Hi.

I'm Laura Vanderkamp.

I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator.

We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

Welcome to best of both worlds.

Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.

From figuring out childcare to mapping out long.

Term career goals.

We want you to get the most out of life.

Welcome to best of both worlds.

This is Laura.

This episode is airing in early to mid August of twenty twenty five.

We are going to be talking about friend retreats, slash girl getaways, whatever you want to call them, getting together for a couple of days with friends.

How to make it happen, of course, why you might make it happen.

Although just sounds naturally like a ton of fun to me, but through the lens of Sarah just recently had a pretty fun getaway, so we wanted to dissect that a little bit and then share some best practices from how she has managed to have close to annual get togethers with her friends for decades now, which I think is really.

Cool, So, Sarah, I mean, maybe you could give us a little.

Rundown of your friend portfolio currently how this group of girls fits into that?

Sure, I mean, this group of girls is one of my sort of far flung friend groups.

I guess I do feel like I have a mix of friends who are local to the area and then people from other phases of life or other parts of life that don't live anywhere near the state.

So I guess starting with local friends, most of them I've gotten to know either through the kids, like other parents, through work, through running.

I really actually the void of having friends that I saw like regularly every couple times a week, really in the morning.

I do miss that I don't have like a sub for that right now.

And then also book club, although I'm still friends with my running club ladies.

And then there's kind of like the kind of farther flong friends.

I have a really close friend who lives in Miami Beach, which is not far, but it's now far enough that we have to think about it when we want to get together, whereas we used to be super local.

And then I have my college friends, and this is the group that we'll be talking about because this is a group that's managed to do very consistent get togethers.

I don't know about annual, they've been annual the past few years.

I don't know about for two decades, but they've been consistent.

And that is a group of six friends that I met at Williams my first year.

One of them is my roommate Azusa, who is a delightful human being.

And then the others were actually in the entry, which is sort of like the building right next to us, and we became friends freshman year and into sophomore year, lived together senior year, and have remained close ever since.

And then I also have this category of like blog friends, and Laura, I would put you in that just because that's how we initially got together.

And now there are some others who I text regularly or people who started off as blog friends, but now I've actually met them in real life and they just feel like regular long distance friendships.

So I really do feel like that sphere of my life has given back to me in the front department quite a bit.

What about you, Yeah, now that's definitely true, So yeah, I would I would put the same categories like I have the few local friends that are available for sort of regular get together as we often do some sort of exercise together, run with people, or walk with people, or sometimes if the weather is bad, we might do coffee or local brewery like to get together at.

And then a few more far flung friends that I see a couple times a year, people I guess, like you who you see on occasion.

We don't live in the same area, but we can still get together when that works.

There's a few people I've gotten to know through my husband's work, reasonably well acquaintances through the kids friends, things like that.

Kind of jealous of your friend group concept, like this idea of a distinct group of people where everyone knows each other, because I feel like a lot of my friends I'm close with.

Individual people, but those people.

Do not all know each other, and I understand that there's challenges with that as well, but it's just a sort of different flavor.

I guess.

Yeah, Well, it's interesting to see.

Because I mean, my daughter actually has a friend group that is a very distinct group of people, Like this is the group, and they get together regularly all the time, and there's the friendships within that, and I just find it interesting.

So I don't know, there's just different ways of interacting with people.

Yeah, I guess my college friends.

And then also my run club feels like a very cohesive group.

I will say the text chain kind of helps solidify a group, like.

Who's on the text chain and who's exactly.

You're on it or you're not.

You have your like little writer club, Yeah, I have a couple of one that is true for sure.

Yeah.

And then in terms of how to keep in touch with people who are not in your locale, I feel like there are three separate ways that it can be consistently done.

The text chain is number one, and also just individual texting.

Walk and talks have been a kind of recent addition to my portfolio, but I've done them more and more.

I tend to do them with specific people who just like to do it.

But that's a nice way to get kind of deep with someone even every few months, and kind of keep up with what's going on in their lives.

And then, of course the in person visits are very, very exciting, and I'm always amazed at how natural they feel.

Like you haven't seen someone for a year, and of course you've been intermittently texting, but you wonder like is it still going to feel like easy and normal when we're together and with my college friends, It's like, yes, immediately we're twenty again, and I don't know, like we can all be real with each other.

