#2017yearoftrips is exactly what you think it is. It is a year of squeezing in lots and lots of trips -- just the two of us! Yep, you read that right, lots of trips. Specifically many, many trips without our kids. Did I mention it is just the two of us? I might have been a teeny, tiny bit excited about this because this went from "trips" to actual vacations. It started out as a joke that quickly turned into a dream and then a reality.
At first we thought of taking one big trip, but then when we realized Southwest flies to mostly domestic locations, we joked about taking a trip every month.
It was a joke for about 30 seconds and then we wondered "Could we really pull this off? Could we replace regular date nights with a monthly trip? If we did 1-3 night trips, we could do them over weekends, holidays, etc." And thus, #2017yearoftrips was born.
We have gotten more questions about this #2017yearoftrips than anything else this year. So, I thought, why not blog about it? So here goes with all the nitty, gritty details.
Back to the questions:
Why now? Financial reasons pushed us to do it now. Last August, Jon qualified for and received Southwest's Companion Pass status. What does this mean exactly? FREE AIRFARE!!!! It means that everytime he flies on southwest, he can take a companion for free. Every. Single. Time. Of course, there are some rules involved. He received this status last August (so Aug 2016) and it is good through December 31, 2017. Also, he can change who his companion is only 3 times. First, he took his brother Mike as a companion on his golf trip. And I've been his companion ever since (umm..rightfully so). That means he can change it one last time between now and the end of the year. But then I can't go on anymore trips, so we'll see about that.
Practically speaking, we seem to be in a good life stage for this. We don't have any babies/toddlers, so the kids are easier from that perspective - no strollers, packnplays, carseats or equipment of any kind is needed. Our kids are old enough to dress, feed and wipe themselves, but young enough that they are mostly compliant, don't have huge social lives outside of school and minimal activities.
How did he get this FREE Companion Pass status? If you think he did it by traveling for work, you'd be wrong. He did in a way that financial guru Dave Ramsey would definitely NOT support. He opened two credit cards to get bonuses. One credit card he opened gave him 60,000 reward points and the other gave him 40,000 points. Then we just put ALL of our expenses on the cards until we earned an additional 10,000 points (of course, you need to be able to pay off these cards each month so you cannot go nuts). These credit card deals aren't always available or with the same amount of bonuses, so you have to time this correctly. A post on those details will be coming shortly. Once you have 110,000 points -- you will get your companion pass status and be ready to start booking flights. Woohoo!!! Time to head to Southwest's Low Fare Calendar!
Also, this means that we often take the late friday night flight out of Midway which means arriving at or after midnight. We've also done 6 am flights (brutal for night owls) but it does save you one night of hotel, so there's that! We've also flown in late on the 4th of July where I was convinced fireworks were going to hit our plane!!!
How do we pick where to go? Early on, we decided that as much as possible, we wanted to visit places that we had NOT already been to already. Bonus points if it was a brand-new spot for BOTH of us. So, we quickly made a list of all the places Southwest flies and ranked them on where we would prefer to go. So far we have visited Baltimore, Houston, Phoenix, New York City, Puerto Rico, Melbourne Florida (Orlando Airport), Salt Lake City, New Orleans, Sacramento/Sonoma/SanFrancisco and Kansas City.
I have saved for last what is quite possibly the very most important question...
Who watches your kids? Anyone with a pulse! Just kidding. Seriously though, this is the most challenging aspect of pulling off the trips. Four boys is no small amount of kids. And, while our kids aren't in a million activities but they do have some, so timing around those important events can be tricky. Summer is easier from a scheduling perspective but it means that the boys are around ALL day which means they will eat you out of house & home and you may need earplugs because they are LOUD. During the school year, they're in school for 8 hours, so it's less work, but you have to be able to get them to school, pack lunches, make sure homework is done (not for the faint of heart either). So it's basically a "pick your poison" scenario.
Both sets of grandparents have done more than their fair share of caring for our boys while we travel. Jon's brother & wife have helped us several times when grandparents weren't available. And, we have friends who have helped us too (for this, we usually split the boys up into pairs). So, we owe a lot of people for their help in caring for our crew. The boys have actually LOVED this part of it. The excitement of staying with grandparents, sleepovers with cousins or a weekend at a friend's house with different toys, video games, food and traditions. I can't speak for our family & friends, but for the six of us, it has been a win/win!
In the next couple of weeks, I am going to post separately about each trip including tips on what to do, where to eat, etc. The one main thing I've learned from traveling is that you can make anywhere fun! I've been more excited about some destinations than others, but after each trip, I've been blown away by how fun & tasty each destination was to explore.
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