Do You Know What Summer Vacation Means for a Chef’s Family?

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It’s finally the last week of school for our two older girls.  It’s been weeks of seeing friends from around the country post their end of the school year pictures on Facebook and it’s finally our turn.

While summer vacation is a great thing for most families, for the family of a chef it’s AMAZING!!  Why?  Because no matter what days my husband takes off (which change weekly, daily or hourly based on what’s going on in the restaurant) we are all home and can do things together.  Or we can just hang out. (Although that’s something our younger two haven’t really figured out yet.  They still think that if Daddy is home they need to be right on top of him every second of the day.  We’ll have to work on that a bit.)

For this past school year, my husband has had very few weekend days off.  So while I have had time to spend with him and so has our youngest daughter who was still at home full time, the older two really only had a few hours in the evening after school to spend with him.  There have been some tough moments, the hardest was probably when our 9 year old actually asked, “Why can’t Daddy have a normal job?”  That’s a hard one to answer.

We tried really hard to get homework done early and to not plan things when we knew he was going to be off.  But often my chef/husband would come home late at night and say, “I’m off tomorrow.” Great news . . . but no time to plan ahead.

We took a couple day trips during the school year and kept the kids out of school (and even told the school we were spending the day as a family.)  My kids survived.  They still did great in school.  It’s not ideal and we only did it a few times, but sometimes it was the only way to spend the day as a family because of conflicting school and work schedules.

family time

Sometimes you just need a day as a family to hang out and eat blue Jolly Ranchers in the car!

So what about homeschooling you might ask?  We’ve talked about it a couple times, but don’t feel that it’s the right thing for our family right now.  So for now, we deal with the conflicting schedules of public school and a Chef and do the best that we can.

So with all that to say, we are very excited for summer vacation!!  No matter what day my chef/husband is off, we will be too!  Woohoo!!  We are looking forward to sun (which usually starts to appear here on a regular basis after the 4th of July), lots of time at the lake swimming and lots of time with friends.  We’ll be spending a week with family and then a week on vacation as a family as well.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) with the sun and beautiful weather in Seattle, comes more customers (if that’s possible), especially when you are a waterfront restaurant.  So my husband’s hours will still be long, but at least we’ll all be home and ready to spend time together (or watch him sleep and then spend time together).

Does anyone else struggle with finding time to do things as a family during the school year?  Have you found anything that has worked well?  If so, I’d love to know.  Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

 

2 Comments

  1. Alisa

    Summer vacation means the kids get to see my husband more so that is a good thing. We get Sundays off together as a family and try to do day trips on that day or see relatives my hubby doesn’t normally get to see cause of his work schedule. Mondays he is home with the kids this summer and is trying to beat the heat by planning water days at the river or lakes. I am a bit jealous of Mondays. Hard to get up and leave them on Mondays for sure. The rest of the week based on his schedule he is either home a few minutes in the morning or a few hours but still seeing the kids a lot more than during the school year.

    Reply
    • Jennifer

      Yeah for summer! Water days sound like fun for them. So sorry you don’t get to join them. Having the kids home definitely gives them more time with Dad though! Thanks for sharing Alisa. 🙂

      Reply

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