Our Annual Family Vacation
Hi everyone! It’s Dana with my first blog post in 2012 – and I thought I’d write a little bit about our annual family vacation while it’s fresh on my mind (we actually just got back home last week!). My family is BIG on vacations – travel is something my husband never says “NO” too. Therefore, we go on a LOT of trips 🙂 Now that we have kids, our trips are usually either to visit family in Chicago or Dallas or to go to somewhere warm (usually Florida or Las Vegas). However, we always take one big trip each year with my husband’s family – and it is always to a Club Med. This year, we tried out Club Med – Cancun and loved it! There were 20 of us who went – and EVERYONE had a fabulous time. I highly suggest a Club Med vacation – especially if you are traveling in a large group – there really is something for everyone! (We love it so much we had our wedding there! LOL!) Also – Club Med is all-inclusive – so unless you are doing an off-site excursion or a specialty activity (e.g., scuba diving lessons) – everything is included in your stay! This includes all food, drinks (even alcohol! although they do have some special wines you can buy at dinner – we just drank the complementary house wine), snacks, activities … )
We’ve been to many Club Meds – in France, Spain, Tunisia, Florida, Mexico, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. They are each a little different – but there is still something similar about each one. I had never been to one before meeting my DH – but he has been going since he was a child. Club Med is a French company – so for Americans, it is a little different than a normal American hotel/vacation. For me, the biggest differences are in the rooms (they are not as “luxe” as a normal American hotel room, in my opinion) and the service (the front desk, reservations, etc. is a little bit slower than an American might normally expect). There is a language difference as well – Club Med hires people from all over the world, so although everyone speaks English, it is not always their native language. My husband’s family speaks French, though – so we love it! There are many, many other things we love about Club Med – here is a list of my top five (in no order!):
1) the FOOD: Club Med really has great food – there is a buffet restaurant that is actually really fabulous – even if you don’t like buffets (and I don’t!). They have a different theme each day – so there is an amazing variety of food, plus the basics (pizza, burgers, breads, pastas, grilled fish and meats) for the kids and less adventurous eaters. One of their specialties is white chocolate bread – it is soooo good! I only allowed myself one piece this trip otherwise I would have gained some major weight!
2) the ACTIVITIES: there are SO many activities included in your stay. Some of our favorites this trip were snorkeling, sailing, water skiing and tennis – we did some of these things every day. This is in addition to the beach and pool 🙂
3) HEALTHY CHOICES: even though it’s easy to be unhealthy on vacation (white chocolate bread and yummy pina coladas?!), there are also healthy choices available! There are always healthy food choices (fruits, veggies, grilled meats, yogurt, etc) and they have great exercise classes too. We tried something every day – including Yoga, Zumba, Abs + Buttocks, Water Aerobics and Sunset Stretching by the beach.
4) the KIDS CLUB: many of the Club Meds have kids clubs available from 9 AM – 5:30 PM (and sometimes even later) … we always put our kids in there for at least part of the day and they have a blast. They do things like trapeze/circus, swimming, beach time, arts and crafts, sports/ball games, etc). This is super handy to give the adults time to do things on their own (exercise classes, water skiing, etc)
5) the TRAPEZE: the trapeze gets its own section for me – i LOVE it! my kids LOVE it … my friends LOVE it! LOL – it is seriously so much fun! They don’t have trapezes at every club – but they are at many of them. It is actually not too scary – and as the week progresses you get to do more difficult tricks. For example, in the beginning of the week you would try to hang from your knees on your own. By the end of the week you might actually get “caught” by someone hanging on another trapeze as you fly through the air 🙂 SO.MUCH.FUN!!
I uploaded a video from one of our first nights at the Club – one of the funny things about Club Med is that they have special dance moves (they call them “Crazy Signs”) to certain songs – they will play these songs and do the dances during the day and each evening and everyone dances along. It’s so funny because even though it is completely goofy – it’s also really fun. And, it is really great to hear them play a song from 10 years before and still remember the moves! Ha! The kids loved doing this – especially at the end of the week when they knew the moves and they people working at the club. Excuse the poor filming and my goofy family – we were just playing around 🙂
So tell me – have you ever been to a Club Med? Did you love it? Hate it?
I am just getting started with scrapping all my photos. The hardest part was deciding HOW I wanted to scrap everything! I’ve decided to do the following:
1) I am doing a digital form of Project Life this year – so I will have my normal weekly spread that covers this vacation.
2) I will do a 6×12 insert using Cindy’s new templates on one side – and just a photo collage on the other side.
3) I will scrap any other special pics/special stories normally like i would do and put in my normal family album.
I have just started doing my digital Project Life page – I am going to work on this some more and probably change things up a bit before it is all over – but here is the first page so far – I am using Traci’s Document Life Sampler, Melissa’s Lemonade kit and Kristin’s Everyday Storytelling Journal Templates.
