We’re taking a little break from food and crafts today to talk about something on everyone’s minds: vacation. While this post is sponsored, all vacation dreams, thoughts and opinions are my own.

Each year, we try to take a vacation as a family {you can read about them all the way back to 2011}. Vacations have drastically changes since having kids and Mathlete and I have learned that it requires way more planning than our single days. Even though our kids are 7 and 4, they still require A LOT of stuff to travel for an extended period of time. And, since they are older, they have a lot more opinions about where we go and what we do. Here are a few of our tips for the best vacation ever based on lessons learned from our recent trips.

While some of these tips may seem like they really only matter if you have kids, I think they are pretty universal for anyone planning a vacation!

1) Choose a place to go

Yeah, this seems self explanatory but, when you have multiple people going who all want different things, it is a good idea to really think through where you are going to go. Mathlete loves the beach so that is always a requirement for our trips. I prefer a pool and so do the kids.  {If your kids don’t like to participate in the conversation, you can check out the results for the HomeAway Kidfluences Survey} Oh, and we all want our own bedrooms too. We usually use HomeAway or VRBO.com to book our vacations because they allow you to easily find houses or condos for vacation rentals versus trying to stay in a hotel. The house we stayed in at the Outer Banks was booked through VRBO.com and it was awesome. It had everything we wanted!

2) Make a Food Plan

We always pack a ton of snacks for the actual trip. I always bring extra too in case the store doesn’t have what the kids usually like.

It is also a good idea to plan out a quick meal plan once you arrive. With our VRBO rental, we had all the amenities of home so we could hit the grocery store and cook at the house whenever we wanted which was awesome. We still went out to enjoy the local places to eat a few times but it was a HUGE money saver eating breakfast and lunch at our “home for the week.” Bonus: our rental even offered a grill!

3) Pack the Necessities

When renting through HomeAway, be sure to check what comes with the rental. Most include everything from sheets to towels but some require you to bring your own pool towels or things like that.

We always have a packing list that helps make sure everything brings what they need both for the car or plane ride and for the actual vacation. This year, we’ll be letting the kids take over some of their packing too thanks to a picture packing list I found.

Speaking of getting kids involved with vacation…this summer, HomeAway is empowering kidfluencers by giving them even more control over their family’s travel plans with a chance to win a $5,000 vacation rental stay to anywhere in the United States in 2015. Be sure to check out the entries which include 15 to 60-second videos of kids describing why their family should win a vacation from HomeAway. HomeAway selected 10 finalists and public voting is open until June 12th to determine the winner. 

What are you favorite places to vacation? Do you have any great traveling tips to share?

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of HomeAway.