Our Florida Vacation

As a family, we sat down together and planned our family vacation to Florida. It was fun to watch the kids contribute to this family event. The first thing we did was set the date. To save us money we planned an off-season trip. Each member of the family had to contribute by raising money. There were three children the ages were 12, 7, and 4. The youngest would pick up her toys and help mom clean her room. The two boys did yard work, errands, and other little jobs they would find on their own. We had a whole year to save and plan for the things we wanted to do or buy. It was a year of odd jobs and garage sales. Every few months we would pool our money together to see how much was in the vacation pot. Each time we would do this, the excitement of the trip would increase. As a family, we raised enough money for plane fare, hotel room, rental car, food, and fun money.

Finally, the week had arrived when we would be boarding our plane and heading for Florida. Everyone got into the car, chattering with excitement over the trip we were about top embark on. Dad was the last one to leave the house and turned on the home alarm then he locked the door since he’d read about Home safety tips earlier in the week. This was the first time the children had flown and they enjoyed talking to people and looking out the window and eating snacks.

Once in Florida we checked into our room. That evening it began to rain. The weather was so warm that the rain did not damper the swimming in the pool or trips to the ocean. The next morning the boys got up early to go swimming and to their surprise, they found that it had rained tadpoles. There were tadpoles in the pool, on the sidewalk, and in the grass. Boys being boys, wanted to take them home. Somehow, we talked them out of that. They had fun collecting them; our daughter would not go swimming in the pool after seeing all those tadpoles.

The kids are all grown up now and have kids of their own, but when we get together, we still talk about our family vacation to Florida and the fun we had.

This is a guest post by Amy Carol