Hawaii for Christmas?

Ok, readers of mine, I have a dilemma.  I’ll let the two of you settle in. 🙂

My family (my parents, two younger sisters, and brother) has decided to go to Hawaii for Christmas.  For those of you who do not know my family, this is quite shocking.  My family is not prone to luxurious, exotic vacations.  When my brother and I we growing up, our idea of a vacation was splitting a hamburger (no cheese!) at McDonald’s.

Now granted, my parents have moved up on the pay scale and now regularly treat my younger siblings to such luxuries, such as Saturday trips to Wal-Mart, that we older ones could have never dreamed up.   But typically, vacations haven’t been of any impressive variety.  My family has vacationed in our great home state, driving around from tourist trap to tourist trap, or made the great trek down to Florida once or twice. But that’s it.

So Hawaii, needles to say, would be like a dream come true.

And now of course, comes the question:

Should we go too?

And if we do go, should we bring the kiddos?

Some considerations:

1) Christmas: The vacay is tentatively scheduled for departure over Christmas break, meaning we would spend Christmas in the tropics.  If we bring the kids, on one hand, they are too little to even know when Christmas is…we could always still have it before we go, or after we get home.  On the other hand, if we left them with some other loving family members, I think my heart would break to not spend Christmas with them.

2) Honeymoon #2: I was 5 months pregnant on my honeymoon.  Although we were gifted with a lovely trip to the Bahamas, it was not a typical honeymoon.  I couldn’t drink, snorkel, para-sail, go horseback riding, jet-ski, you name it, I was denied it.  Not only did I resemble  a beached whale, but that’s pretty much all I could do too.  So, in my mind, a trip to Hawaii (taking place around our anniversary–the 29th) should constitute a second honeymoon of sorts.  So would I really want to take the kids to that?  Or spend that with my family? Although there are some price savings in going with a package, maybe we should just wait until the kids are older, or go by ourselves later.  We’ll be sharing a hotel room with my family, so how much fun can that be?

3) Childcare:  This is obviously the biggest obstacle.  Aside from the horror that would be the 12 hour flight to the island itself, there will be some activities we will want to partake in that will be problematic with the kids.  I am a big believer in including the kids in everything, but let’s be honest: Who wants to be worrying about kids the whole time we are in paradise?  And then there is the whole issue of my-life-currently-revolves-around-nap-time that could be challenging on a vacation of this caliber.  I suggested looking into a family-friendly resort that offers daycare, or paying the way of a family member/nanny to watch them, but Ben is so far vetoing both ideas.

4)  Live a Little, Would Ya? Part of me just wants to say, “Screw it!”  Let’s just go to Hawaii, already! How often do we get the chance?  Will we really plan another trip, later when the kids are older?  Let’s face it, there will probably be another little one before we know it.  Why can’t we be fun and random and spontaneous? Bring the kids, they’ll have blast! We only live once! Heck, we could be dead tomorrow! (How’s that for inspiring?) Carpe diem!  It’s only money! I’m all out of peppy cliches!

Oh–and side note: My mom is buying tickets today. No pressure or anything.