Last year at this time we were buying a house at the beach, and I was scared to death. Even as we were signing the papers, I wasn’t completely sure a vacation home was such a good idea for us.
While I was also excited and determined to make this longtime dream a success, the house was risky—and we just weren’t that risk tolerant.
The house we could afford was one that had sat on the salt-aired Gulf coast for the past thirty years. So much could go wrong with a place like that. I’m not even talking hurricanes, I mean the house was old and the environment was harsh—it seemed like the formula for a money pit.
More than the upkeep, I really worried we wouldn’t use the house. Our weekends were full. Our family rarely stopped for a weekend movie, how would we pause real life for a weekend vacation? Every weekend?
After renting the house out for the summer (more on that in another post), the fall was finally here. Now, our family could go to the beach whenever we wanted.
But would we? Or would the house become an expensive source of guilt? For every person who talked about buying a vacation home for their family, there were another five with stories about never using one they had owned. Their stories of “we sold the house because we never, ever used it” worried me.
But I shouldn’t have worried. A year later, it looks like the beach house was just what we needed.
Our family did go down to Galveston to for a mini-vacation almost every weekend. The kids can pack their suitcases in ten minutes flat. With two hours notice, we can go from the rat-race busyness of our suburban house to the island and sand between our toes.
You know what I think made this year a success, what I would tell anyone considering buying a vacation home?
You have to really, really like the vacation city. Really like it.
If I hadn’t been from Galveston, if it wasn’t still a kind of home to me, I’m not sure I would’ve been motivated to pack up every weekend and drive down there.
And Mike and the kids?
When you love someone, who loves some place, you’re willing to give that place a real chance. My family opened their hearts to Galveston. They tried all the restaurants, went to the beach all hours of the day and night, made new friends and reconnected with old ones, and discovered their own Galveston hobbies.
We all fell in love (or back in love) with Galveston enough that packing up and going there every weekend isn’t a burden, it’s just what we do.
And because of that, going to the beach isn’t a vacation from real-life.
It is our real life.
As it turns out, that’s become the real blessing.
