Handling the Holiday(s)
I wasn't trying to be politically correct in using the term "holidays" because my question really does include both the Thanksgiving and especially the Christmas holidays while being a snowbird. Th...
Forum Discussion
Hi Mike,
This will be our second year of being gone for Christmas. Our situation is different from yours in that our two 30-something year old daughters (no grand kids) are married and live out of state but there is still the desire to be with them at Christmas. But we now know that being away is not a big deal and actually makes their lives less complicated at Christmas.
We thought it would be tough last year to not host the kids at home for Christmas but it actually worked out well. Both daughters felt relieved because of not having to spend time with both sides of their family at or near Christmas, especially the one in Texas as flights are expensive that time of year.
This year, as we did last year, we spent Thanksgiving weekend with our daughter who lives 5 hours away and celebrated two holidays on the same weekend.......Thanksgiving on Thursday and Christmas on Saturday. We were able to Skype with our other daughter while opening gifts and we all thought it worked out well.
We really enjoyed heading south under better road conditions in early to mid December last year and will do it again this year. It takes the stress out of hoping for a dry weather window between Christmas and New Years.
Next year we are discussing the idea of heading south right after Thanksgiving and flying up for 4 or 5 days either sometime just before Christmas or right at Christmas. Lately, I have seen some very good pricing for flights getting us up north and back south again before Christmas day and also if flying north on Christmas eve and returning south a couple days after.
We're feeling our way along. Like you we are early in our snowbird career and it seems our plans are still a work in progress but it's fun to plan and see what we like and don't like.
This will be our second year of being gone for Christmas. Our situation is different from yours in that our two 30-something year old daughters (no grand kids) are married and live out of state but there is still the desire to be with them at Christmas. But we now know that being away is not a big deal and actually makes their lives less complicated at Christmas.
We thought it would be tough last year to not host the kids at home for Christmas but it actually worked out well. Both daughters felt relieved because of not having to spend time with both sides of their family at or near Christmas, especially the one in Texas as flights are expensive that time of year.
This year, as we did last year, we spent Thanksgiving weekend with our daughter who lives 5 hours away and celebrated two holidays on the same weekend.......Thanksgiving on Thursday and Christmas on Saturday. We were able to Skype with our other daughter while opening gifts and we all thought it worked out well.
We really enjoyed heading south under better road conditions in early to mid December last year and will do it again this year. It takes the stress out of hoping for a dry weather window between Christmas and New Years.
Next year we are discussing the idea of heading south right after Thanksgiving and flying up for 4 or 5 days either sometime just before Christmas or right at Christmas. Lately, I have seen some very good pricing for flights getting us up north and back south again before Christmas day and also if flying north on Christmas eve and returning south a couple days after.
We're feeling our way along. Like you we are early in our snowbird career and it seems our plans are still a work in progress but it's fun to plan and see what we like and don't like.