We obviously have a lot to catch each other up on because we don't keep up with like the everyday details of our lives, but it feels very natural and fun and even easy.

I would say, Yeah, Well, we're going to spend a lot of this episode talking about a recent getaway that Sarah did with her friends.

Can you just give the basic what that was?

Yes, So they actually came here this time to Fort Lauderdale Beach area, and we spent about a Wednesday to a Saturday together.

Okay, but it's not always in Florida, correct.

No, So should I go through our location?

Well, I guess we'll get to that.

But I'm just saying, like, the idea is that you get together somewhere, but it's not like you have a set weekend every year that's a set place.

Correct.

The weekend varies and the place varies.

Okay, All right, Well let's start by talking about the logistics.

So how do you guys decide where and when to get together, So.

We start with a when, because that is the toughest part.

We are six busy people.

You are correct.

You mentioned later in our notes that not everybody have kids.

Of the six of us have kids, so three of us have kids.

I have the oldest children, so I'm the only one with a teen, and then we've got a bunch of like toddlers and five year olds and things like that.

But everyone lives in different places, and everyone works pretty much full time, so that means finding actual agreed upon time is difficult.

And so what we start with is a shared Google sheet and it has the months the year listed in everyone's name, and then you just code the month red, yellow, or green.

If it's a great month for you and you think, oh yeah, October's looking really open, you make it green.

If you're like, absolutely no way.

I always make May red because I'm just like no.

And then once we have it down to the month or a couple months, because we look to see where everybody is either yellow or green, then we can actually list this weekend, this weekend, this weekend, this weekend, and at that point people usually have even more granular I can do it or I can't do it, and then finally we will decide on the date.

Ideally this is done, I mean almost a year in advance.

I am absolutely leading the charge here.

I don't know that everyone else would be that excited about planning so far ahead.

But we do have a nurse who gets her schedule way in advance.

We have two people who are in the science and medical world who do like international speaking gigs that get booked like nine months out.

This is a busy group, so it actually does make sense to solidify these dates on the earlier side.

Plus I need to make sure that I'm not on call, so usually by at least by like January February, we're figuring out the dates for a given year.

And it sounds like you may be somewhat spearheading this.

Would you characterize it that way?

I haven't been the one that makes the Google sheet.

I feel like that is my friend Nicole.

But I'm usually the one to nag everyone and be like, yeah.

Okay, so that's the first thing we need in order to have your girls get away.

You need a Sarah in your group, right.

You need somebody who is into planning and it is into organizing people and is willing to kind of stick with it.

And I think that.

All of those are challenges that might arise as other people are trying to plan multi people get away.

We'll get to other challenges that might arise too as well.

But then let's say you've decided, so you decide date first, and you guys decided first.

Okay, So often we'll have date before we have location, by a matter of months, like, okay, we should be better about location, as I'll get to in a second, because lodging can be tough with our particular group of people.

But yeah, usually dates are far beyond any other detail just because we can't agree.

Yeah, but once you have the date, then it moves to location.

And is there a general policy here?

I mean, because you're all over the country, do you try to go to one person's place or do you try to meet in the middle?

What's the thought process here?

There's no particular policy except we try to share the wealth.

We have two West Coasters, we have two Bostonians a main and then me, I think we're missing someone there.

But you get my basic idea.

We're kind of spread out, so we wouldn't like go to California every year because obviously that would be hard for the Boston people and easy for the California people.

We kind of move it around.

Plus moving around is good for variety.

And then usually other than this year, if we pick a summer destination, we try not to make it a really hot and disgusting one because a couple of the members of the group don't prefer that, but they took one for the team.

Ok, year, and as all right, Well, we're to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with more on the logistics of planning a friend getaway.

Well, we are back talking friend getaways, girls' weekends, that kind of thing.

Looking at this through the lens of Sarah's recent gathering with her six friends from Williams or six total people from Williams that they've been getting together over the decades fairly frequently, so we've learned that she decides a date many many months agehead of time.

Lodging location comes later.

You guys have done both airbnbs and hotel type situations.

We have done mostly hotels.

We've actually done some interesting kind of hybrid places.

There's this sort of like apartment like hotel we did in Denver that was kind of interesting, Like no front desk.

It was almost like everyone got their own mini apartment.

