These are not necessarily in the order of importance and are meant strictly to entertain you:

1. It takes me longer to prepare for the week of vacation than the actual week itself. I’ve never clocked it, but I’m the type of person who wants to see every single rental option online before I decide. This can take days. And then the eleven trips to Target to either purchase the items I can’t find or to buy the things I forgot last time add up to at least another full day. And at this point, I haven’t even begun researching our itinerary.

2. We are too cheap to fly. That leaves driving, and my kids are not conditioned to road trips. We never take them anywhere. So, I guess you could say we’ve created the monster that rears it’s ugly head in the back seat and continually moans, “I’m huuuuuungry and boooooored and tooooooo waaaaaaarm and I have to gooooooo!”

3. We have boys. And boys like mine don’t remain constrained in a seat belt for longer than two hours without needing to hit someone. Luckily, they have each other. Last year, on our way to South Carolina, we made the boys get out on the side of the highway and run up a cliff ten times. I think that was the only peaceful moment of the trip.

4. Our house is nicer than a hotel room. It has lots of rooms and multiple bathrooms. There is a table to sit at so you don’t get crumbs in the sheets. There’s even a flat screen TV and a ping pong table for entertainment. And we sleep better at home than anywhere else.

5. After a week away on spring break vacation, I feel like I need a vacation. I haven’t slept or eaten or exercised like normal, so I’m grumpy. But rather than getting a chance to rest up, I’ll have a mountain of laundry, a disheveled house, and a school bus waiting for me bright and early on Monday morning.

6. Everyone else will be on vacation, too. Once when we went to Florida on Spring break, it took me three hours to get one bag of groceries on the night we arrived. The grocery store was filled with everyone from eastern Michigan to western Illinois, and you could hardly move down the aisles. At one point I realized I had forgotten peanut butter, but there was too much of a traffic jam to maneuver back that way. In Michigan, however, the grocery stores, malls, and movie theaters will be completely empty! I don’t like it that way all the time, but once in a while it’s kinda nice. 🙂

7. My kids can’t remember past vacations. Recently, we had a big argument about whether or not we ever saw the dolphin show at an amusement park we visited. Somehow, that doesn’t motivate me to shell out $300 to make sure we’ve got the penguin act checked off the family bucket list.

8. Most importantly, we love to be home. If you ask my kids what they’re looking forward to, they’ll say, “some stay-at-home time”. We love to have a whole week with absolutely no agenda–no homework or sports practices or music lessons or church meetings demanding our attention. And while some people struggle with letting the house go and enjoying the time off, I am not one of them. Nobody will have to tell me to sleep in a little longer or to stop scrubbing floors. And at the end of spring break, I hope we’ll be rested, refreshed, reconnected, and ready to go.

Whether or not you’re traveling, I hope the same for you!