Tag: missing family

The truth is, you miss your loved ones when living on the road.  While there are many families around the country and the world that live far away from their children, parents and siblings, it is a somewhat new experience for us.  We are new-ish empty nesters, so that transition can be tough even if you haven’t moved into a house on wheels.  But once you are mobile, every exciting destination is another series of miles farther away from those you love.

So it was with this distance in mind that we decided to try to lure our loved ones to us for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We believed that if we could find some great places to visit, we might just be able to host a big Thanksgiving dinner or a fun Christmas celebration from our little ol’ camper.

Well, I think we struck holiday gold!

This is how we did it and how it felt.

Thanksgiving:  

Months before the holiday, we selected Pirateland Family Camping Resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as our destination for Thanksgiving.  There was a chance the weather could be as warm as the high 60s, but also a risk of much colder temperatures.  Fortunately, the holiday week leaned toward the warmer side.  The other advantage is that Myrtle Beach is a drivable distance from Maryland and Pennsylvania where most of our children live and has a generally quick and affordable flight option from the Baltimore airport (but not from Gainesville, FL), so we could extend an invitation to more of our loved ones.

I love Pirateland because it is right on the Atlantic coast.  I have been there twice before, but my parents went there for many years, and like us, always in the off-season when the crowds are low, the prices are lower and the weather is mild.  This year, we booked a month, with a beachy site only five sites from the dunes.  Very affordable with longer stays in the off-season, campers can stay for as little as $30 a night, tax free for a stay of three months or longer.  

We extended an invitation to all six of our kids, our future son-in-law, our moms and our friends, Steve, Kenda and Katie.  By the time everyone committed yea or nay, we were happy to discover that we would be hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for ten!  We booked an extra campsite for the days around Thanksgiving, and found a camper to rent on Outdoorsy.com (not an endorsement, but a decent experience), which would give the kids a place to stay comfortably nearby.  Steve and his family also booked an adjacent site, and arrived with their Class C RV.

In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I collected seashells, driftwood and sand to create a pretty tablescape.  I painted autumnal cups for each guest.  We bought lights on a string and set up our Clam Quick Set Pavilion Camper (we love ours, but would have loved the Escape Sky Camper more, had it been available for purchase!) adjacent to the campground’s pavilion to create a windbreaker and larger dining and serving area.  We even put out our little outdoor Christmas tree, with fresh new color-changing lights to usher in the festive spirit.  Our Solo Stove (not a sponsorship of this site, just a big fan!) provided a warm campfire on chilly nights, and we stocked up on a variety of beverages and snacks for the surrounding days.  We shopped for spare blankets and sheets to accommodate our visitors and took a number of trips to the grocery store, much like we did around the holidays for many years from our sticks and bricks home.  The preparation was familiar and exciting to a mom that missed “nesting” opportunities with no children at home.

When Thanksgiving week arrived, we had friends and kids arriving on a few different days, which further built up the excitement as each person arrived.  Even my son, Lorne, was able to arrange a few unexpected days off from work and a last minute flight.  Ella endured long and circuitious flights from Gainesville, and Adalie made the flight despite flying not being her favoriate thing to do! It was the first time I was blessed with a visit from all three of my kiddos since our “Bon Voyage Crab Feast” in July 2020.  As the big day arrived, our hearts were full of joy, filled with nearby friends and family.  We embraced the busyness and slept a little more peacefully at night.

We all shared in the meal preparation, as we found that any one RV kitchen capacity would struggle to provide such a large meal.  It worked out great because everyone was kept just busy enough with meal preparation but not too busy that we couldn’t relax as well.  We stood around in the sand of our Thanksgiving “dining room” to share a blessing and then sat down to a feast that rivaled any we had enjoyed for the years we lived more traditionally.  Andrew and I, along with Steve and Kenda, sat at the “old people table” and I smiled as I listened to the quiet chatter at the nearby “young adult table”.  Our children (and friend Katie), were chattering, laughing, joking and enjoying this now-very-rare time together.