We are open to airbnbs, and in fact, for next year we're considering renting a house in addition to using one of the actual members of the group's kind of shorehouse.

So yeah, it can vary.

We're pretty open when it comes to lodging.

Okay, but this year you wound up at the b Ocean Resort.

I hear this year what I did.

End up at the b Ocean Resort, which Laura has been to twice because it was the scene of Besley Plans Live for the past two years, not this upcoming year actually, but it fit the constraine of we do have to respect people's budgets, and people in this group have different budgets a little bit, but we just make sure that everyone is comfortable with what we select in terms of the niceness and the costs and everything like that.

And this year be Ocean fit the bill really nicely.

And do you spend a lot of time thinking about the itinerary?

I mean, is this like a planned week in Europe where you're going to one thing after another or is it more of a chill and relaxed sort of thing.

It is more of a chill and relax sort of thing.

Now, being the person who was closest, I felt a little bit of pressure to kind of help out and figure out what we were going to do.

And I'll give you guys a rundown.

But we do try to keep it to just sort of like one chill anchor thing per day, because the idea is not for us to be touring some city and seeing a million different landmarks, but to be doing things that are fun but really just getting to spend time together, a lot of long lingering brunches and dinners.

Yeah, we'll talk us through.

What did you guys do when you were I mean, other than see the Mermaid show at be Ocean?

We did not did not see the March Sarah.

Now, I'm just disappointed the Mermaids.

We were thinking about it, but the Mermaids are only on until nine on Thursday and Friday, and we were out later than that, so we were just too much fun.

We missed the Mermaids and we did not purchase tickets to the official burlesque Mermaid show that they have at the b Ocean.

We're giving them a lot of free advertising today.

But yeah, for girls get away that could have been really, really fun.

Honestly, just the idea of the Mermaids made us happy, so that was good enough, all right.

So basically everyone flew in on Wednesday, and I actually drove over from my house and met them at the hotel just to hang out with them for a bit, and then we went and met up for dinner, and Josh actually came because the kids were at camp and I didn't want to entirely leave him out.

We did some girls only dinners, but we figured, hey, but the kids away, what's wrong with him coming?

And they were all excited to see him.

They know him pretty well by now at this point.

And we had dinner at Yacht which is a place Josh and I have been to a lot.

It was nice because I felt like we were close enough in Fort Lauderdale that I had enough since it wasn't that long of it.

I was like, I have a good number of restaurants enough to fill this time.

So that was the first one we did.

On Thursday, everybody kind of relaxed in the morning, they got breakfast.

Another girl actually came in a little bit later on Thursday, so everyone I think hung out, had breakfast and I had to go to a family funeral, so it was actually very lucky that this is a local event.

I did not want to miss Josh's great ants one hundred and fourth.

She turned one hundred and four and then she passed away.

Anyway, lovely woman, Marilyn.

Nice to say goodbye to her, and then I went back to join my friends because that's what life is all about.

And we met at the spa and I got a massage and some of them got facial some of them got massages.

We had a great time, went to the hotel to chill a little bit, and then went out to dinner at a pizza place.

That's where I thought we'd made it back to the Mermaids, but again we were having way too much fun.

Interestingly, we found that at most places servers were really happy to see us and like just they'd ask like, oh, is anyone local?

And I'm like me and then they're like, oh, where's everyone else from?

And when they realized it was six forty some women that got together, they were super happy, so that like kind of added a festive air.

We had a great dinner, hung out at the hotel bar afterwards for a little bit even though we missed the Mermaids.

On Friday, we slept in a little bit and then went out to brunch, and then I decided we would spend the day in boc Ratonon just because there's a mall there that I really like, and there's a Japanese gardens.

And it wasn't because one of the members of our party happened to be Japanese, but I don't know that made it even more appropriate.

So we hung out of the gardens, went shopping, went to a lot of fun stores.

I bought a pair of sandals, which I will say, I'd love to buy some item when we take these trips, even if it's just like a little cosmetic item, because then I get to see it and I think, oh, I bought that with my friends, and I will think that every time I wear these Nordstrum sandals.

And basically we shopped until we dropped, headed back to the hotel after the and then went out to a grand finale dinner.

