

My thinking: The kids would get new clothes and toys for Christmas, I’d have MORE work packing everything up after they just unwrapped and opened everything, they’d miss the toys they didn’t choose to take and would surely fuss about that.  Basically, I saw “more work for Mom”.

My husband’s thinking: We need to get away, the kids will enjoy the time in the mountains, we can have some family fun complete with hot cocoa, 1000-piece puzzles, time to unwind from the busy schedule we juggle, you don’t take new clothes camping so you can pack the week before Christmas, they can pick some of their new toys and fill their own backpacks for the week.  Basically, he saw “fun family getaway”.

It turns out, he was right.  And as the parent who does most of the schedule juggling and thinking about how things will affect the kids, I was surprised how very wrong I was about this post-Christmas getaway. …continue reading