How traveling with our kids became a key part of slowing down and spending quality time together as a family.  

Before

Before having children and as a young professional, I spent years channeling all of my energy into my career. I love what I do and was genuinely thriving. I have always been a typical “go-getter”. I am a task-completer, a rule-follower, a list-finisher and a goal-setter and I like it that way. I was always driven to tackle whatever I deemed the next appropriate step in my career, and I wanted to do it as quickly as possible. 

Now

In January of 2020, I married my husband after 7 years of dating and we had our first baby in the spring of 2022. When my daughter was born, I met a new version of myself that I didn’t recognize. Suddenly, I desperately wanted everything around me to slow down. I wanted to savor every single moment. As my baby girl got bigger before my eyes, I felt like I was clinging to time that refused to stand still and was leaving precious milestones or stages behind at every turn. The world around me and my career kept moving forward at the same speed it always had, but I felt like I was losing the ability to keep up like I used to without sacrificing the ability to savor those moments. I was desperate to find ways to create lasting memories with my little family.

We booked our first cruise the following summer when my daughter was one. On that trip, we didn’t just make memories. I learned so much about what traveling could provide for us as a family and how it could serve as an escape and an opportunity to stop time, just for a little while.

What Traveling Means for Our Family

For us, travel has become a way for us to leave the real world behind for a bit and just spend uninterrupted time with each other. Whether we are in Disney World, on a cruise ship, or just spending a weekend away in a nearby town, those escapes from reality have become something we treasure and the memories we make with our kids when we get to spend some distraction-free time with them is priceless.

Why Planning the Perfect Trip is Overrated 

We’ve all done it. Saved for years. Planned for months. Spent thousands of dollars on “THE” trip. As parents, we are naturally driven to put everything we have into creating lasting memories for our families and we want them to be perfect. As a result, we often put time, effort, money and energy into crafting the perfect itinerary to create the ultimate core memory when planning a vacation. I’ll be honest, that first cruise with my one-year-old toddler was a disaster. I packed way too much, I over planned activities, I set high expectations that were unrealistic for our family, and I felt like I failed. I remember thinking to myself, “We spent so much money on this trip, and we didn’t even do half of the things that I had planned!”  I was frustrated with myself, feeling like I had somehow failed to achieve the standard that only I had set. 

In the midst of my frustration, I remember my husband saying to me “We did a ton of things. They may not have been things we planned, but we did what worked for us and we had a great time.” He was right. When I look back on pictures from that first trip, all I see is joy on each of our faces. We had a week of uninterrupted, quality time together. We may not have made it to bingo or the late night comedy show on the ship even though I planned it so meticulously around my little one’s bedtime and the hope that she would sleep in the stroller during it. We paid too much for an excursion that in retrospect, wasn’t a great fit for us with a toddler. But we did a lot. We went on daily walks around the ship, drinking coffee and talking. We played for hours at the splash pad. We spent a day at the pool bar, passing a sleeping toddler back and forth (after she had a full-blown meltdown in front of everyone around us). We enjoyed breakfast, lunch and dinner every day as a family without any interruptions from our daily lives. We froze time, just for a little bit. 

How my Vacation Planning has Changed

We may not have done all of the things I planned for on that trip. But the things we did not plan for are where much of the magic came from. After we returned from that cruise, we planned our first trip to Disney World with our daughter. I made one promise to myself – that I would prioritize quality time with my family over completing a to-do list. Now, when I plan our trips I don’t create a detailed itinerary. I don’t stress about how long we will spend in each place and how many activities we can fit into a certain time period. Instead I just prioritize the experiences that will bring our family joy and create quality, uninterrupted time for us to bond with each other and make memories. 

Becoming Disney Vacation Club Membership Members

In August of 2025, we purchased a Disney Vacation Club membership at the Riviera Resort. Some of our friends and family thought we were insane for committing to 40 years of Disney vacations. Hey, maybe we are. But for us, we made a commitment to a product that will continuously provide us with the opportunity to freeze time and make these memories as a family. 

Thanks for being here! We can’t wait to share all of our unbiased, unfiltered tips, tricks and chaos as we navigate traveling and making the most of our DVC membership with young kids. If there is something specific you want to hear about, please consider sharing it with us in the comments below.