This weekend we took our first vacation as a family. We went to Santa Barbara for two days. Even though the kids are over three years old, I haven’t really wanted to take a vacation with them. Basically, I don’t find parenting to be relaxing, and the thought of taking a trip–where everything is even more stressful–just is not appealing at all.
So, why did I bother trying to take the kids on a vacation? I have no idea. It literally popped into my head on Wednesday, and we left on Friday evening. That was mistake number one–trying to drive to Santa Barbara from North Orange County at 6pm on a Friday. It took three and a half hours when it should have taken less than two hours. But surprisingly, the kids did okay. They ate dinner in the car and fell asleep at about 8pm. The last hour and a half, Bernard and I pretended we were a childless couple on our way to a nice weekend at the beach. It was quiet, the moon was up–I almost relaxed.
When we arrived in Santa Barbara at about 9:30 pm, the kids had fallen asleep in their car seats, so Bernard and I placed them onto the king sized bed for them to sleep the rest of the night. At 4 am they woke up bewildered at being in a strange bed, so I climbed into their bed, explained to them that we were on vacation and that they needed to go back to sleep. I slept with them until the morning. Big mistake. The next day, they went on and on about how the big bed was for Eleanor, Miranda, and Mommy, and the sofa bed was for Daddy. At naptime, there was a huge fuss when I said, “No, Mommy is not going to sleep with you guys.”
The hotel had a king sized bed and a saggy sofabed. The kids normally sleep in very low beds, so we brought these “bed bolsters” to keep the kids from falling out of bed. Overall, the kids slept okay, despite never having shared a bed before. Needless to say, they talked and played the whole time they should have been napping during the day on Saturday, but they did sleep most of the way through Friday night, and all the way through Saturday night.
On Saturday, we went to the annual Harbor and Seafood Festival and played in the sand for a little while. I think the kids had a good time, except for when the wind blew sand in their eyes, and a huge flock of seagulls descended on us, a la Alfred Hitchcock.
On Sunday, we went to the Santa Barbara Zoo, which I highly recommend for families with small children.
I was quite amazed at the lion. He was sitting two feet away from us (and behind a thick pane of glass). The zoo has a cute little train that goes around the zoo.
Overall, we were able to have some fun with the kids–I might actually do this again.