A few years ago, my parents decided to treat us all to a vacation to celebrate their upcoming wedding anniversary. There’s 24 of us in all, including my brothers, sister, our spouses, our kids, and even a couple of really cute grandkids.
This is no small undertaking.
The first year went so well, they decided to make it an annual event. We have visited places in Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia, and have learned a few lessons along the way.
Hopefully these ideas can be helpful to you as well.
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Extended family vacation: what works for us…
#1 What’s the goal of your vacation?
Define that first. For us, it’s designed for us to purposely spend time with family members, focused on catching up and on building stronger relationships.
#2 Establish a budget.
Include who will pay for what.
For us, Nana and Granddaddy have an amount they set aside to pay for the place we all will stay during vacation. That also determines, generally, how long you’ll stay.
Because of the goal we have set, we always find a place where we can all sleep under one roof. Lots and lots of bedrooms and bathrooms, but one roof.
The second year of doing this, we found 3 cabins, all side-by-side, in a lakefront retreat…the cabins were nice, but we all felt pretty disconnected despite our attempts at focusing on our goal. From then on, we were determined to find one place big enough to house everyone.
For us, the cost of getting there and any activities we choose to do gets paid for by the individual family…kennedyfamfive pays for theirs, my sister and her husband cover their costs, etc….
#3 Food.
Hey, these are priorities, right?
We all decided to do breakfast and lunch on our own, meaning if Uncle John wants to cook pancakes for his dear family at 7 am, he is welcome to and whoever is up that early gets the spoils!
But it also means that if you sleep in and want cereal later, that is A-OK, too. Help yo’self.
For dinner every night, we rotate who cooks for everyone. One brother and his family cook the first night…usually grilled burgers (I’m going to tell his secret: Montreal seasoning, mmmmm); my other brother and his family cook the second night…they are awesome planners and have brought homemade jars of spaghetti and alfredo that they cook along with pasta, salad, and bread…can’t wait for this year! The last night, my sister and I (and our hubbies) share the task. We grill chicken, or pick it up from a local place, and have a few veggies…one year, we went the lazy route and bought pizza.
The first year, we all went out to eat at a local restaurant one of the nights. Despite our best efforts to find a fun place that we’d all enjoy, we ended up at separate tables all spread out, we spent way too much money on a meal that wasn’t that enjoyable, and we were unable to hear each other over the restaurant noise. We will not repeat that mistake again.
#4 Expectations.
We all go into a vacation with different ideas. There’s the adventurer, the shopper, the beach bum (even if you’re vacationing in the mountains, you know what I mean), to name a few.
That’s why it’s so important to refer back to #1, and to remind those in your charge of same (or get them to remind you, not that I would know about that…).
So, no, we don’t expect all 24 of us to traipse around in one big communistic group from one activity to the next. But we do all spend the evening mealtime together.
It’s been really neat to have different activities that we all splinter up to do during each day. It gives everyone a chance to spend some time individually with that brother, sister, cousin, granddad, aunt, etc…that you normally don’t get to spend time with.
For instance, my oldest brother and my sister, their spouses, and his daughter always end up exploring some remote mountain trail at some point during the trip. They come back with hilarious stories, usually involving someone falling into a body of water and losing a shoe. Don’t ask.
Last year, my Mama, sister-in-law, nephew, one of my daughters, and I all went one afternoon to see Mary Poppins at the local playhouse. It was a great show, and we managed to annoy (and by that I mean: entertain) the others with our bursting into song {just a spoonful of sugar, anyone?} for the rest of the trip. Win-win.
#5. Activities.
We plan some things, but really try to keep planned outings for the entire group to a minimum. (See #4.)
So, one time when we were vacationing in Gatlinburg, we all went to Dollywood for the day.
Every trip, several of the guys go for a round of golf. And Granddaddy usually wins. 🙂
But other than that, the activities, pretty much center on our after-dinner family time wherever we are staying.
Some of the games we’ve played included…
- Minute to win it games, with goofy prizes
- Bingo, and it was actually fun and a little ruthless, because of the way we did the prizes for that one
- A game that took some planning where everyone had to answer a series of questions (before the trip), and then played a game to see how well we all knew each other. We laughed until we cried, argued about the “truth” of some of our childhood memories, and learned a lot about our loved ones. It was a modified version of the idea, described here.
And there you have it: what works for us, extended family edition.
I hope to expand on several of these ideas soon, including sharing where we’ve stayed, in case your family is looking for some recommendations.
Have you gone on an extended family vacation? What works for your family?
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