It has been a while since I have written here. Not because of fear of getting blasted again, I actually secretly like that, but because I didn't have a good subject to follow my last one. Still not sure if I have a good subject but, here goes anyway.

There seems to be a fine line between family time and school time for us. Every year our family takes a vacation to Sanibel, Florida. My husband has been going there every year since 1983 with his mom and sisters and after we got married it became our family tradition too. Over the years our family has changed and so have our times we were able to go as we had always had to share a condo with my husband's mom and work around his sisters and their children's spring breaks too. Since our children are the youngest, we chose to go earlier so their older children could go over their spring breaks.

This is the first year his mom is staying in Ft. Myers and not heading over to the island for us children to head down there. So, it is also the first year we were able to choose the dates we were able to go. Our dilemma, do we continue to go the same weeks we have always gone? The weeks we know everyone down there, the weeks we don't have to wait in lines for 2-3 hours at restaurants, the weeks the island is still relatively empty and so is the pool? Or do we go over our children's spring breaks(which are all different this year) and make things easier on the schools but, harder on our family time? Do we go during 'spring break' and deal with our young children and our baby being pushed around in the pools, no chairs left to sit on, and busy bike paths? We save up every year for this trip and over the years have made many sacrifices to be able to do this trip. It has become such an important family tradition and it feels like a second home to all of us. It is one of those places we feel like we can finally exhale, relax and have quality family time with no interruptions from life.

So, what seems to be the problem I am sure you are saying to yourself, right now you seem like a spoiled, rich girl (haha) that is about to complain about something you should be grateful for, right? The problem is, we now have 3 children in school and a baby. So every year we struggle with the time we go, do we continue to go the same time we always have or is this the year we are going to have to push it back to our children's official spring break? For our family it works better to go earlier than spring break because frankly, in Minnesota, spring break is too late, it is finally getting nice and we are going on break. We want to be in Florida while it is still freezing cold here! To us February seems the perfect time to get away, it is cold, snowy and you are still in the thick of winter. Plus, that seems to be when our children start to get cabin fever, as does mom! We are all getting antsy, perfect time for us to recharge and head south and regroup and plug in together as a family. Our family vacations truly are family vacations. We do no sight seeing, we eat almost every meal together, we swim, play, bike, and swim some more all together as a family. For us, it really is the only time during the school year that we don't have other commitments, we don't have holidays with other family members, we don't have to do anything on any schedule! It takes our whole family about 3 days to decompress and to truly start relaxing. Our children sleep well, eat well and play well. Our normally quick to temper son is calm, kind, and gentle again. Our daughters don't fight with each other and genuinely are best friends during our vacation.

I know it is difficult for teachers and students to miss 2 full weeks of school, and we have been very strict with our children that they have to spend at least 30 minutes a day while on vacation working on school work or reading. We ask the teachers if they will put together something for the the children to work on during vacation and we make sure it is all done and done well to give back to their teachers when they return. We know the importance of education, both my husband and I are college educated and expect our children will do the same. Every year though, we seem to have to buck the system and go against the wishes of our children's schools to fight for our family vacation.

As the children get older, we know we will probably need to move our vacations later and go over their school breaks instead. We know it is hard for the schools and disruptive to the classroom but, for these two weeks each year, we are choosing our family, our children. We are choosing to put our family first and everything else in life behind that. So, again this year when we get home, I will wade through 100's of pieces of mail looking for the threatening letters from the school social workers telling us, our children have missed too much school and are at risk of being kicked out or held back and once again, I will call the schools, explain our situation and pray this isn't the year they decide to follow through with the threats.