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Jenny Sparks and her friend Patrice Rex discuss the importance of family bonding through vacations. They mention that vacations can be structured or more relaxed, and both have their benefits. Structured vacations provide specific experiences and create common memories, while unstructured vacations allow for creativity and bonding through shared activities. They also emphasize the need for downtime and balance between structure and relaxation. Overall, family vacations help strengthen relationships and create lasting memories. Hi, this is Jenny Sparks, and this is the fifth installment of my podcast, where I take questions from different chapters in the book, Successful Marriages and Families Proclamation Principles on Research Perspectives by Alan J. Hawkins, David C. Dollaheit, and Thomas W. Drake. I'm here today talking with my friend, Patrice Rex, and we have been in the same ward for a long time, and I've known her as a very good mom, who works really hard at, I don't know about hard, is it really hard at playing? Finding time to play? Yeah. And the right things to play? But Patrice, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself? So, I've been married for 30 years, as of next month. 30? Yeah. Well, our 30th anniversary is next month, so we just went on a trip to celebrate it last week. Two kids, 24 and 19, so we are recent empty nesters. Our son is biological, our daughter is adopted, and there's been some unique challenges with dads, with the adoptions. I currently teach science, and am also working on a graduate degree in science education, so my background is primarily biology and biochemistry, but I like to teach kids. I know, and I've seen some of your experiments, because when we served in Young Women's together, the kids always loved them, so I think that's great. Experiments, and it's my MO. What are some of the quality vacations that you've taken with your children, meaning the ones that you feel have helped foster a tighter family bond? One of the things that we tried to prioritize pretty early on was just family time in general. My husband lost his dad to cancer when he was only 11, and so he has very few memories of his dad, but trips and vacations, and trips to the lake house and the cabin and stuff where things always really stood out to him, and so that was something that was super important to him to make sure that he spent time making memories of his kids, just on the off chance you just never know what's going to happen. He had such a limited amount of time with his dad. We haven't done tons of huge vacations, but we've tried to make frequent opportunities to at least do small things and take weekends away. Also, with the way that our family is structured, my kids are almost five years apart in age. One's a boy, one's a girl. They haven't had a lot of just natural interactions on a daily basis, because they just have always had different interests, different age groups. I mean, they were even only in the same elementary school for one year. They never overlapped anywhere else, and so we kind of had to intentionally force them together. We used to joke around all the time and call it forced family fun. So, one of the things that we've tried really hard to do is a lot of weekend trips or just one or two nights. We were blessed enough to be able to purchase a small ... We started out with a small pop-up trailer, and we would just go camping for a day or two. One of our favorite traditions is camping for conference, and we have been camping for general conference for, gosh, 15, 16 years. We have a couple of places that we go that have good internet access, and so we go and we just go camping and watch conference in our trailer. So, camping season usually starts in April and ends in October. We try to do at least kind of one bigger vacation a year, but a lot of them aren't huge. They're just longer. Yeah, right? They're not necessarily fancy. They're just longer, but really just trying to be intentional about at least once a month having something where we have to spend time together, even if it's just a day trip for a couple of hours. Oh, that's good. I think anything that fosters family togetherness and when you're doing things together like that, they're fun, but also learning activities is always a good thing. Well, it makes us sound like we're super fun. We're really not. Both my husband and I are super A-type personalities. We always have huge to-do lists. We always have a lot on our plates. We're always doing a lot of different things, and so we have to be intentional about actually taking time to relax or we won't do it, and that's one of the reasons why the camping thing came about because it's one of the few times that my husband will legitimately relax. He's like the energizer bunny. He never sits still. Anybody that knows him just knows he goes and goes and goes and goes, and so when we go camping, you can literally see the weight kind of come off, and he's able to relax enough to just enjoy spending time with his family, and so when we try to do that at home, it's not as effective because he and I both have these to-do lists in our head, so we have to be intentional about taking time