A Blog Just for Fun!

It’s Friday night, my man is gone, the kids are asleep, and the power is out. The perfect atmosphere for blogging! I thought I’d take a break from the blogs about New Day and about my family and blog about one of my other passions. If I didn’t help run an orphanage in Zambia, what would be my dream profession? Go ahead, guess! I have a teaching degree, but nope, not a teacher. Keep guessing! No, not a professional organizer, but you’re getting closer! A travel agent! Two of my passions are organizing and traveling: put those together and you have a travel agent!

I’m trying to think of when the travel bug bit me. Growing up, my best memories are of our family vacations to Colorado Springs, Turner Falls, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and of course Surfside Beach. Singing in the car, heating our hot dogs on the dashboard, buying decks of cards for Grandma, collecting postcards of each place we went – I just loved it! The travel bug bit again when I was 18 and I went with Blu’s family on a weekend trip to Nebraska to see his grandparents. I loved going to a state I had never seen and it was gorgeous to me! I made his family stop at every state marker to take pictures, and they all laughed at me!
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That was all it took – after getting married we took vacations to Colorado, Washington State, Louisiana, New Mexico, Las Vegas, Oregon, Utah, Washington D.C., New York, Maine, Virginia, and Florida. We then decided to embark on some international travel and added London, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Acapulco, & Cancun to the list.

One month from today, we will once again head to the USA on our furlough and we have decided to do a 3 day Paris layover with the kids. As I am preparing for our trip to Paris, I have come across many blogs dedicated to travel, which is what inspired me to write this post! So here is “Darbi’s Guide to Amazing Vacations:”

1) Have rich family members.  I say this tongue in cheek of course…kinda. We have been blessed by family members on both sides who have helped us out along the way. Blu’s cousins paid for most of his seminary education, Blu’s brother has generously paid for a trip to Acapulco, Blu’s parents took the entire family to Cancun for their anniversary AND paid for most of our trip to the USA last year, and my parents have paid for resort vacations in Zambia. Without these gifts from others, those vacations would definitely not have been taken! Their generosity has made we want to do the same for my family some day! (You hear that Blu? – we’re paying for the whole family to go to Cancun for our 30th wedding anniversary!)

2) PLAN – PLAN – PLAN. I love to organize. I love to plan things. I have 4 calendars in my house and I look at them daily. I feel better when I can see a calendar, and if you give me a date 4 months from now, I can tell you what day of the week it is. (OCD much?!) We have NEVER taken a spur-of-the-moment trip. That would break us financially! We plan all of our trips months in advance, sometimes years. For instance, we already have our family’s August 2014 vacation planned, and Fall of 2015 tentatively planned. Now, I realize that some people thrive on spontaneity. If that is your personality, go for it and have fun! But that is NOT me! The one time we took a trip (Zanzibar) where things weren’t planned to a tee, a LOT went wrong. Our favorite vacation (New York City) was where we had a schedule, down to what subway stops to take. We saw EVERYTHING in just 3 days’ time and had a blast together!

3) Almost as important as planning is to BUDGET! In case you are curious, our family makes $30,000 per year working for the orphanage, before taxes. So rest assured that your gifts to New Day are not paying for Tidwell family vacations! But we have decided that travel is something that is important to us, so when we have extra money, that is what it goes to. That being said, we don’t spend money on nice furniture for our house, new t-shirts for Blu (), etc. We instead put money aside each month into our travel fund. (Remember, not everyone has the travel bug!! When asked if he wanted to go to New York City with us, my dad said that he would “rather have a colonoscopy with no anesthesia!” If that is you, then you obviously will spend your extra money on things other than travel!) We live meagerly so that we can travel well! Each week we have a set amount that we can spend on food. If I spend ½ of that money on books for my kindle, then I won’t buy as much food that week. (beans again mama?!) We also tithe, and we have seen in our 12 ½ years of marriage that faithfulness in tithing leads to blessings above and beyond. (Try it if you don’t believe me!) We also pay for vacations months in advance. For instance, the Paris trip, our October Cape Cod trip, and our November Costa Rica trip are already paid in full. We take a trip, like Cape Cod for instance, and we pay for it in chunks. For instance, if we decide in Dec of 2013 that we want to go to Cape Cod for 4 days the next Fall, we would pay for airfare in February, lodging and rental car in April, and set aside spending/food money for the trip in June.

4) Another tip – have children.  Our tax refund due to the child tax credit paid for our Costa Rica trip this November!

5) Airline miles! We have one credit card that gets Delta Sky Miles that we have used for years. (I have heard from others that Capital One has an amazing reward program!) We have flown almost free to New York City and Maine, and we take advantage of companion airfare certificates that we get as well. (Remember to pay your credit card off at the end of every month – debt free is the way to be!) Our British Air miles paid for most of our Paris airfare, our Paris lodging in full, and one night in London in full. If you don’t fly a lot, this obviously won’t apply to you. We are taking SIXTEEN flights between August and January of this year!!

6) Research!! We always check to see if it is cheaper to fly or drive. We check hotels on expedia, priceline, and vrbo. We find cheap things to do and read reviews on the best cheap restaurants (ate at an awesome place called Bedouin tent in NYC using tripadvisor reviews!)

7) Vacay with others! We have taken several family trips with Blu’s family and have loved them! It also makes things so much cheaper when you can split the cost! If you haven’t checked out VRBO.COM you should! We stayed in Florida in a huge house for $35/night after splitting the cost! We have done the same in Colorado, Ruidoso, and Cape Cod!

8) Take the kids – or not! I’m definitely not an expert on marriage, but I know that Blu & I NEED our time alone. We plan at least one trip every time in the USA without the kids. We come back missing them and feeling refreshed! However, we also plan several things WITH our kids. Some people have questioned why we would take our kids to Paris of all places (especially when we went to Disney World without them!!). But we have done our research and found that Paris is the most kid-friendly city in Europe. We will visit gardens with old carousels, puppet shows, and rent toy sailboats in local ponds. We also have surprise activities planned “just for them” while we are in the USA. Again, back to step 3, these were planned months in advance and are already paid for.

9) Just do it! Some people want to travel but use the same excuses: We don’t have the money, we don’t have the time, we’ll do it when…. I don’t want to have any regrets. I want to see the world and I don’t want to wait until I am 60 and retired to do it. Blu & I rarely take long vacations – we are known for taking “mini vacations.” We know we can’t afford 7 days in Costa Rica, but we can afford a weekend and still see experience amazing things. We know we can’t afford Disneyland Paris for our kids, but we can still show them the Eiffel tower for free. Just do it!

I think that is all of my awesome vacation tips for now! If you have made it this far reading, I hope you take this post in the light-hearted way it was intended of me sharing one of my passions! Again, some people have no desire to travel and I am not judging you for that (homebody!!) This is just a glimpse into what makes me tick, and…oh look! The power is back on! 