Parents on Vacation?

 Last week my boyfriend and I took a cruise to the Caribbean.  We could not have been more excited to get away from it all and just be together.

Between us we have four teenagers.  They are all extremely busy and we are all very close.  Phone calls fly back and forth on a daily basis so we were a little concerned how it would be to be "out of the cell phone" loop for an entire week.

I put the international plan on my phone and we told the kids to text us if they needed us but if they called at 1.99 per minute someone better be trapped under furniture or holding a winning lottery ticket.

The first night we got a text at 2:34 a.m. that said "Can I call you guys? It's not an emergency".  Thank goodness we slept through that one. Of course when we woke up we became concerned about why we were needed at that hour and called.

The next text we received was "What is my budget for the Easter Bunny?".   This was from my fifteen year old. I still buy Easter baskets for the kids for Easter and apparently picking out what he wanted for his Easter basket was worthy of a text.

The next message was "Snooki (from Jersey Shore)  is pregnant!!!".  Now if Snooki was my daughter that might have warranted an International text but otherwise I am fairly sure I could have waited until I got home to find out Snooki was with child.

Throughout the week there was the anticipated "I am out of money" text and "There is no food in the house" text.  The last one we received was one that read "I have bad news.".  Of course I text back as soon as I got it and received no response.  After several urgent text attempting to get a response I broke down and called home at the rate of 1.99 per minute.  I spent 10 dollars to find out that we had a mouse.  I explained that being out of the country there wasn't much I could do but that I sure was glad that for the next 16 hours I could worry about coming home to a mouse.

In all honesty Brad and I struggled with not being able to talk to our kids as much as they missed talking to us.  We both admitted on Thursday that being on vacation was great but we both were homesick for our "babies".  

There really is no vacation from being a parent.  No amount of blue water and sandy beaches can take the place of talking to your kids at the end of the day.  It looks like next time we will be taking all four kids with us and we wouldn't have it any other way.