A great family vacation, whether you spend it at a campground, a hotel, in the mountains or on a beach, is a great way to spend quality time away from home relaxing with your loved ones. If you'll be spending your much-needed vacation with your immediate family or even with extended family for a larger, intergenerational event, having a creative, organized plan will make your trip a memorable success.



Use the following five helpful tips to have a great family vacation that the whole family will talk about for years to come.

Make a list, check it thrice. While over packing can have its own host of problems, not packing enough or forgetting some of the essentials can be much worse. Consider making a list and following it closely to be your best defense against forgetting something important. With all the hustle and bustle that often comes along with preparing for a great family vacation, without that list it's pretty much a guarantee that you'll forget something.

You can certainly have more than one list to make things even easier, one for items to pack, one for things to buy, and one for the actual vacation complete with itineraries and things that are an absolute must to remember like medications.

Stay close to your regular schedule. Children, especially younger ones, can be greatly affected by changes in their routine. In order to have a great family vacation, you must not change their sleeping schedules or eating habits too much; they'll feel more secure that way, and also be more likely to behave. If possible, try to keep bedtime relatively close to the normal time for youngsters, within reason of course, after all it is vacation!

Creatively capture memories. While nearly everyone brings a camera along on their vacation (check your list), there are several other ways of capturing your special memories. The prices of camcorders have dropped greatly as of late as technology continues to reinvent itself, but if they're not an option, consider renting one or borrowing from a friend, so that you can show everybody that you had a great family vacation.

It's also fun to give the kids their own disposable cameras so they can capture favorite parts of their great family vacation. Voice activated tape recorders make great gadgets to take along on a family vacation to record candid moments that can be saved for generations to come.

Another keepsake to treasure from your time together would be artwork done by the kids. Give each child their own set of ?art supplies? so that they can convey their thoughts or memories of the vacation. They could draw something they saw at the beach, or a certain ride in an amusement park, or a picture of a new friend they met on the trip. Whatever it may be, imagine what fun it will be years later get them out and reminisce about their great family vacation

Play the waiting game. Unfortunately when traveling using just about any mode of transportation, chances are you'll be doing some waiting and will be delayed at some point for one reason or another. But don't let this spoil your great family vacation. By staying positive and having a sense of humor you'll realize that getting there really is half the fun!

For each child, or vacationer, prepare a personalized vacation survival kit to pass the time. These can include snacks, books, comic books, coloring books and crayons, hand-held video games, and pens and notebooks as travel journals for the older kids. This is essential to keep the children entertained, and by doing this they will tell everybody at the school what a great family vacation they had.

The chances that everyone in the family enjoys the same music are usually very slim. If they don't already have one, consider buying the kids their own portable CD players with headphones. Most kids will be satisfied with a ten dollar set that will serve a great purpose and get a lot of use. In the months prior to your great family vacation have your children compile a list of their favorite songs or groups to make personalized CDs to go along with their new players.