And I actually took everyone out to dinner that night, in part because I hadn't had to fly and everybody else had to fly here, and also because we tend to do little gifts and I just figured, you know what, in lieu of a physical gift, let me just make this a gift that everyone will enjoy.

So we went to Toto in Fort Lauderdale Beach, which is a little bit fancier.

Our server was actually not very great at that restaurant, but the food is excellent, so I don't know, I had to get throw them a little shade because they deserved it, but the food is really good.

And then that night we had our own impromptu adventure because afterwards, three of us went to go back to the room and the power was out in the tower where we were staying, so the hotel was totally dark.

We went to the front desk and they said, oh, we're gonna move you.

We don't know when the power is gonna be back on, but you're gonna have to go in there and get your stuff.

And it was like, oh my gosh, pitch black, hotel, silent, no power.

Thankfully, safety and numbers.

So the three of us actually went to one room at a time, we used our flashlight phones, and then as soon as we had packed the first person up, the lights came back on, but again kind of added to the memorableness well, you.

Could actually get into your hotel.

There aren't the doors electronic.

How does that even work?

I don't know why it worked.

I think it might be like we asked them and they're like, yeah, it's gonna work, and it did work.

They were right, So yeah, fun fact about the power outage.

They also had some master key that they said would have worked if not, but they thought it would work.

We all slept in again, which was luxurious.

On Saturday, Laura, you will not believe this, but I actually went in the ocean.

Yes, it was very exciting.

Sarah tend's not to go in the ocean.

It was peer pressure and I think I was in there for fifteen minutes.

And then I can't get you in.

I can't get you in.

Apparently my peer pressure isn't strong enough.

Well, the other thing is it happened to be like a cloudless sky and like the calmest I was like, if I can't get in under these conditions, like I'm never going in.

I was like fine, but then one person was like, oh, there's fish touching my feet and they're like, I'm.

Out by guys.

How dare the ocean have marine life in it?

So I was like, I'll be at the pool, but I did go in and then we checked out.

I didn't really have any activities planned for that day, but we all decided to get nail appointments near my house since I knew where to go.

We stopped at a brunch place on the way that I knew about, and then we landed at our house, where we played Nintendo, like a really old Nintendo from the eighties that our neighbor had given us, and we had Super Mario Brothers, which, like many of us, have embedded and seered into our memories, and we sat around and played video games that hung out with the kids.

It was very fun because obviously I had talked about the kids to them so much, but some of them hadn't really met the kids since they were little, so that part was really really fun.

And then we actually cooked dinner, so well, we half cooked dinner.

We did We made our own drinks, We made old Cubans, and we made some piccadillo, and then we ordered some additional Cuban takeout to like go with that because we wanted to give them some kind of a South Florida flavor.

Had a great dinner.

They ended up ubering back to the hotel after and that kind of concluded the weekend.

They flew out the next morning, so I would definitely call it a success.

There was a little bit of hosting pressure on me, but they didn't make me feel pressured at all.

They're like, it was very much like I'd be like, let's do this.

Okay, sounds great like because I think everyone just didn't care.

We just wanted to hang out and the terms weren't that important.

Way another, which was wonderful, and I do feel like I really caught up on everyone.

I got some nice one on one conversations, but we had group conversations as well, lots of joking, fun nineties and early aughts music.

It was great.

I love it.

I love it.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, did you manage to get your next one booked?

I mean I love the idea of, like the hair selon, you make your next appointment while you're at this one.

Did you get your next weekend booked while you were there?

We did not get to a specific date because I think especially my two like international speakers, that they're like, I need to consult the conferences and stuff.

But we did kind of decide that we're most likely I think.

I mentioned like one of them has a beach house in Massachusetts, so we're going to try to combine her house within nearby house a little bit off peak season, so September October, so we've certainly narrowed it down.

And that's always a season when I love to travel because I love to get out of Florida in the non fall that we have.

So even though we don't have the exact dates, I feel like that's pretty good in terms of solidified since it's only August of twenty twenty five.

Yeah, and your kids were actually at camp during this for at least half of it.

Yes, So of course one thing that always comes to mind is like, oh, I feel guilty leaving the kids.

I will say I didn't get a lot of guilt vibes from the two parents who attended, which is awesome.

I mean, that's the way it should be.

