My family of 5 always schedules 'home days' into our vacations to rest and reconnect. We bring board games, wear pajamas, and watch movies.
- My family of five travels often, and we incorporate "home days" into our travel plans.
- We stay indoors at our hotel or Airbnb every few days to rest, reset, and find time to connect.
Our family of five travels fairly frequently. We've been to Iceland, Amsterdam, Portugal, Hawaii, London, and more with our kids as they’ve grown. One of the best ways we’ve managed to make the trips enjoyable for all of us and to stay connected to our kids while on vacation is to schedule “home days.”
Instead of trying to cram everything we can possibly find to do, having this downtime allows us all a chance to reset and connect while on a trip.
I love traveling with a loose itinerary
I’ve always been a bit of a loose planner in my own adventures. I tend to pick a handful of things I want to do or see in a given place but never set a certain day or schedule for most of the activities. The exception being, of course, things that require special reservations or planning (like when I went to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory High Tea in London).
As I became a parent, I kept this habit, which has been helpful as we traveled with younger kids (hello, unpredictable nap times). It keeps everyone’s stress levels down while giving our kids time to connect with us and each other no matter what city or country we are in.
What a “home day” looks like
We do our best to build in a home day every third or fourth day of a trip. During these days, we mostly stay in our hotel or our Airbnb. The kids often stay in their pajamas all day, and we’ll watch movies or cartoons together on and off.
It’s not all screen time, though, as that would give us all a little cabin fever. We also each bring a card game or small board game in our carry-on luggage. We rotate through playing these together on our home days. Since my family members are a wide range of ages, the games we bring are always evolving, but some of our favorites over the years have included a game called Sleeping Queens, Phase 10, and every game you can play with a regular deck of cards, but especially Gin Rummy (this book has been amazing for us).
We also create a “dance party” playlist for silly dancing when we need to move our bodies. We each add songs in a rotation so we all hear things we like.
Finally, we end with a homecooked dinner, if possible, where we cook something that is familiar and a favorite of the kids. We’ll get the ingredients from a local market as part of one of our outings a day or two before a scheduled home day. This is also one of the reasons we often stay in a vacation rental instead of a hotel.
A little rest goes a long way
These days are slow and cozy. They allow the kids, and us, to move at our own pace. Adjusting to the time zone and culture of new places can take a lot out of the best of us. For kids, I’ve found having the time and space to rest and reset goes a long way toward helping them be adventurous in exploring new places the following days. After every home day we’ve had, I see an increase in patience in all of us, which always makes traveling a better experience.
Thanks, at least in part, to our home days, we’ve been able to enjoy long drives to try to find the northern lights in Iceland, a complete tour of the Tower of London, and a day trip to Sintra in Portugal to check out the Palácio da Pena, among other adventures, with our kids when they were as young as two years old. Best of all, our kids remember our family trips with joy and are excited about where we might travel in the future. As a person who loves to travel, it makes me happy to not only be able to continue to travel as a parent, but also to see my kids’ growing love of travel, too.