During their all-too-brief visit, some of us enjoyed an afternoon discovering some of the many thrift stores in the area, and nearly everyone left with a bargain or two.  We took walks on the beach and some made s’mores by the campfire at night.  By all accounts, Thanksgiving 2021 was an enjoyable and filling success.  Both my stomach and my heart were filled with all things good that week, with a very traditional, yet non-traditional Thanksgiving holiday.

Christmas: 

When we launched our full-time RVing life, it was a fairly new concept to at least half of our loved ones, so we wanted to begin our trip by inviting our kids to camp with us at Walt Disney World.  Alas, Covid had other plans, and for a variety of reasons, we postponed the trip one year so that we might instead celebrate “Christmas in January” in 2022.

After a year’s delay, the invitations were issued and the flights (or bus reservations, for Ella) were booked.  This time we used our pop-up screen room as a tent and we squeezed our camper and the tent into one site at The Campsites and Disney’s Fort Wilderness (if you are a camper, you gotta try this outrageously expensive campground at least once).  We decided early on that for this trip, we were gonna go “all in” on making this trip “all inclusive” for the kids, as this was going to be their (and our) Christmas gift all wrapped into one fabulous trip.  

So as each kid responded with the dates they could join us, we booked shuttle rides from the airport, bought park tickets, made park reservations, and learned how to maximize our attractions with Disney’s ridiculously expensive Genie+ service (like the old Fastpass service, but no longer free).

I pre-assembled meals in the freezer for each day we had guests and then dumped the meal into the InstantPot each day upon return from a park for an easy yet tasty meal.  We stocked up on a ton of candy and healthy snacks that we could all take into the park each day (the food at Disney is costly, and mostly meh), and budgeted a daily stipend for each kid that they could use as they wish for food, drinks or souvenirs.

Once again, we made sure the “house” and “yard” were decorated for the belated Christmas celebration, with string lights, garland, two mini Christmas trees and even artificial snow and snowballs on the ground.  We had travel hand sanitizers and holders, and mask lanyards to help keep everyone safe while in crowds, and handed out passes so that everyone could gain entrance to the parks and have photos taken by Disney PhotoPass cast members along the way.

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Because there was less overlap of visitors than we had hoped, we pushed through a four day stretch of visiting parks before we could enjoy a day of “rest” back at camp.  It was a complicated schedule that my dear husband, Andrew, developed so that each visiting kid could at least have an opportunity to see their “favorite” park during their stay, no matter how brief their visit.  It was successful but tiring!  

Throughout much of that week, Andy and I experienced moments of “parental peace”, which is an elusive feeling for parents and quite an oxymoronic term.  Perhaps it was the Disney magic, sprinkling a little Pixie Dust on our group, or maybe it was the fact that our kiddos were all now young adults, ages 20 – 30 years of age.  Whatever was the cause – we felt peace. 

Sometimes it happened as Andy and I strolled hand in hand, a few steps ahead of a couple of the kids.   We heard their laughing, cajoling, and complete excitement as they experienced Disney.  It happened as we watched two of the girls excitedly spot amazing animals on the Animal Kingdom Kilimanjaro Safari ride.  It happened again as we screamed and held onto each other on the Hollywood Studious Tower of Terror.  It certainly happened as we all got goosebumps and tears in our eyes, looking out across the sky at EPCOT’s spectacular laser, water, music and fireworks Harmonious show.  It even occurred when we happened upon our first Disney Characters in the Magic Kingdom that returned us all briefly to their childhoods.  In their presence we were witness to their happiness – and that is the secret ingredient in parenting that gave us the gift of “parental peace”.

In all, we were able to see each of our kids and our future son-in-law at one or both of our holiday celebrations this year, but we never had a moment when they were all with us together at the same time.  As is true for any mother, you never sleep as well as the nights that all of your children are under the same roof with you, and while we were not quite successful in getting us all there at one moment, for a group of adults, each with busy lives, we came pretty darn close.  When that night happens some day, when my husband, my three children, my three bonus children, and their significant others are all with us at the same moment – yes, I will sleep very well with a happy heart full of parental peace.

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Adalie, Lorne, Ella, Christy, Chris, Ben and Abby – we miss each and every one of you wherever we go, and we always look ahead to the next time we are together.

Love, Mom/Tina and Dad/Andrew

Safe travels and many blessings for togetherness in your journeys.