Originally Posted by
patk
Thanks for the feedback folks.
So after reading this, my wife will kill me if I buy any toys
We haven't had a "real" vacation in years, due to the kids. Now that the kids are all in school, she's been pushing me, hard, to take her on a European vacation. Especially now that I'm traveling so much, leaving her at home with the kids by herself. With the 50K pts bonus this fall (I easily have 25 nights before Jan. 15) + paying for the stays with the MR Visa, I'll have that 320K pts and then some, which pretty much takes away any excuses I have left. I had not realized the difference between the stay at the hotel vs the toys. Big difference, thanks for pointing it out! Now I need to work on the airline miles to get the airfare covered. I've been flying domestic on F9, but they don't do TATL,so it's time to switch airlines. Thanks for the tips, we've got something to look forward to now
I know things could be very different raising two children, but we've always had a "travel fund" that we would put money into every month automatically--just like a Christmas Fund. We didn't even see it...if we had, I'm sure we would have had 100 other things to do with it.
Perhaps you could start one and just know it is for flights only...and watch kayak or the many other sites that allows you to put in your "wish list" and it will watch the airfare for you--it's free and what a time saver!
Good luck!!!
Dawn
PS: If your kids see you take time out for your relationship (without them), they will learn to do this with their husband/wife. You can't have it both ways--if you model this for them and take time away from them to build/strenghten your marriage, they will follow suit and know this is "okay." If you don't model this for them, it is unlikely they will ever feel that is "okay" to take time away from their children. And as grandparents (someday), you would love nothing more than to have your children have the best marriage/relationship with their spouse, which should include mom/dad alone time/vacations, but it will be foreign to them if they didn't live it growing up. Just my 2 cents....