Choosing Travel Over Christmas: A Multigenerational Adventure

Mount Baker Ski Area's Annual Photo's with Santa

WE'RE CANCELLING CHRISTMAS...

...well not really, we're just choosing travel instead.

I love the warm lights of Christmas. I love the family get togethers. The laughter and smiles.

I do NOT love the materialism. I do not love the plastic. I do not love the stress. I do not love the waste.

I do not love the materialism of Christmas.

The United States is so engrossed in consumerism, that it's difficult to avoid getting caught up in all the spending, and it's even more difficult to figure out how to move away from it, when the "unwrapping presents under the tree" is engrained in our children and grandparents alike as the highlight of the season.

I've been pushing our family to choose multigenerational travel over Christmas for years, but I needed Gma's sign off cuz I wasn't going to leave her home while we galivanted across the globe. Spending time with loved ones is literally the most important piece of the holiday season.

A few years ago, I at least got the G-parent's to move to experiences instead of things. We would buy tickets to the theater, concerts or sporting events, we'd pay for club sports, or we'd promise a camping trip in the summer. They even got plane tickets to go visit the G-parents one year!! I bought a dozen frames from a second hand store, we'd print out a home made gift certificate, frame it, and that's what we'd wrap and leave under the tree. There were a couple stellar things about this tradition:

1. It satisfied the apparent need to 'unwrap' something

2. It lasted for months after Dec 25th. We were literally saying "Merry Christmas" until July when the last event was experienced.

And while this was a great first step, my itch wasn't quite scratched. There was still the feels-obligatory-STUFF that got bought; there were still purchases on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

But this year is different.

Riding away from a materialistic Christmas....

Last year on December 26, Gma had had enough. "I'm ready to skip Christmas and travel." YES!!! HALLELUHIA!! "You got it Grammy. I'll plan it."

Luckily, I truly enjoy planning trips; gimmie a spreadsheet, a cup of coffee and access to the internet, and I'll plan a killer family vacation on a shoestring budget! That said I've never planned a multigenerational trip, so this is going to be a whole new experience for me. A little background, my mother was a flight attendant for 40 years, so she is a professional traveler. She is used to nice hotels, everything is planned for her, a car waiting to pick her up at the airport...her job was to pour Coke and 7-Up in the sky; the logistics of when she got to a destination was someone else's department. Since she retired, she does those group tours where, you guessed it, everything is planned for her.

I, on the other hand, haven't had someone plan my trips since I was a teenager. Money has always been a factor in how we travel and where we stay.

In other words, finding a balance of how Gma travels and how our family typically travels was going to be an experience in itself.

Follow along as spend 3+ weeks in developing countries with parents, teenagers and Gma!