When it comes to family travel, the key is K.I.S.S.: keep it simple, stupid.
That's been a hard lesson for me to learn. Summer seems so short and there is so much I want to do: road trips, plane trips, see the relatives and show my kids new and exciting places.
But sometimes too much is just too much. Like this summer.
I took my teen and tweens on a 1,200 mile road trip from Connecticut to Florida, a plane trip from Florida to Kentucky and another plane trip from Kentucky to house swap in California.
We took a full week to enjoy our road trip, stopping along the way at Natural Bridge in Virginia, the BMW Performance Center in South Carolina, and historic Savannah. We visited one set of grandparents in Orlando, Florida, and then another set in Kentucky before flying to California to begin a house swap near the beach.
Much of the trip was planned a few weeks before we left, but all of the stops and starts required unpacking and repacking, double checking and eventually scrambling to replace a house swap gone bad.
My kids said they loved all of the things they got to do: play incredible golf courses, be spoiled by grandparents, enjoy beautiful hotels and bike the beaches in California
But they NEVER want to take a trip this complicated again.
It was too long. There was too much to do. There was too much packing and unpacking.
Next year they asked for one thing: keep it simple. So easy to do and yet so difficult for me to embrace. I still want to do it all. I just have to find a way to do it without being stupid.