Both of them have involved partners, and both of them have partners who travel as well, so I think both of them were like, yeah, like sometimes you go away and sometimes I go away, and it's doable and it's great for everyone.

So that was awesome on my end.

I didn't even like, I couldn't have felt guilt if I wanted to, because my kids were at camp.

For most of this.

They got back Friday night, our nanny picked them up, so she took care of them, and then when Josh got home, she left, and then so Josh really had like half a day of solo parenting.

So yeah, not a huge ask, although he yeah, he did great in terms of like helping cook dinner for everyone and just being kind of part of the festivities without being in all of it.

Now, do you think you would do something like this if you didn't have a specific group of people, Like could you see yourself trying to organize like a group of your local friends to go to I don't know, Vancouver together or something like that.

Yes, yes, okay, I mean I think they'd be more likely for it to be centered around some kind of event or excuse, Like well, when you and I do our little recording retreats, like we're trying to get a bunch of recording done, we're also trying to have fun.

If like my friend was running a race, we might like go to spectator or something like that.

And I actually, I mean this is very indulgent, but I have another girl's weekend coming up this year.

In my defense, I took zero last year and these two opportunities just sort of presented themselves.

So I'm going away again.

This time I'm traveling and meeting two friends in the middle of October.

So I guess my answer to that is yes, I'm kind of always up for this kind of a thing.

And there are bright spots in my life little getaways with Josh, trips with the kids, and then also solo traveling.

I love all three of those things.

Awesome.

Sounds good.

Well, we're going to take one more quick ad break and then we'll be talking a little bit more about logistics of girls getaways, et cetera, and our Q and A and all that.

Well, we are back talking friend getaways.

Sarah recently had a great one in Fort Lauderdale, which was on a getaway for her, but she has traveled to with the same group of people various places.

So I have a few questions about this that we can sort of help people who are thinking like this sounds great.

I'm not sure if I could ever make it happen.

Do people occasionally miss like what do you do if you realize in a year that like, you're just not going to get two of these people to come.

Well, I missed last year.

I missed not in a planned way, but we had something going on where it was like, you know what, can't go, Sorry, ladies, and it was sad, but they had a great time without me.

So so far we've always been able to find a date where all six people can go.

But I kind of am glad there's a precedent of like somebody missing because it wasn't the end of the world, and like the group went on and it showed that just because someone misses one year doesn't make the next year any less worthwhile.

I could imagine that.

Interestingly, I mentioned that, like the other two have young kids and they were perfectly time with COVID, so we didn't meet up in like twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, And that was also when Vicki and Azusa had kids, so that was like convenient for them not to even feel pressure to travel when they were still breastfeeding or anything like that.

Yeah, I mean I could imagine a situation where we would plan a smaller group and we have like kind of floated the idea of maybe doing just a kid get away at some point or things like that, but I think we would at least give it the old college, try to make all of us be able to make it.

And is this the original six?

It's not that somebody was originally part of it and drifted off for anything like that.

Or the original six?

Okay, what was the first one?

What was your first get together with the six?

I have no idea.

Okay, so you don't remember a specific part where the tradition started, No, I.

Mean I feel like for many years we'd either go to Williams reunions or we would go to like someone was getting married, like many years, like Vicky got married in twenty sixteen, and like Amy got married in two thousand and nine, like I feel it and everyone had there was a lot of years with weddings in there, so that was often the gathering.

And I also feel like before our pre r thirties, I'm not sure we were so good about doing this annually, just because I don't know that, like we had the funds, like we just didn't ever stuff together at that point to do this.

So yeah, I don't know when the first was.

But now I'm gonna float that to the group text after we're done, and I'll let you know.

Has there ever been a disagreement about something.

Sometimes there's disagreements about lodging, Like certain people have higher end tastes and then other people are like, I am not paying that, So that can be point of contention.

And you've come up with a compromise.

I mean, what's the so far we've always been able to come up with a compromise.

Okay, all right.

Interesting and it sounds like generally people are more or less easy going on actual activities.

That's not a source of contention.

Yes, Oh, and I should mention we have done at least one of these with our partners.

We used to use the name snuggle face ironically to refer to having a partner, so like we'd be like snuggle face inclusive or not.

That's one of those things that like works really well in the group chat, and then I say it out out of the podcast.

I'm like, that's just funny.

Now the world knows about snuggle face.

