Time flies when you are having fun, working hard, and when reality sets in that your baby is now a full-fledged teenager.
It feels like June 2006 was just yesterday, and yet here I am, a mother of an only child and I have spent his entire life dedicating my time to building and running two businesses, Ignite Funding and Preferred Trust Company. I have talked about this guilt in a previous blog, but this time I can proudly say I have done something about it.
For the past 5 years, we would spend just about every weekend at the same beach house. I know you are probably thinking “oh poor us”, but don’t be a hater, I work my ass off. The initial novelty wore off and soon became a routine, like running businesses over family. It was high time to find different ways to make the remaining years of our son at home an adventure and make new memories that involved more than the same beach.
What better way to do this than to hang up the beach house keys for motorhome keys? You read that right, we bought a motorhome. How many of you can say your CEO would choose to spend their free time in one of those with their family on long weekends and for weeks on end? I’m guessing not many. We reserved a covered parking spot for a motorhome one weekend and went shopping the next. We drove off the lot with a 38’ motorhome and a Jeep to tow behind. Since October 2020, we have been on fourteen trips from one end of the country to the other. My friends started to ask me if I retired, and my employees recognized that if I drove the Jeep to work, the motorhome would be pulling up in the afternoon to take us on our next adventure.
We can always get another beach house, but we cannot get these next four years with our teenage son back. I spent my whole childhood camping, so I knew darn well what I was getting my family into. I was trading in the routine for an adventure. One that allowed for new experiences, quality family time, and the guilty pleasure of all the s’mores you could eat. By the way, if you eat s’mores with Hershey chocolate, trade it out for a Reese’s and you will never go back! I’m converting fellow campers one RV park at a time.
“I was trading in the routine for an adventure. One that allowed for new experiences, quality family time, and the guilty pleasure of all the s’mores you could eat."
Planning the trips are as fun as the trips themselves. We always have the next trip to look forward to. And yes, we took the motorhome to the beach the minute the California governor lifted restrictions and we plan to spend a month at the beach this summer. This was my way of making up for no more beach house or as I refer to it, a mother’s guilt.
It is getting harder and harder to determine our favorite trip. We have been to Sedona, AZ, Duck Creek, UT, Bryson City, NC, Big Bear, CA, San Diego, CA, Newport Beach, CA, Meteor City, AZ, Logandale, NV, Nashville, TN and multiple visits to Lake Mead in Las Vegas which allows water and bike adventure weekends only 30 minutes from home!
If you are a CEO and think that the Ritz Carlton is an adventure, think again. Let your kids be kids and experience all those priceless moments by taking them on an adventure.