away. Well, I was going to say, when you were saying you weren't that fun, I remember going to a conference camping with you, and I had a lot of fun, but when you went into the, you guys both being A-type personalities, you needed to relax. I got that. Yeah. I'm a party individually, just not... Yeah, and great peach cobbler. Have you seen a difference in the amount of family bonding over vacations that are more relaxing ones versus those that have more structure, sort of like either a cruise versus a family road trip? I think they both serve different purposes. The benefit of having something structured is it gives you a specific experience to bond around, or if you have a kid who's maybe less willing to participate, it's easier to get them involved if you're like, look, we already paid for this excursion, or we already paid for this event, or whatever, and it gives you common memories that you can look back on and say, hey, remember when we did this, or we did that specific thing? We all kind of, well, three of us really like to go and do and see new things, and one of us not so much, and so we literally had to schedule stuff that we'd already paid for and kind of use that as the cash to get the other one to come along. But at the same time, the less structured stuff, I think, allows for more creativity, allows them to get bored. When we didn't have structured time, it provided opportunities for my kids to kind of come together and play games or make up stuff. A lot of our stupid family inside jokes that we still laugh about, that we still talk about, came as a result of kind of unstructured boredom sorts of times that allow that to be filled in. I can't say one's better than the other because I think it depends on the purpose. Yeah, for sure. Not everybody, but most people will go on the cruises or things like that less than maybe a road trip or whatever family thing. I was going to say, it reminded me in Young Women's when we had girls camp and we had FOB, feet on the bed. Yeah. Like, it was so structured, and then we'd have that time when the girls were supposed to have their feet on the bed and they could read or they could do whatever or sleep, but it was that time to themselves after everything was so structured. I think for family time especially, you need to allow time for that downtime. Some family members need it more than others to kind of recharge their batteries or whatever. Like I said, my husband is super high energy. He's going to wear all of this out. My family members are not as high energy and kind of need that downtime, and I think having the combination of both is helpful because it just kind of allows you to meet different people's needs and expectations and give you a reset because you don't want to be grumpy and exhausted the whole time. Yeah. Right? For sure. But I'm a firm believer that, speaking of girls camp, like I've done it 18,000 times, right? Yeah. The more downtime they have, the cattier they get, and the more arguing there is, right? So I think it's really important to try and find some of that balance, like providing some downtime but also enough structure that they can't just lay around and do nothing and disengage. Yeah. For sure. One of the interesting stories in the chapter, it talked about this guy, his dad, who had taken his children camping, and all the other families had lit their fires, and he was trying to do it manually, and the bow kept swinging away. And the daughter finally went over, picked up the bow, brought it to the dad, and put her foot on the other side so that he could hold the bow and start the fire. And later on, when she became a drug addict and was frustrated with her choices, he remembered that love that he felt from his daughter at that moment and that camping moment when she put her hand on his shoulder, and so then he was then able to, remembering that love in that moment, reach out and give that love back to her. And then later, when she was clean and sober, she was with him in the audience when they were talking and mentioned that that love in that moment, that one moment that was a memory that helped them both get back, and it was that love that he showed her then that helped her get clean and sober. And she talked about different things. And it was really interesting to me, because I do, we camp too, and it's one of those things that I feel like we've gone to Disneyland, we've gone on cruises, but it's the things that happen on the camping trips that they remember. There's something about a campfire. Yeah. Right? That too. Like, something evolutionary, like, you know, back in our DNA. That too. Maybe the fact that you're just so tired. Well, no, but I think family activities in general, especially things like, maybe camping, it's because it puts different physical stress on you, like it's less convenient, it's less easy, right? For sure. I think activities together, they're an excellent laboratory for relationships in general, because you're going to get a mix of people and times when people are grumpy, when people are sad, when people are frustrated, when people are happy, when they're having a great time, when they're tired, you know, all dirty, smelly, you know, get your feet off of me, you're breathing my air, you