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the work & play cornerstore

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Show Notes:

I'm so grateful that for every baby we've had, we've had the opportunity to get away, just me and my husband for a few days before our new baby arrives. Today's episode is going to cover all of the work and play of going on a babymoon. I'm going to summarize each of the babymoons we've taken; how they've all been different and how we've budgeted for each one.

Now, there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to make it happen, but the play makes it all worth it.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.

First. I want to just talk about why in the world do we take babymoons? I feel like my parents are always like, what is a babymoon? Why is this a thing? It's kind of a newer trend in our generation, but I am a big fan for a few reasons.

I think the top three reasons are:

#1

Newborn life is coming. And if you've never been through newborn life before, it's, it'll rock your world. I mean, it is—it's a lot. And knowing that that is on the horizon and you're going to be working so hard and you're going to be sleep deprived and you're going to be learning what it looks like to have a new baby as part of your family, it makes sense to just take some time to rest and enjoy the season of life that you're in before that comes around.

#2

It’s just important to connect as a husband and wife and remind yourself of your foundation and your marriage and fall in love with each other again, and go on dates every night just like you used to when you were dating.

And as you have more kids, as we've had more kids, that becomes more and more difficult. And so it's so sweet to have that time to just be together.

#3

Just like any vacation, the extra time brings clarity. It brings new ideas. It brings margin and conversations that you wouldn't normally have and the ability to dream about your future.

So, let's talk about the work and play of a babymoon.

First, let's tackle the work.

Of course you have to budget for it, just like any trip or vacation you would take in that takes work. You have to work to make money in order to budget for a babymoon, you need to work to plan for your time off. What is it going to cost you in losing clients or losing that time that you would normally be working?

You have to work in the sense of planning ahead for childcare. If you have kids, planning ahead for packing packing in and of itself is you need to turn on your email signature, your away signature, plan for any school activities that the kids may have, etc. So this babymoon, which is the fourth babymoon that we have taken, the biggest bulk of my work was planning for my kids.

And of course this has gotten a little bit more demanding as we've had more children and as we've added to our family, but man, this time it was a little crazy because we went in the middle of their school year. Not that it's really intense. I mean, I have a five-year-old in kindergarten, a three-year-old and a two-year-old in preschool. And none of them even go five days a week, but there's two different schools, a lot of different schedules and taking all of the time to plan for them. It took me eight days. I'm not even exaggerating, took me eight days to find everyone that could help, to plan ahead for all of the pickup and drop-offs, I actually texted so many different people to see if they could help with the kids and didn't want to overload one person since we were going to be gone for eight days.

So it kind of looked like this:

Somebody would take all of the kids for two days or three days, and then another person would take them for two days. And then we split up all three kids to go to three different houses for three days. And then they came back to our house and spent one night there. And then we came home and all of that equaled our time away.

It was a little bit crazy. So for me, it was contacting a ton of people. Some said, yes, they could do it. Some said, no, some said they could do it only on certain days. So it was like a puzzle trying to figure that out. I probably started that process six to eight weeks ahead of our trip.

Once I got the final schedule, I emailed all of them. The final plan, contact information, kind of what I was thinking. Then I had to send individual emails to each caregiver about pickup times drop off times, you know, just the different nuances of taking care of each child individually. So because we have three kids right now, ages five, three, and two, they're all still in car seats, which also was a layer of complication because when they're going over to stay at someone else's house, I have to make sure that those caregivers have car seats. So what I did was I packed their bags ahead of time. I packed overnight bags for each of the kids to stay at these houses for two nights.

And then I drove to each of those houses and I installed the extra car seats that we have in each of their cars. And I dropped off those bags ahead of time. I went ahead and he even bought extra toothbrushes and things so that they could have toothbrushes at home and then travel toothbrushes so this could work a little bit easier.

It was a lot of emailing and corresponding. And my brain, I feel like was fried by the end of all of this. On another note, my kindergartner goes to a university model school, which means she's in school two days a week, but I homeschool her three days a week. So we also had to email her caregivers her full on lesson plans, her homeschool material. I had to pack an extra backpack for her so that the people watching her could also homeschool her.

So all in all, I ended up writing out a daily schedule of who is where, who picks up who, the addresses of the locations and buildings, where they would be picked up and dropped off the times I had to send an authorization form a week ahead of time to their teachers saying these people are okay to drop off and pick up my kids.