So we have done them.

I think that was more pre kids, but there's been at least one or two where it was Oh and we did one in Portland.

Actually a memorable one was in Portland.

Oregon, when Genevieve and Ali who Sayzusa son were like each eight months old, and that was like with partners and stuff, and we have pictures of the babies playing together only two days apart actually, so they're like almost the same birthday and those are like iconic photos for us.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because it sounds to me like when this got sort of running as a more regular thing, you were the only person who had kids.

Oh yeah, as we've established, they also all visited me in Durham when it was just Annabel at one point, which was the cutest thing ever.

But as we have established, you are also somewhat the one spearheading some of the organization for it.

And I feel like in many cases, one of the obstacles to a regular girls get away slash whatever, friends get away, whatever it is is that people decide that their kid responsibilities preclude this, or that the kid's schedules make it impossible.

Whereas in your group people had children later.

You were the one who was on the earlier side.

But since you were the one organizing and spearheading and doing the planning, it didn't wind up being an obstacle.

I'm sort of just like to.

Break down what makes this work in a long running way that I think a lot don't.

Yes, And again, to be fair, I don't know that we did it like every year when I had like a one in three year old, because this hasn't been like a perfectly consistent year after year thing other than the past few years.

But it's certainly been again like at least every year or two, there's been some reason that we all get to see each other.

Yeah, which is great.

I mean I love that idea.

I don't know, are you going to do this?

Like have I given you any inspo to get a group together?

I mean when you asked the question about like would you get your local friends together?

Yeah, I know, I think I could be inspired to do it, And like you said, I do have some get togethers with like writer friends and such that happen.

I mean, it's like the overlap with professional and personal.

But things don't have to be purely personal, and the work is life and so there is overlap on that.

But yeah, I think we certainly want to encourage our listeners to consider doing it as well.

If you have a group of people that you would like.

To see, maybe you could take that on as a project, as a goal over the next year to try to get some group of them together to do something, and probably you will enjoy it enough that maybe you can lock people in for our next getaway while you are on it and start having a great transition.

That could be all sorts of anticipatory joy in your life because you look forward to this for a long time.

Stary, I remember you were quite unhappy last fall when you didn't get to go.

Oh.

I was unhappy for many reasons, but that was.

One that was one of them.

Sorry for the vague podcasting, but so Partners, your husband has he ever done anything like this?

Well, he isn't really a group person either.

I mean, neither of us has like the fraternity brothers from college or something like that.

Just is not our lie That's not our personalities, I think, is what.

I would say.

But he is really close with his little brother, and the two of them do things together, like a couple years ago they went to the Super Bowl together, and they go skiing together.

Most years.

They sometimes get together.

When my husband's like working in Boston, they will get together while he is there, so he does get away with him.

It's not a group thing obviously, but that's just that's great though.

Yeah.

Yeah, Josh has also been like there's no regular occurring thing.

He's done some one off trips to Seattle because he has a close friend there, and he actually just decided that he's going to do a spring marathon with our good friend and it's going to be a guy's trip, and I'm very I'm like really excited for him.

I think that will be kind of a good experience for him.

Yeah, well I'm excited for him too, all right.

Well, so moving to our question part of the show.

So many people when this is airing are either on vacation or going to be taking a vacation in August at some point, and particularly if you're going for a longer period of time, you might wind up doing some work on vacation.

Stress here that there's a difference between being forced to work on your vacation days, which is not really cool.

But sometimes we decide that we have responsibilities, Like, especially if you're in a managerial role, like you need to kind of check in at some point and all that you might decide to do it you run your own business, whatever it is, are there ways to make that happen without driving everyone else on your vacation.

Insane, Sarah, what do you think?

Well, first, I guess I think we should give you credit for this inspiring this question because it did kind of stem from a wonderful Vanderhack's sub stack article.

So you want more wisdom like this, that's subscribing to Van.

Yes, I think working on the plane can be, especially if it's a long plane ride, you can churn out a lot of hours of work without really bothering anyone.

Now, of course, if you're on life full on toddler duty or you're passing your toddler back and forth, that might be less of a thing.

But if your kids are fiveing up and easily entertained by devices, this could be a wonderful way to kind of front load the work on your trip on the way there.

But not my five year old, Let's see, it's a different five year old, except Henry.

