Vacation Home Rentals Tool To Help Plan Our Next Family Reunion

December 29, 2007

Suzanne’s family is trying to plan a big family reunion for the summer of 2009. For years, her family has been renting beach front houses at Gulf Shores, Alabama through a local realty company. This company has been difficult to deal with and has very strict rules for when and how houses can be booked.

With the family every growing in size, it has become nearly impossible for us to book a property that will accommodate all 30 plus members of our extended family. We’ve started to utilize sites like vacation home rentals because they allow perspective renters to contact the owners directly in order to book the rental. Cutting out the middle man is a nice benefit of this vacation rental site. Vacation rental properties make an excellent alternative to the typical hotel room.

This site features a powerful search tool. I like the way that I can narrow down my search results on this website. Using the Gulf Shores example, I can click on Alabama, then Gulf Shores, and then click on “sleeps 13″ or more option in order to see the options that are available that might accommodate our large group. Once I click on the selected property, I can see pictures of the property and get the owner contact information for the property. This makes the whole rental process much more user friendly than going through the real estate company that we used to use.

We also have a week long trip to Anaheim planned during the summer and we will definitely be looking into a vacation rental home for the week rather than being cooped up in a small hotel room.

If you are looking for a vacation rental property, our just planning your next trip, be sure to check out Home Away From Home.

Posted by Mr Papa | Filed Under Family, Travel | Leave a Comment

Vacation Update

December 17, 2007

Vacation continues to go nicely. I really needed some time off. The last part of the year at work was rough. I still haven’t decided if I am going to go back to work on the 2nd of January or delay until the 7th. I had been thinking the 2nd, but the kids are trying to get me to make it the 7th since they have that whole week off from school.

On Saturday, Suzanne and the kids had their annual Christmas dance recital with the Alma Dolores International Dance Centre. This tends to be the biggest production of the year. Unfortunately, its also the performance with the most little kids. One can only take so many 4 and 5 year olds up on stage trying to dance. Don’t get me wrong, we were there with our kids too, so I fully understand the families and how they like it. I just wish they didn’t cut out a large portion of the older kids and adults from this recital.

All that said, this recital was the most crowded that I have seen yet. Almost the entire theater was jammed pack and some folks had to stand up for the show. When the first act ended, it cleared out somewhat because most of the little kids had to go home for bed. Sean and Savannah did very well in their dances and had a great time. Suzanne didn’t actually dance in this recital, but as the pom pom teacher and song and dance teacher at the dance studio, she had several numbers in the show. Her pom pom class continues to be popular and growing in size. In fact, its too big and there was too many kids on the stage at once. They still looked pretty good, but if you have 50 girls on stage, at their age, there is no way to keep them all in time. After the first of the year, she will be breaking the pom pom class into two classes to keep the size more manageable.

The kids have finally won us over and sometime this coming week we will likely be getting them cell phones. We have wanted to wait until they are old enough, but will all of our activities, there are times that we give them one of ours so we know where everyone is and what they are doing. It is just making sense to get them a phone. There will obviously be some strict rules on when they can and can’t use them. It will cost $10 a month apiece to add them to our current plan. For a normal month, they will pay us half the bill out of their chore earnings. If they are particularly bad in a month, they will foot the whole bill. If they should happen to have an outstanding month, we will pick up the whole month tab. Hopefully, this cost / sharing type of arrangement will help them be responsible. It doesn’t hurt that I want to get myself a new phone too – probably one of those LG Voyagers.

We had a nice sight in our yard today as the local herd of antelope when strolling by our house. The herd size is definitely up this year, which is good. Enjoy the prong horn antelope images below. They were taken from our back porch.