I had to email their teachers, just let them know we're going to be out of town. Let Milly's teacher know, “Hey, I'm not going to be the one homeschooling her this week, but her caregivers are going to do the best they can.” Yeah. I mean, it was just a lot of details. And by the end of it, man, I was packing patting myself on the back for figuring it all out because I felt like it was the craziest puzzle. And I just left so immensely grateful for our friends and family who stepped up to care for our kids, because I know not everyone has that. I know that there are so many people who don't have help nearby who don't have family nearby.

And it made me so, so grateful for the people who are here to help and to take care of our kids. And so, yeah, it was a lot, it was a lot of work about eight days solid of me doing something every day, corresponding with someone, taking something to someone else, making sure everything was in line for them. And then the last thing I did was I went grocery shopping.

I stocked up our house, our fridge, our pantry with easy meals for the kids, made a list of easy meals that they liked on the fridge. And then I made a list for myself and literally it was the afternoon before our babymoon that I started packing for myself for a few hours, and then we left the next day.

So it was, it was just a lot of work. It was a lot of work to prep and plan and prepare for the baby moon.

But let's talk about the play, the highlights once we got there. And I will say as a mom and after spending all of my time and energy focused so much on the kids and caring for them, it takes about a day, sometimes two days, for me to completely unwind from all of that. I miss the kids, you know, I've done all this work to go on this trip. And then I just start to feel the separation anxiety. I miss them. Like, what if, what if something happens? What if I did something wrong? What if I missed something?

And it takes about 24 to 48 hours for me to kind of come down off of that and then really be able to enjoy my time. But once I get to that point, once the 24 hours of travel and everything has passed and I get to relax, man, Will and I have so much fun.

Here are some activities we usually do on our babymoons—

Usually we try to plan a hike or to go swimming. Snorkeling (Obviously this depends on the location). All of our babymoon's included these things, but this time, this is what we enjoyed: reading a ton, I think I read two or three books sleeping in every day. Just having long, quiet times in the morning of journaling and prayer. Having extended conversations at dinner and long dinners where we don't have to get back for a babysitter, which is so great. Dreaming about baby names. Talking about work. Talking about our future and life as a family of three, transitioning to a family of four, it just gave us this big, deep breath of fresh air and renewed love for each other and renewed love for our family. And one of my favorite things about the babymoon is it really allows me to miss my kids, like really miss them. And then when I get back to them, I feel so renewed as a mom, which is so important and sweet.

So I'm going to run down the four different babymoons that we have taken over the last seven years. I'm going to include a rough budget of what we spent and how we saved money to go on them. And then a brief itinerary of each day, just to illustrate, I don't know, the fun that we've had and the memories that we've made and also how planning ahead and the work of planning for a babymoon really pays off so much because these are some of our favorite memories as a husband and wife.

And also just to say, you can get creative with what you spend, where you go, and your babymoon will not look like our babymoons, and that's okay. But just maybe to get your wheels turning and thinking about how you could spend your own babymoon.

Milly’s Babymoon

So our very first babymoon was to California. We budgeted the most for this trip than any other trip. I think we ended up spending around $6,000 for this trip. It was, I think it is the most expensive vacation maybe that we've ever taken.

We arrived in San Francisco. We went to Muir Woods, national park. I hope I said that, right? And then we drove to Yosemite that night. I drove. I was so pregnant. I was like 30 weeks. We drove and drove and drove. We got stuck in traffic, but we finally settled into our Airbnb in Yosemite. It was beautiful. We had an Airbnb located in the heart of Yosemite National Park.

The first day we got there, we hiked the mist trail. If you know the mist trail, you know, that is no joke of a hike. And there are so many steps and it is one of my most proud feats as a pregnant woman to have hiked the mist trail while 30 weeks pregnant.

Day three, we hiked around mirror lake, and then we just settled in. We watched a movie at our Airbnb and just chilled out. I remember making nachos and they were the best nachos I've ever eaten. They were so delicious. And we just made them in our oven there at the Airbnb.

Day four, we hiked Mariposa Grove.

Day five, we drove to Carmel Valley Ranch, then we did a 17 mile drive along the coast. And then we shared appetizers at Spanish Bay with a bagpiper playing in the background of this beautiful golf course—it was amazing.