know, sorts of moments. But then, honestly, just opportunities to create shared memories and laughter, and I'm a firm believer that laughter is one of the best ways to, like, create bonds, right, and bond with people. And just those activities, like I said, provide a laboratory for those relationships and how do you deal with different situations with different people. And, you know, I think all of those things kind of come out when you're traveling or when you're camping or kind of outside of your normal routine. What do you feel is the most difficult challenge in finding time for quality family time? Time. Yeah. Time. Especially, like I said, with my kids being almost five years apart in age and having very different interests and very different schedules than when they started having jobs, which, you know, we felt like was important for them to have those experiences, but then it really limits what you can do as a family or different activities or whatever. And interestingly, and this is kind of me on my soapbox, but I see this as a teacher as well, and kind of what's happened over the years is kids, a lot of our kids these days are super, super scheduled, and they're involved in a lot of activities, and there's almost this pressure from society or from the church or whatever to have them do everything. Everybody has to play an instrument. Everybody has to play sport. Everybody has to do dance. Everybody has to do dance. Everybody has to do... You know, all of those things are awesome and wholesome, but combined together, it's a lot. Yeah. Right? And so it really does take away from family time if you're not careful. I think that can be family time, right? Like when possible, we always made sure our kids supported each other in terms of, like, I'm going to go to this choir concert, I'm going to go to the band concert, I'm going to go to the basketball game or the volleyball game or whatever it is. But we tried to be a little bit intentional about making sure that they weren't overscheduled because if they're overscheduled, we're also overscheduled, and then that doesn't allow any time for family time. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah, it makes total sense. And in the chapter it talked about, too, if someone... If a child takes music lessons, then they start to say, I'm musical. And if they do a lot of sports, then they say, I'm athletic. Athletic, yeah. Right. Instead of, you know... And it kind of pigeonholes you into something. Yeah. I don't know. The other tricky thing is, I'll be honest, my husband hates crowds, right? Yeah, I know. But I'm a school teacher, and so the only time that I have time off is when everyone else on the planet has time off, right? And so trying to just make that work and balance out everybody's needs and interests and things, it's tricky. And we've had lots of times where the kids haven't necessarily been excited about doing something because you're doing an activity that's focused really more for one individual or supporting one person in something that they're doing. And in those moments, we just kind of had to say, you know what? You're going to be present. Yeah. Right? Like, you're going to be present. And sometimes that's all you get. And that's okay, right? But looking back, especially as my kids are getting older, and they've been away from home a little bit, and they're starting to recognize some of the things that we did and comparing to other roommates or friends or whatever and recognizing, like, hey, I've had both my kids in the last couple weeks say, I really appreciate that we prioritized time. My daughter hated camping, but she told me literally two days ago, I'm so glad we went camping because we got to spend that time together. Yeah. And granted, it was in a trailer, so it wasn't total, like, in the dirt. Yeah, it was. It was all around the dirt. Or, you know, they appreciate that we tried to prioritize family dinner time whenever we could. And if we couldn't make dinner work, sometimes it was dessert when everybody got home from their activities or whatever. And recognizing that not everybody did that. So it's kind of one of those, you know, parent paycheck moments. Yeah. When they come back and they're like, oh, thanks for doing that. Thanks for making that effort. They're starting to recognize that we really were intentional about it. And we're at the age where those parent paychecks are starting to kind of pay. A little bit. A little bit. They start to trickle in because so long you parent and you wonder, am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right choices? Is this worth it? Yeah. Dragging the screaming child into the car. Doesn't want to go camping, yeah. On a 12-day road trip with us. Through the middle of nowhere Wyoming where there's no Internet service, and dang it, you're going to have to actually have a conversation. I think, and I'm hoping, too, I think more of the paychecks will start to come in when they start having kids and they realize how difficult it is. Logistically. I know that's how I felt. I mean, they're just my own parents. It's like, oh, man, I can't believe you did all this. Yeah, when they start to realize the logistics, I'm like, what? Yeah, for sure. So we talked