Early morning hours for me are always like a good full proof I'm fresh, I can get my coffee, if I can find a place to sneak to if I have to work.

That's what I think I did when I had some book to finish and we were skiing in Montana.

I mean, it wasn't my favorite.

Honestly, I'm really hoping that this time I will not Well, I know, I won't be finishing a book because my book will have come out like two weeks prior, so I won't have another book being finished this time.

But yeah, I did them kind of early, got it over with.

And then in your sub stack you mentioned orchestrating a trade with your partner.

Perhaps, yeah, I.

Mean you should.

I have to think about what kind of vacation it is and what kind of what you're dealing with in terms of the ages of your kids.

As Sarah said, early morning is good for a lot of this, especially if you have older kids who might sleep in or want to sleep in on vacation, or if you are doing things like sight seeing all day.

Then obviously working in the middle of that is just going to disrupt everything.

So you need to get up early and do it at the beginning, or maybe it's at the end of the day after you've come back, if you have like an hour before everyone goes to dinner, that might be a time you could make it happen.

Now, if you're stationary somewhere and it's like a relaxed kind of vacation.

You're at the beach, and especially if you have younger kids, you might decide that you're all going to go out to the beach in the morning, come back, have lunch, and then do nap time or screen time, depending on if the kids are still napping, And then that presents itself as like one point thirty to three thirty could be your work time while the kids are napping or watching a movie, and then you all kind of gather together at the end of that and then do whatever your late afternoon thing is before dinner and the rest of the day.

So that might be an option there.

And then of course the other trading off with your partner.

I mean maybe both of you have something you would like to do that your partner might need to.

Work or want to just do something for him or herself.

And if you decide, especially if you have a longer day that you need to do like that I'm going to have to leave in the middle of this beach vacation to go to the office.

Like you're close enough that that's an option.

You could decide that, Okay, I'm taking Tuesday to do that.

Wednesday, the other person does whatever they're going to do, whether that's work or go off and do something on their own.

So you've orchestrated a trade.

So each of you feels like it's fair because.

I would point out that just because you need to work on vacation does not mean that your partner necessarily wants to cover more childcare on vacation.

So in the interest of keeping everyone.

Happy, probably need to account for that as you were planning these things out.

Sounds good to me.

Well, Love of the Week, Laura.

All right, I say the Phillies.

So Sarah and I went to a Phillies game in early July when she was here.

We decided to go to another one recently over a Friday night.

You wanted to see one where they might didn't.

Win, where they won.

Yes, it was good to see one where they won, although it was tenuous because so they were playing the Detroit Tigers, and the Tigers scored like three runs in an inning.

I mean, it was really terrible.

It was like things were looking good and.

Then all of a sudden there were like three runs, so you're down three zero, and eventually the Phillies came back, and then the Tigers scored another run and then Phillies scored one, and then there was this call that was like whether the runner was safe or not, because then that would have been the third out or not the third out, and so whether the next run that was scored on the same play was called, and so it was like the ump said it was he was out, and then it was reviewed and it was pretty clear that everyone the stands was screaming because he wasn't out, like I mean enough that people could see it.

But so it was called back and so they got the run.

So then the Phillies wound up winning five to four.

So that was pretty exciting.

Yay, that is exciting.

My love of the week is that at this delicious brunch place called Maple and Cream, they have croissant French toast, and there was also a place in the Head crossant French toast, and at both places it's the best of both worlds.

So if you see it on a menu, you should order it.

All right the end, we will keep that in mind as a life hack.

In general, well, people do up French toast all kinds of crazy ways.

There's this brunch place near us that has a carrot cake French toast, so you basically turn carrot cake into French toast, which is a good idea.

I would like that too.

Yeah, there's another brunch place that does seasonal French toast that it's like stuffed with something, so it was like pumpkin in the fall.

There's this chocolate chip cookie dough French toast that has had my daughter wanting to go back to this place numerous times, although.

They've never had it on the venue again.

So, well, I know what we're doing the next time I come to Philadelphia.

I'm excited one of those.

There's two brunch options then, exactly all right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.

We've been talking friend getaways, why you might consider them, and the logistics of doing it based on Sarah's recent happy experience doing so.

We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

Thanks for listening.

You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.

Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.

This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.

Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.