Day six, we went to Big Sur Mcway falls. We had this crazy adventurous drive on this mountain that someone recommended to us and I would not recommend it, but it was really hilarious and fun. And then we visited earthbound farm and then we just explored Carmel Valley Ranch and had dinner at the ranch.

And then day seven, we had a spa day and dinner, which was wonderful.

Day eight, I woke up early and did a yoga class there, which was offered at Carmel Valley, and then we traveled home.

It was, it was beautiful. California was amazing. I feel like we did all the things. We looked at the trip and we broke it up into two parts. The first part was Yosemite was very active. It was hiking, it was exploring, it was sightseeing. It was gorgeous. And then the last half of the trip was at Carmel Valley Ranch, which was more of a luxury ranch. It was, I mean, it was just beautiful. It felt more restful. And we really enjoyed splitting it up like that. This is the only trip where I feel like we just paid for it all ourselves.

Lyndon’s Babymoon

The second trip was Lyndon’s babymoon. And we went to Highlands, North Carolina, about a seven hour drive from us. And we only budgeted, I think it was less than a thousand dollars. I think it was maybe $800 where we spent all of our money on staying one night at old Edwards Inn and a spa day. And the way we could do that is because I was photographing a wedding that weekend and we decided to turn this wedding—and it was the most beautiful wedding—but we turned that wedding weekend into our babymoon because we loved Highlands, we loved Old Edwards, and it was a great way to save money.

So a lot of our travel expenses were covered as they always were when I was a wedding photographer, but we didn't obviously ask our clients to pay for an extra night at the Old Edwards Inn and a spa day. We just had them cover the Airbnb that we stayed at for shooting the wedding.

So Friday we shot the rehearsal dinner Saturday, we shot the wedding. Sunday, we headed straight to Old Edwards Inn. We went to their spa for an entire day. We napped, we ate, we got a couples massage. We checked into the hotel and we had a late night dinner at Melanie's in downtown Highlands. It was lovely. And then on Monday we rested, we hiked, we took a nap by the pool. We enjoyed some Kilwin’s ice cream. And then we took our road trip home and that was it.

So this one was way less expensive, way less extensive. And it also was just the perfect getaway weekend to rest and relax after shooting a wedding and make sure we at least squeezed in some time together.

Beaufort’s Babymoon

Now, Beaufort’s babymoon was coupled with our 10th anniversary trip. We knew for our 10th Anniversary we wanted to go somewhere in Europe, somewhere big. You know, we've been married for 10 years. We wanted to go for it. The cool thing was, is I was again, booked for a wedding in Italy. It was my first international European wedding and again, our flights were covered and some of our travel expenses were covered. So I think personally, we ended up budgeting maybe $2-3,000 for our Italy trip. Maybe a little bit more than that. I know it was still less expensive than our first trip. I think honestly it was around maybe $3,500.

So day one, we arrived, went to Rome. We saw the Vatican.

Day two was Rome. We saw the Coliseum and then we traveled to Cinque Terre that day.

Day three, four, and five and six, all four of those days were Cinque Terre. We did a beach day, then we did hiking from Montessorial to Vernazza and then we had a rest day where we just spent the whole day at the beach.

And then we went hiking from Carneglia to Manarola. I hope I'm saying all these names, right. Just bear with me. Okay.

So day seven was Florence where we went to see the David, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio Bridge. We did a lot of the touristy things.

And then days eight and nine were Lake Como. And these were our restful days, actually days eight, nine and ten were Lake Como, and that's where we photographed a wedding. It was really intimate. It's really beautiful. But we spent the days before and after just exploring Lake Como, we did our ten-year vow renewal on a boat in the middle of a lake. It was beautiful. We rested and just explored and ate delicious lunches and walked around Lake Como. It was beautiful.

Then day 11, we flew home from Rome. Well actually, the day before had to travel back to Rome and then we flew home. So, that was our third baby moon.

And that brings us to our last babymoon, which happened just a few months ago while I was pregnant with baby number four, still am pregnant as I'm recording this podcast episode. But we went to St. Thomas and it was beautiful. And it was probably, we budgeted personally the least amount because this trip was actually a gift to Will for reaching a certain sales goal through his job and the people he works with generously gifted their timeshare to us and allowed us to stay in St. Thomas for a week with no expenses, which is amazing.