a little bit earlier about, you know, the difference in vacations and structure versus non-structured. Do you feel it's important for your children to have a balance between structure? We talked about that a little bit in the vacations, but just like activities and non-structured activities, and if so, how do you plan that? Or can you plan it? Can you have a plan for it? Like in vacation conditions or just life in general? No, in life, like your daily life. Can you, like structure, like they have piano lessons maybe here and they have this job here, or they have tutoring here, and then they have their individual play time, that sort of thing. You know, I probably err too much on the side of structure, just because, like I said, I am an A-type personality. I always have a to-do list. There's always a million things on the to-do list. But I've really had to back off with one of my kids especially, who's just not that way and would get anxious and stressed because they were feeling pressured by the to-do list and all the things. And so we, with that kid in particular, had to make sure that we'd print a calendar, we'd have it out like a daily schedule so that they could see, okay, these are the structured times, and then these are the times when it's okay for you to just disconnect. F-O-B. Yes. Just do what you need to do. But also trying to help teach them coping skills. Like both my kids, again, parent payback moment, like both my kids have gotten to college and we're like, gosh, I need a piano keyboard. They both took piano lessons for a long time, and they both realized that for them that was one of the ways that they could deal with anxiety or negative emotions or insomnia in the case of my son. And so he literally asked for a keyboard with headphones that if he needed to he could play it and not bother his roommates. Like it's literally become a coping skill for both of my kids. But I think it's really important, again, this is kind of the teacher in me too, I see a lot of kids who honestly cannot handle being bored. And cannot handle unstructured time. They just don't know what to do with themselves, and as a result I think we're losing a lot of creativity. Oh, yeah. A lot of creativity. And so I think it's important as a parent or on vacation or whatever it is you're doing, one, to kind of look at the individual needs of your kids. Some kids are going to need more structure than others. But kind of what are your non-negotiables? Like what are the things that have to be structured, that have to be done, and what are the things that you can let go of? And for me that's really, really hard because, again, I want everything to be just right all the time. But that doesn't work for everybody. Right. And so we literally had to kind of negotiate like what are the things that have to be done and what are the things that we can let go of? I find that personally in my daily life sometimes when I'm tired and I'm overworked. Like what are the things that have to be done today and what are the things I can let go until tomorrow? What can I ignore long enough for me to watch British TV? To be impressed. Impressed with history? Yes. That's my wife. That's my wife. I was going to say, probably reading history novels is my wife. But the keyboard thing is, that was a double payback on two fronts. One, you gave them the lessons. Exactly. And two, you're like, ha, it's better for more than just me telling you to go get lessons. It worked. Yeah. We spent a lot of money on piano lessons. That was actually one of my non-negotiables, and we all had to do it at least for a certain amount of time. But there are other reasons for that. It has to do with like brain science and all that sort of thing. Oh, yeah. No, I was informed about that in a different class. Yeah. About the importance of music and how kids with music can do different things early on. Yes. Okay. How important do you feel activities invoking service is for youth? Awesomely important? Incredibly important if you can get them to do it. True. Right? Yeah. It's the motivation. But I think sometimes we think of service activities, it has to be like some big formal sort of thing. Like I, for years, felt really bad that we weren't saving up to take my kids on some sort of humanitarian trip, right? Yes, right. And they're super common and awesome for those people that can participate in that, but it's not often realistic, right? So we've tried to do other things. Even if we've gone, like my husband's family has property up above Bear Lake, so it's like family property with a lodge. And so we try to go there at least once or twice a year and just help do some of the property cleanup. Or if we're in a campground or a state park or whatever, we try to find something, like leave it better than we found it. If we're visiting family, we try to find out if there's something that we can do for whoever's hosting us, right? For a lot of years early in our marriage, we lived about two hours away from my grandma, who I was really close to, and we loved to go visit her. Well, especially after my grandpa died, every time we would go, my husband would call her before we would go, and he'd say, what do you need done? And he'd bring the right tools and whatever