What do two teachers and one stay at home mom choose to do with a half week in the middle of summer? Take a mom and kid beach trip, of course! A mom and kid-cation, if you will! I want to share with you all about our trip and why I think every group of mom friends should do this!
Surviving and thriving. This is not a vacation for you, mom. This is a vacation for your kids.It’s a kid-cation. If you go into this trip thinking that you will be getting to relax… you will barely survive. However, if you go into this trip knowing that you will work hard but it will be a blast for your children… you will be thriving. The three of us gave ourselves pep talks on the way down to the beach to try to help ourselves thrive. While it is for the kids, there of course are benefits for the moms. Multiple times throughout the trip we looked at each other and would say, “We are awesome!” Because let’s be real, taking 3 moms and 6 kids (6 & under) on a beach trip is quite the undertaking!
Co-parenting with friends. This is quite possibly one of the most refreshing things to experience. It is nice to see other children respect their mom and to praise them for that. It is nice to see that your three year old is just like every other three year old and will probably stick their tongue out at you when you reprimand. (Not acceptable, but threenager is all I can say.) It is nice to be able to look at your friend when you are about to lose it and they step in for you to correct your child.
Three days and two nights. This is just enough time to have fun with the kids and have your fix of beach time without it seeming like an overwhelmingly fast trip. Yet, not so much time that the kids become overly tired and turn into raging zombies.
Fruit snacks, Lucky Charms, and Dunkin’ Iced Coffee. These three things should sponsor us… because our trip would not have been a success without them. Basically, if the kids asked for a snack we said yes. Again, this is a kid-cation for them and we are busting it to thrive. Therefore, when asked, “Mom, can I have fruit snacks?” The answer is always a resounding, “Yes!” We tried to keep the food simple and did frozen pizza the first night for dinner. The second night we discussed going to buy something to fix, but had all the snack and lunch foods to create…. A kid’s charcuterie board! This was a major hit. I think each kid tried something new to them! I highly recommend trying this with a group of kiddos! Oh, and the moms each had a Large Dunkin’ Iced Coffee every morning! No successful day at the beach is complete without caffeine!
Optimize time. Since check-in on the first day was not until 4:00pm, we chose to still leave Auburn-Opelika at 8:30am. We stopped about an hour away from Destin, FL to have lunch at a Chick-fil-A. Once getting into Destin, we chose to go straight to the state park and spend a couple of hours on the beach. Additionally, the last day, check-out was at 10:00am. Therefore, we chose to wake up and load the car, except for a change of dry clothes. We went with the kids down to the pool and spent a little bit of time wearing them out before we hit the road. Using up ALL of your time keeps the kids busy and doesn’t allow for the misbehavior that happens with down time.
Extra tidbit. Pay the extra cost for chairs and umbrellas to be set up for you. We already had our hands full with 6 kiddos, 2 wagons, and all the kid things. Thus, paying a company to set up 4 chairs and 2 umbrellas for us that gave us a designated spot to land, was 100% worth it.
I hope that you will consider grabbing two friends and doing this too, if given the opportunity! I am hopeful that this will become an annual tradition! The beauty of doing motherhood with others is that you can have someone to help you juggle the balls that are about to fall. Going on vacation with others doing this fine juggling act is quite refreshing.
Just keep juggling momma, and happy “vacationing”! Go have a fun mom and kid-cation!