So we did have to pay for our own food and we had to pay for how we kind of got around on the island and we rented a car one day, but it was such a gift because it literally was a gift to us. This trip was given to us. So we budgeted, I think around $800 of our own money to cover food and travel and date nights and any other spending that we were going to do.

Then all we did was make a list of beaches and restaurants we wanted to try. And so we made a list of the beaches we wanted to visit Megan's Bay, Lindquist Beach, Brewers Bay. Of course, we did a hike because we love to hike on our babymoons. We hiked Mermaids Trail. And then for two of the days we rented a car and on one of those, we just explored the island and went on a hike and did some other things.

And then the second day we took the car ferry over to St. John for a day where we visited trunk bay, cinnamon bay, honeymoon beach. And we hiked the Linde point trail. I do feel like our itineraries for our babymoons have gotten more and more relaxed. Will and I are the kind of people that we really like to have a plan. We want to make the most of our time. So we like knowing what we're doing, but this last time it was really sweet because we just made a list of some beaches we wanted to go to, some restaurants we wanted to try, but it was really fluid. Like we just kind of woke up that day and decided what we wanted to do. And I think at this point in our lives with three kids, we just needed a really relaxed restful babymoon, and it was wonderful.

Now I posted about our babymoon, I've always posted about our babymoons on Instagram, and I got several DMs saying, man, I wish I could do this. You know, I wish we could afford this. And I wish that I had done this with my kids. And w you know, we didn't do this. And I just want to pause and say, you know what? It's okay if you didn't have a babymoon, or if you're not going to have a babymoon, it's okay. Not everyone has to have a babymoon. It's really fine.

I'm just a big fan of them for the reasons I mentioned before, because it just gives you a pause before you have baby to just reconnect with one another. Now your babymoon does not have to look like mine. And I mean, all four of ours look very different, but it doesn't have to look like any of ours, does not have to cost as much.

I even got one message where someone was saying I'm 32 weeks pregnant. It's too late. We can't do this now. And I messaged her back and said, girl, you find a weekend between now and when this baby's born and book a local Airbnb, it does not have to be in a tropical island or in Europe or seven hours away, it can literally be 30 minutes down the street. It just takes some planning. And with some planning and budgeting, you can have a beautiful, beautiful, wonderful getaway just a few minutes from your home.

You know, there were some years where we spent a lot more money on our trips than other years. You have to take into consideration your financial goals, your financial status, and you can still prioritize this without spending a lot of money. You can get creative with it. It does take a plan and a budget though. And so I just want to encourage you think about this ahead of time, you know, ask to borrow a friend's vacation home. If you know of a friend who has a place to stay, or just, like I said, drive to a city nearby. If you don't have childcare nearby, if you don't have family that lives nearby or regular crew of babysitters, and you don't know how you'd get your kids taken care of, start testing out babysitter services now. Try to find somebody with it in mind thinking, okay, how am I going to secure someone to watch my kids for a weekend?

And you can start testing people out and getting to know people now as part of your plan to have a babymoon. As with everything in life, it's all about trade-offs, you know? You’re going to trade working for a week for some play and rest, but it's going to take some extra work to get out the door so that you can enjoy that time with your husband.

And so I just want to encourage you that taking a babymoon is worth it. If you can manage it. If you can do it, it does take work. It takes a lot of forethought, a lot of planning, a lot of puzzle pieces, and the more kids that you have, the harder it gets to make it happen. But, but in the end, it's so sweet and so good and so important to do, I think, before every baby if you can make it happen. It takes work for sure, but the play is always worth it.

Work & Play Cornerstore

It's time for the Work & Play Cornerstone where I share a book I'm loving and a thing I'm loving. I'm going to be adding the book Where the Crawdads Sing to the Cornerstore. Oh my goodness. Such a good book. I read it on our last babymoon and could not put it down.

And then the thing I'm adding is actually the snorkel masks, just in case you ever go anywhere with snorkeling, but I've never seen such cool snorkel mask before. They actually cover your whole face. So they don't have the mouthpieces that you used to have with circles. I mean, your snorkel is like that still, but anyway, this kind of face mask covers your whole face. It was really neat. Some friends let us borrow it. I think it's worth buying and taking with you if you ever go to a tropical place.

I'm going to close with an anonymous quote about travel, but I loved it. And it says,