he needed to just take care of it, and that was like a super awesome example to all of us. He's like, you know what? And she'd feel really guilty about it. He's like, no, we're just going to spend a couple hours taking care of a few things, and then we'll relax and do stuff. But one of the other things that we've done is if we're in a new location, we've tried really hard to do family history and temple work. So we've done baptisms for the dead in multiple temples. We had one trip when we were going to California to go to Universal Studios and a couple of things down there, and we stopped and we did baptisms in Provo. We did baptisms in St. George in Las Vegas. And then we had them scheduled for L.A., but we had to reschedule. And we got to do them in the Nauvoo Temple and things like that. So that's been kind of fun, too, to have the kids find family history names before some of our bigger road trips, like we visited the Alberta Canada Temple on our way to Calgary and down on one of our big road trips and stuff like that. Well, that's a good idea. That also makes it, you know, what am I looking for? It makes it more of a spiritual connection. It makes them educational in a certain way because they can connect that moment at the temple with this trip and maybe that feeling they had in that temple. And sometimes we forget that temple activity is a service as well. I mean, at least I do sometimes. Sometimes I just think, I need to go because I need to go for me. And I forget that, you know, you are performing. We've done a few specific activities or day trips or things like that specifically to perform service. But a lot of times for us it's been more how can we leave wherever we're going, how can we leave it better than we found it. Well, that's good, though. So many people who I've noticed since COVID there's been a lot more people camping. Oh, my gosh. During COVID. Yes. So much more people camping. And a lot of people who maybe never camped before or very rarely camped before. Don't know what they're doing. Don't know what they're doing. Don't know that, you know, you're supposed to. Common camping courtesy. Thank you very much. I think there is, and I'm sure there probably are some YouTube channels that show common courtesy camping etiquette. Well, or even like going through an airport. Like when we do stuff, we usually try to challenge the kids like, okay, who can you be nice to today? Oh, yeah. Right? Like especially if you're traveling, a lot of those people that you're interacting with like in the service industry, like a ticket agent, you know, or waiters and waitresses, they put up with a lot of grumpy people. Oh, yeah. Right? And a lot of it's not their fault. Like if you've ever been stuck in an airport because of a rescheduled or late flight or canceled flight or whatever, you know, those poor gate agents or ticket agents or whatever are just really struggling. And a security check-in. Yeah. I always feel sorry for the security. The TSA people. Yeah, TSA people. They say the same thing repeatedly over and over and over. Why? There's still water in your bottle. Take your shoes off. Take the tablets out and put them, you know. Yeah. So the other thing that we've just tried to do is just tell them, you know, it doesn't matter what kind of day you're having, you need to be nice. Right? Yeah. Usually it's not their fault. And so sometimes it's, you know, leaving a better tip for somebody or writing them say they used to draw pictures on receipts at restaurants for the waiters and waitresses. Right? And things like that. And just trying to be nice to the people that you're interacting with as you go. Too. And also you don't know what day somebody else is having. Right. Right. And sometimes even when you're having that bad day, when you can reach out and make somebody else's day brighter, it lifts your day as well. Well, and honestly, the other thing that's kind of nice about getting out of your own little bubble, and like I said, we're not world travelers by any sense, you know, imagination. We've done a lot around the western United States in particular and done some big road trips with our campers, but I just like my kids to be able to interact with different people. Right. Right? And see different places and different people and, you know, we haven't, they haven't had huge culture shock in a lot of cases, but just get out of their own neighborhood and get out of their own school and just be able to see and interact with different people. I think that's a good life skill. Yeah. Right. To be able to have a conversation with somebody no matter where you are. And age. Yeah. And gender and affiliation. Yeah. And just to see people for who they are and not what they are or what group they belong to or, yeah. And it's super easy, again, soapbox moment, but it's super easy when we keep ourselves so overscheduled and so involved and so, you know, kind of head down, butt up. Right? To not see other things and other people around you and so just kind of intentionally disrupting that routine, I think, has so many benefits. Yeah. In lots of different ways. Well, thank you so much, Patrice. This has been fun. I know, I mean, I know some of this stuff already, but I learned new stuff