The past few Christmases, we’ve bundled the kids in the car and travelled to the American Midwest where their American grandparents were within a few hours’ drive from each other. It was becoming a tradition. Until, that is, one set of grandparents retired and moved to California, and the other set of grandparents came up here to save us the trip.

Between this and other coincidences in terms of the daughters’ and my wife’s vacation period, we realized we had a week to ourselves and no familial obligations. What were we going to do with all that time?

My wife and I have a confession to make: we don’t like winter. Whatever winter offers us weighs on the soul. But we know that we have months to go before the thaw, and that’s just so hard to take.

So, my wife’s desire was that we’d spend this week going someplace warm, like Florida. Find a deal somewhere where meals are included and we’d have nothing to deal with except sun and sand and warm ocean waves. I agreed that this was a good opportunity for us to do something special. So, we decided to take the leap.

And head down to Sandusky, Ohio.

There was nothing wrong with the Florida dream, until reality crept in. Imagine days of nothing but sand and surf, kicking back in a cabin by the beach . . . and our six and three-year-old daughters toddling up to our deck chairs and saying, “Mom? Dad? What is there to do?”

“Play with your toys,” we’d probably say in return.

“We’ve played with them,” they’d say. “Now there’s nothing to do!”

“Go build a sandcastle by the ocean!” we’d say.

“Okay,” my eldest might say. “Come on, sister! Let’s go feed the sharks!”

At which point, we’d hoist ourselves out of our deck chairs. “All right, kids. Wait up. We’re coming with you.”

If you’re taking your kids with you on vacation, you’ve got to know that the vacation will be centred around them. It’s just a fact of life.

Airfares were another dose of reality, and a frustrating one. A search on websites like Expedia or Orbitz yielded many promising leads with prices that seemed reasonable at first glance, until taxes and fees were added. They were also unclear as to whether the prices were single fares, or applied to all four of us. After about the tenth time of having our hopes raised and then dashed, I was muttering dark words about false advertising.

So, the revised vacation had to be somewhere we could easily drive to. Fortunately, our kids are troopers when it comes to driving. They’ve handled several trips to Des Moines and back far better than one might think.

But as we weren’t willing to give up the dream of surf just yet, we did a little hunting and discovered the Great Wolf Lodge, a chain of hotels whose unique cachet is that they’re half hotel, half indoor waterpark.

Yes, there might be snow on the ground outside, but there are waterslides inside and, most importantly, all of these pools are heated. There are other activities geared to kids that give us parents some hands-off time. There are also bunkbeds in an in-room log cabin.

These are the compromises you make when you start a family. It’s probably more than you’d expect to make during those nervous and heady months leading up to labour, but it’s worth it. When your child shrieks with joy and hugs you, it’s amazing how much it’s worth it.

• • •

James Bow is a writer and a father of two in Kitchener.
You can read more about him online at bowjamesbow.ca
or follow him on Twitter at @jamesbow.