We've Never Been on a Family Vacation

Our children are 9 and 5 and we have never been on a family vacation. 6 months out of the year we go up to our family's cabin every chance we get and the other 6 months of the year I feel are spent just getting through birthdays, holidays and sports.

Most of the reason why we haven't been on a family vacation is because of money.. the other reason is because it sounds overwhelming as heck to travel with children. Especially two high energy boys.

But, we feel confident that our children are at wonderful ages for traveling and we've finally made it a financial priority for us.

[Drum roll please] WE'VE BOOKED OUR FIRST FAMILY VACATION TO PUERTO RICO!

And you guys, it's going to be a VACATION - 8 full days in 85 degrees and staying right on the beach.

We went to Puerto Rico back in 2015 but only for 3 nights for our honeymoon. We had never been on a trip together and we hadn't been that far from our kids so we made the trip short and sweet. But man did we ever fall in love with PR! We've been itching to go back ever since.

We've had this trip in the forefront of our minds for about 6 months now. Since hurricane Maria hit we've been keeping close tabs on their progress in getting things back up and running. The populated areas like San Juan are good to go - it's the center of the island in the more remote areas that are still without power, water, etc. I would love to find a service project that we can do with the kids while we're there. Even though traveling there in itself is great for their situation it would be even better if we could lend an extra hand in any way possible.

Another exciting part of this trip is that we're taking my mother-in-law with us! She goes south every winter so by the time she gets back and we go on this trip with her it will have been nearly 3 months since we've seen her. It will be really nice to get that quality time with her.

A trip we'll remember forever!

We fell in love with Puerto Rico

When we first started planning our wedding we didn't put any thought into a honeymoon. Neither of us thought it would even be financially possible. I crunched some numbers and thought, "We can make this work". Without talking to Andy about it I checked in with our moms to see if they would be able to care for the boys if we went somewhere. With the go ahead from them (and the encouragement from my mom to plan a honeymoon "because you'll never go on one otherwise") I surprised Andy on Fathers Day by telling him that I'm paying for us to go on a honeymoon to Florida. I thought for sure he'd try to talk me out of it because of money but he didn't question it and instead started doing some research and figured out we'd save a ton of money by going to Puerto Rico instead! So, Puerto Rico it was! We found an AMAZING hotel (La Concha) right on the beach in Condado (basically San Juan) and we were only gone three nights but we made the most of it and fell absolutely in love with the island!

The view from our room

Old San Juan

A castle in Old San Juan

There were a lot of stray cats!

The view from a tower in El Yunque Rainforest. The only rainforest in U.S. territory!

Waterfall in El Yunque Rainforest. The water was so cold!

View from one of three pools at La Concha.

I could go on and on and on about Puerto Rico and how much we loved it. We cannot wait to go back! But next time we'll stay on the other side of the island to surf, bring our kids with, stay for a week and maybe even scope out schools, jobs and neighborhoods to live in ;-)