today, and I'm grateful that, you know, you agreed to do this with me. So thank you. Okay, one other thing. Okay. Because I wrote it down. Okay. In my notes. Okay. So we have to cover it. Let's do it. No, one of the things that occurred to me as I was kind of thinking about the questions that you sent me was that having an opportunity to spend time with each other, kind of focused one-on-one time, also is a chance for you to be more thoughtful about other people's needs. Oh, yeah. Like if you spend, you know, one or two days together or a week together or whatever, like we talked about before, not everybody's going to be into every activity and every moment, right? But you have to be aware. You have to compromise. You have to be accommodating to other people. And sometimes it means that that moment or that hour or whatever gets to be about you. And sometimes it's not. And sometimes it's for somebody else. And so I think it just gives you an opportunity to think about other people's needs and their abilities and their interests and, you know, be accommodating and thoughtful in those moments. And then it's not all about you and your gratification. Right, right. So, you know, there's been times like one of the times that we went to Universal Studios in Hollywood, we went there because Sadie loves Harry Potter, you know. And Jake was just like, oh, my gosh, this is so lame, whatever. But he loves the ocean, so we went to a really cool aquarium. Right. While we were there. And Sadie was bored out of her brain, right, at the aquarium. But the reality is we tried to plan that trip. And then I made him go to La Brea Tar Pits because I'm a biology dork and I wanted him to go see, you know. And it's your turn. Yeah, it's my turn. Not all the kids. Right? And so just I think it helps develop kind of a little bit more thoughtfulness and less selfishness when you have to think about other people's needs within that experience. And I think, too, by experiencing something that they didn't think maybe they wanted to do, I think oftentimes they find, oh, this kind of is cool. Yeah, like, okay, I can't admit it now, but maybe later on I'll be like, oh, okay, I kind of like that. I feel like it's kind of like eating. Like if you're a picky eater and you say I'm never going to eat this and you don't try it. Like, for example, like before I went on my mission, I was an extremely picky eater. And then all of a sudden I had to eat food that I hadn't eaten since I was a child and I was like, wait, I do like this. Because my palate had grown up and changed. And I think it's just like you can be surprised when you – maybe those little braided tar pits ended up being really interesting to them, too. I still don't think either of my kids is going to be a paleontologist, but I'm okay with that. But they can like it or at least enjoy that you're liking it. We do that, too, because I want to be at the beach. I want to be in the water. And my husband wants to be at the amusement park. And so every time we go to Disneyland, it's a definite how many days do I get at the beach, how many days do you get in the park. Negotiation. Negotiation, yeah. And the kids, you know, they weigh in on what, you know. Some want to be at the beach more with me and some want to be at the park more with their dad. So it's a combination. Maybe one year I get more beach and the next year he gets more park. Not that we go every year. It's more like – You guys go pretty often. Well, but like last week we were in Maui celebrating our anniversary a little bit early, and my husband loves the water, wanted to be a marine biologist, you know, loves, loves, loves the water. And he scuba dives. He does scuba dive. So that's usually our compromise, right? He scuba dives, and while he's diving, I sit at the pool or at the beach with a book. Because I usually need a little bit of downtime, especially after a flight. And so we're okay with that. And then there's other things that we, you know, do together. We find a couple things that we want to do together, but we usually try and find something at least every trip that meets the interests of – everybody at least gets to do something for every trip that they want to do. That leads right into the chapter and what it says, that you need to find compromises you need to do, and finding that balance of the husband golfing all day as just an example and spending time as a family and finding, yes, those things by yourself are good, and, yes, those things together are good and finding that balance. And it's okay to like different things. Yes, it is okay because my husband can't even swim, and I like the water. That's why we end up with park, beach discussions. I can swim. I just am scared of well poop. Yeah, yeah. I'm just kidding. Katie has more trouble with open water. I'm just kidding. I can do it. She doesn't want to be in the lake. She doesn't want to be in the ocean. But in the pool, she's fine. I'm okay with it, but I'm not going to seek it out. Well, and he can like survive for a little bit. Yes. Not very long, but a little bit. Especially in salt water. Oh, yeah, in salt water. All right. Thank you, Patrice. I appreciate it. This has been fun. Yeah.
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