Annual trip...

There's truly no place like home, but sometimes it is very good to get away for a little while. We are packing up to make our third annual journey to Amelia Island, FL. Here at home we sprawl all over the place, each one heading to his/her own "space" when relating to family gets a little old or intense. But at Amelia Island, we stay in a one bedroom condo. Close. Very close. So we all have to get along.

I don't think that's a bad thing.

One of the things I noticed in my years of selling real estate was that people want space... as much space as they can possibly afford. They want closet space and bathroom space and living space and play space and entertaining space and parking space and, above all else, storage space. Space is nice. True. But space, for all its perks, has a down side too.

For starters, when we have tons of space, we tend to accumulate tons of stuff. Then all our time goes into stuff-management instead of relationship-management. Building solid family relationships gets even more difficult because we're just not in the same space much at all. So space for all it's glory has distinct drawbacks.

One of the wisest parents I've ever met is a lady named Kandy. She raised four girls largely as a single mom. I marveled at the close relationship Kandy had with her girls. She always talked to them plainly and openly and she never ever seemed embarrassed to tackled the tough topics. She was ALWAYS in the loop and not only knew what her girls were up to, but she knew what everyone else's kids were doing too. One day I asked her how she stayed so connected to her kids and she shared two secrets that we have chosen to put into practice in our own family:

1) No TVs in the kids' bedrooms. If they want to watch TV, they have to come into a common area with other family members. We've extended that to include computers.

2) No phones in the kids' bedrooms. That one's a lot easier in theory than in practice, with cordless phones and cell phones. But we have made limits on phone use in terms of time spent on the phone and where in the house they are allowed to talk on the phone.

It's a culture-battle to stay together as a family. Everything from technology to floor plans seems to pull us apart. So every summer when we head to the coast, I'm grateful for the chance to pile into one place with one TV and one phone line, sharing one bathroom (OK... maybe two of those might be nice) as we once again become one family.