Best places to travel with teenagers

I have several teenage children, and as they get older it feels like we have less and less time to spend together. School, sports, friends, you name it...they don't have a lot of time. My heart just hurts sometimes as I long to spend time with them before they all leave the nest for college. I have found that time together has to be intentional, and I literally have to schedule things with them. So here are a few places we have been together that we all really enjoyed!

1. Park City Utah. We live in the midwest so we decided to drive to this trip. We made several stops on the way, and made a ton of awesome memories! They complained a lot about the long drive, but I think they actually enjoyed it. We mapped out the route, and I found some fun places to stop & eat on the way. Once we got there, we found lots of things to do. It's a mountain town with a lot of beautiful scenery. However, teenagers always need stuff to do. Olympic Village was our favorite. They have all kinds of fun activities to do. There are zip lines, alpine slides, white water rafting, hiking and the list goes on and on. My favorite part was spending time with my kiddos.

2. Branson is another one of our favorite trips. We were also able to drive here, which made it more of an adventure. We took golf cart tours, played mini golf, explored, ate, laughed, played a lot of cards and had the best trip. We went with my husbands family and rented a VRBO. There is just nothing better then time with cousins!! It was a blast and we made the best memories. Highly recommend Branson with teens! However, it was very hot and muggy so maybe not in the dead of summer. :)

3. California. We went to wine country, near Temecula for my nephews wedding last Christmas. My husband and his boys were not able to go with us, which was a bummer. But it was fun to spend time with my kids by myself and we made the most of it! The kids were very hesitant about this trip but we decided to rent a VRBO with my parents and sisters family, and we had a blast. The house had an orange grove on the property and it was so cool. The weather was amazing in December as well. My whole extended family was able to go, so spending time with cousins was probably their favorite part. We played lots of cards, board games and guitars!! Definitely a great place to visit, but probably the best part was the giant VRBO, with the whole family.

Photo booth photos are some of my most favorite!! They are always so funny, and most everyone looks goofy but I love them!! This was taken at the wedding.

My beautiful niece Valentina Rose. She was obsessed with those orange trees! And my sweet girl, Liv took the pic! What a beautiful place. Often when I was in California I thought about how beautiful God made that place.

6. The beach. Anytime we get a chance to check out a beach, we go for it. This particular time we went to Huntington Beach in California. It was winter, so it was not hot but still so beautiful. The kids love to admire the ocean. Where we live, we are about as far as you can get from a coast line. So when we get a chance to admire the enormous ocean, we go for it!

I call this picture Nebraska boy meets the ocean. You would think he has never left the "ranch", but I swear I do get him out once in a while! Haha, he didn't love the ocean as much as the rest of us did!!

I love this picture. Its of my oldest son Will and his girlfriend Rhiannon, and check out the hat!! #familybusiness Those boys are my biggest "Merch" promotors!!

As I think back to some of our favorite trips as a family, I think our best memories are just the time we have spent together. Try to always take time to vacation together, even if its just across the state. You will never regret time with your people.