French school. They’ve really got things figured out over there! Aside from NEVER having to pack your kid a lunch; my favourite thing had to be the configuration of the school calendar.

Every six weeks they have two weeks off.

Wrap your mind around that for a second. The kids start up school in September and by mid October they already break for two weeks. As a parent, I loved it. And now as a teacher in Canada, I fantasize about it.

My brother asked me the other day how that worked for families with working parents. My answer was that it functions the same way that summer holidays work here in Canada. Some parents take their holidays during that time(the French are famous for how many holidays they get) and others put their kids in organized activities like sports camps. Except, in France they are heavily subsidized by the government and you pay according to your income, making the programs accessible for all kids.

In the expat community this was almost always a time for travel. In Congo friends would commonly travel with their families to South Africa, Namibia and Dubai; or sometimes you’d see a plane full of French Mamans with their kids heading back to their houses in France for une petite pause while Papa stayed back to work that set of holidays.

One thing was for sure: we got totally spoiled! For years on end we would take some exotic family bucket list vacation every six weeks-almost without fail. You can imagine that this has made my transition back to reality slightly difficult! School in Canada does NOT break for holidays every six week so when Facebook started fluttering my daily memories with countless amazing vacation of my past, I was feeling the sting. Then I was seeing photos of friends currently in France, popping down to Spain, and I was shaking my fist at social media. ‘Comparison is the thief of joy” I’d remind myself as I looked outside at the snow and threw on an extra sweater.

But I digress…

Having less holidays does have one (small) advantage. It makes you look forward to, and appreciate more, the holidays you DO get!

We always planned to go away at Christmas because now that I’m working I’m locked in Canadian school holidays. But being the awful planners that we are, hadn’t actually locked down a location until recently.

Since being expats, we’ve always had hotel Christmases, except once when Océane was 8 weeks old and we brought her to Canada for Christmas, which was the last time we’ve been home in the winter(she’s now 7).

We’ve had Christmas in Morocco, Copenhagen, Dubai, Vienna, Philippines, Vietnam, Russia and France. They were all great trips and we made it as Christmasy as possible: sometimes we’d meet family or friends, we’d rent apartments so have more space on Christmas morning, one year we bought a live tree, and one year I stuffed a small tree in my suitcase, we always find some random church to go to, and Santa finds us no matter where we are. Having said that; Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were always the two days of the year that I’d be homesick.

So this year, now that we’re in Canada, and we’re in our new house, we decided that we’d cut our vacation time short to have a proper Christmas in Canada with our family.

Most of my side of the family will be with us in our new home on Christmas Eve, along with cousins, friends, and Kevin’s sister flying in from Ottawa. We’ll get a real Canadian Christmas in our new home, and then right after Christmas we’ll give some love to our passports and head south in search of warmer temperatures.

For my non-Canadian friends I will tell you that searching for warmer temperatures when you’re based in Canada can be difficult at this time of year!

Our initial plan was that we were going to South America. First it was Argentina, then we thought maybe Chile, then we said for sure it would be Columbia. Then we priced airplane ticket. Ho-ly-crap it’s expensive to get out of Canada over Christmas!!!

At just at just about $10,000 on flights alone for eight days, we put the breaks on South America for this trip until we can go for a little longer, or not at such a peak season to fly.

We cast our net again and since we were now only a couple weeks away from our time of departure(in true Webb last minute style) we quickly realised that we’d be going to Mexico, a very popular designation for Canadians because it’s basically the easiest/closest/cheapest place for us to get to for a short(ish) amount of time.

We’re still going to get a bit of adventure in though. Kevin being the geography nerd that he is, checked out the geological map of the coastline and found us a spot with great water, calm beaches where I can walk out for ages and then float my cares away, forgetting all about the bonhomme de neige that is waiting for me back in Calgary. We’re flying into Cabo next week and renting a car to go to La Paz, Mexico. I can’t wait, but at this point, I am ready to get on a plane going anywhere!

I’m not just ready…I am SO ready!