Hooray for Staycations!

We've been staycationing since we got married, back before the term was cool (or at least before I heard it. For any other people living under a rock, a staycation is a vacation where you stay at home).  I'm glad they finally gave it a hip name, because back in my day it was known as, "we're too poor to go anywhere but we had to use up this paid vacation time at work."  The past few years we've had some pretty cool staycations.  Usually we do one overnight trip and spend the rest of the week doing close to home days out.  It's a great way to hit museums, parks, and all the other stuff you always forget about then wish you had time to see.  Last year we had the mother of all staycations (for me, at least): a trip to the beach!  We went to the Indiana side of Lake Michigan and played in the sand (it was a bit too cold that day for water), we stayed at a b&b, and we walked around the outlet mall.  I could not have asked for a better time.  

Maybe that's why this year's staycation seems so lackluster.  Maybe the beach just could not be topped for me.  What it comes down to is planning.  Or lack thereof.  We didn't plan on having a week together as a family right now,  I was supposed to be taking a separate trip and Husband would stay here with the kids.  But my plans didn't work out so we ended up with a week together.  Now don't get me wrong, anytime together with my family is great, but as far as vacations go this week is kind of a bust.  We didn't  plan anything big, so we've just been waking up and saying, "ok, what are we doing today?"  For some people this probably sounds great, but not me.  I do not do well without a plan.  Or rather, I do not do well with half a plan.  If I could spend the entire week in bed with a big stack of books and a big bucket of cookies, I would be a happy camper.  It's this idea that I somehow need to be entertaining, but don't know how, that bugs me.  So I feel like this week is more stressful than a regular week, though at least we get to be stressed together.

And another thing:  when did my kids get so spoiled?  And I don't mean that in a cute way either.  I mean, every day we have done fun, kid-oriented things, and every day we get whining and fighting and just a general disappointment vibe from them.  I think things have gotten too entertainment focused lately.  My kids have been indulged in their cases of the "Gimmes," and now we're paying the price.  I think it's time to go back to the world in which entertainment was reading library books and drawing pictures and making cookies together every Monday.  It sounds very quaint and old-world to a lot of people, but it's the way we lived a year ago.  Somewhere along the way we've all gotten sucked into various adventures that have led us to feel like we need to go to Chuck E. Cheese or movies or whatever else all the time in order to have fun.  Let me tell you: taking two preschool aged children all over the city and letting them hang out with a bunch of other preschool aged children is NOT FUN.  When I figure out what is, I will let you know.