It’s vacation season!  Beach trips, mountain excursions, National Park adventures.  What could be better than a trip with loved ones to an awesome place?  In my opinion, not much.

Vacations are an important part of family life.  They provide us with new experiences with our family, create memories to treasure, and sometimes even give us the opportunity to make new friends.  Vacations are also an important part of maintaining mental health.  They give us a break from the stresses of work, maintaining a household, and other everyday chores.  Vacations can also give us perspective on how other people live and how we might be placing too much importance on non-important things.  One of my favorite summer vacation rituals is setting goals for the year ahead.  Work goals, family goals, personal goals.  Vacations give me the time and space to be able to think about such things.

My pre-vacation goal for this summer is to let my vacation actually be a vacation.  Not an on-location working trip or a working holiday.  Off go the ipads, laptops, and smart phones.  On go the out-of-office vacation responses on email and voicemail.  Bring on the fun, relaxation, and memory-making…who’s with me?