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Vacation Planning PollMy mom is the Queen of Organization. She takes a vacation planning poll from all my siblings (there are 5 of us), our spouses (there are 4 of them), and from all the grandkids that can voice an opinion.
We have found that what works best for us, in trying to organize our family vacation, (there will be 19 of us on our trip this December) is to alternate a beach day and activity day (an "A-B Pattern" as my kindergartener would say). We always enforce the "No Clumping Rule," which means no one needs to feel obligated to join in an activity if they'd rather do something else. But this way there is a daily agenda to help organize our chaos. Mom's vacation planning poll is very helpful in keeping most everyone happy almost all of the time. My dad is a kid at heart and provided the opportunity for all the siblings and spouses to do some outstanding Maui activities. Once Mom's vacation planning poll was completed he had a good idea of which activities we were interested in. By making most of the arrangements for our activities before we even left the mainland, he saved us a lot of time once we got to Maui. The time that would have been spent on the phone making reservations instead was spent playing at the beach, on a horse, parasailing or just enjoying being away from home. Because of the number of children, we decided to "tag team" some activities so we didn't leave my mom stuck with five kids under age 5! Usually, half of each couple stayed behind to help in the babysitting effort while the other half went off. Sometimes we split the groups up differently so couples could go together.
One of the most fun activities we did was our Sandcastle Contest Day. It started out initially as an activity for the kids but the adults soon discovered it was more fun than we ever imagined. We start by dividing into 3 or 4 teams, breaking up the couples (it's more fun/competitive for us that way) and sprinkle the kids in here and there. Then, after fighting over sand tools and sand toys, sculpting marine life sand figures and digging tunnels, we sit proudly as passers-by comment in approval of our efforts. Mom usually declares a winner (we're all winners of course) and prizes are often awarded. It's been a fun tradition we've started because the whole family can participate. It's beach/pool time after the contest is over and everyone enjoys soaking in a little more Hawaiian sun.
We also alternate eating meals out and in. It seemed after 6 or 7 days people were tired of eating out all the time during our 2000 trip (we stayed about 2 weeks at the Marriott Maui Ocean Club ). Mom's vacation planning poll helped us figure out which meals we could prepare fast and easy in our condo, during our 2004 trip. Each family (or wife in each family, I should say) took turns fixing dinner. We alternated these nights with eating out. This was nice because we didn't have to clean the kids up completely to eat in "Grandma and Grandpa's" condo, and it didn't seem to be as big of a hassle to get ready on the nights we ate out.
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