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By: Amy Whitley
Amy Whitley
When you rent a vacation home instead of booking a hotel room, there are many measurable savings you’re probably already aware of. You can fit an entire multigenerational family in one dwelling, for instance, instead of paying for multiple rooms. You can skip resort fees and daily equipment rentals, and you can even calculate, at least roughly, how much less you’ll pay for groceries rather than restaurant meals. What you can’t measure, however, is the quality—and sometimes more importantly, the quantity—of family time you’ll be privy to in a vacation home. Never is this more evident and easily managed than at the dinner hour.
We’ve enjoyed this particular ‘amenity’ of vacation homes on family trips ranging from ski trips to Tahoe to national park trips in cabins. During a recent Kauai North Shore beach vacation, however, we took the traditional family dinner hour to a new level with ‘family cocktail hour’. With a busy, active family of 11 all under one roof, evenings in our vacation home became our time to come together and digest our day and plan our next.
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The setting: our Princeville vacation home rental’s beautiful garden-side lanai. The appetizers: chips and dip (mango and pineapple salsa of course) and signature cocktails (adult and virgin) made in-house by my husband, an enthusiastic amateur mixologist. As we went around the table, recounting our Na Pali Coast catamaran cruise, comparing tropical fish sightings on our snorkeling chart, or voting on the best beach to explore in the morning, the smiles—and mai tais—were plentiful. The young kids played with a football on the stretch of lawn between the palm trees, the grandparents looked through guide books and maps, and the parents—siblings and in-laws—caught up with each other after months apart.
Depending on the night, our dinner menu varied, with each adult taking a turn in the kitchen. We grilled fish on the BBQ one night, and created a make-your-own-taco night the next, alternating homemade meals with the occasional take-out from the local country store: Hawaiian plate lunch or takeout pizza saved the day several times. No matter what was on the menu, however, every night began with our new ‘cocktail hour’ ritual as the sun set.
Yes, we saved money on dining, and we certainly saved on cocktails given the $12-15 price point in town, but mostly, we gained time with each other that might have otherwise been lost in restaurant waits, driving time, and scheduling.
Renting a vacation rental with your family? Plan something similar with your crew! Here’s our ‘signature’ Mai Tai recipe, for adults and kids:
Hawaiian Mai Tai:
1.5 fluid ounce rum
1.5 fluid ounce coconut flavored rum
1 teaspoon grenadine syrup
3 ounces pineapple juice
2 ounces orange juice
2 maraschino cherries
1 cup ice cubes
Kids’ Virgin ‘Mai Tai’:
5 ounces POG (or two separate juices)
1 teaspoon grenadine syrup or juice from cherries
2 maraschino cherries
1 cup ice cubes
Substitutions:
Feel free to substitute grapefruit juice for the pineapple juice if it’s too sweet, or POG (Hawaii’s original pineapple-orange-guava juice) for all juices.
Enjoy your family cocktail hour!
Amy Whitley is an outdoors and family travel writer making her home in Southern Oregon. An avid traveler, backpacker, skier, and hiker, Amy authors the NWKids column in OutdoorsNW Magazine, works as an editor at Trekaroo and founder of Pit Stops for Kids.