Vacation

If you’re in Las Vegas on October 19, 2013, from 1-5 PM, you’ll want to be hanging out at Fashion Village at Boca Park. Send Me On Vacation, a 501(c)(3), charity will be sponsoring “Pink In The Park,” a benefit concert that is part of the October 2013 Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The event will be hosted outside of the Sambalatte and Eccoci stores there in Fashion Village.

Featured entertainers will include world-renowned vocal entertainer Jack Walker, and singer and songwriter, Rhayne Thomas. Other surprise guest performers will add to the music, magic, comedy, and fun of the special afternoon. Gene Backus, Board of Directors for Send Me on Vacation, explains, “We started out thinking this event would be 30-32 people in a coffee shop, and it’s turned into taking over the entire shopping center and blocking off roadways for a major-production event.”

In addition to the entertainment, many of the shops in the village have donated items, services and more to be raffled at the event to help raise funds. Online reputation expert and board member for Send Me On Vacation, Walter Halicki, says, “Pink In The Park’ is going to be a great event for everyone involved.”

To find out more, contact Cathy Backus (702) 277-3812 or via email [email protected]. Send Me On Vacation was founded with the mission, “to provide a much needed vacation to women with cancer who have undergone treatment and need to rejuvenate and heal their body, mind and spirit.” SellMyTimeshareNOW.com and VacationOwnership.com are proud to support the important efforts of Send Me On Vacation.

Vacationing in your backyard is just not as much fun as many “experts” promised us it could be. When the economy tanked a few years back, American families found themselves eliminating non-essential expenditures in any way they could. Vacations were dismissed as luxury items that people either couldn’t fit in their budgets or were told they shouldn’t try to fit in the family budget during such uncertain economic times. Well-meaning life advisers attempted to sell weary consumers on the idea that a staycation was actually a viable alternative to taking a real holiday.

But as The Priceline Group  announced in a press release last month, it’s now time to say, “R.I.P. staycation.” Whether the US economy is actually any better or not doesn’t matter. Hard working American families are tired of pretending that the inflatable pool in the back yard is a real vacation fun.

According to Priceline, 83 percent of Americans plan to take a real vacation this year. This is no less than double what the number has been in recent years. Says Brian Ek, of Priceline, “Staycations were popular between 2007 and 2010, when economic uncertainty had many Americans concerned about their finances and their jobs. But anyone who’s tried a staycation finds out very quickly that it’s not very relaxing. There isn’t that clean break with everyday responsibilities and activities, like checking in at the office and doing household chores. A vacation away from home lets people truly disconnect from the daily grind and recharge.”

Timeshare Resale Vacations Help Pull the Plug on the Staycation Concept

Family vacations don’t have to implode the family budget. Timeshare resales have always been an option. And the truth is, as the economy has struggled, the number of resales available at deeply discounted prices has increased.

This doesn’t mean that every owner selling a timeshare is giving it away, but it does mean that for some properties and some seasons, families who want to buy a timeshare have many properties from which to choose, all at competitive prices.

Vacationing is one of part of life that should never be on the “expendable” list. Taking a vacation is too important to our health and well-being, and adds too much to our productivity and clarity of decision-making, to dismiss its value in our lives.

For most of us, it was all we could do to reboot after a long weekend holiday and find our workplace groove again. For millions of children across the US, this week heralded in a new school year filled with challenge and anticipation.

And, like every week, countless amazing moments transpired as babies were born, books were written, and business ideas found their way to fruition. Despite all of the uncertainties and ugliness of economic hardship, illness, and threats of war, people still found a way to accomplish the joyful, the unexpected, and even the unexplainable.

We’d be remiss to let this week wind down without acknowledging one uniquely singular incident of amazing triumph, that of 64-year-old swimmer, Diana Nyad. In her fifth try, she accomplished a goal she had set for herself a lifetime ago. She swam the 100 plus miles between Cuba and Key West, Florida, crossing the Straits of Florida, the waterway connector between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Nyad’s swim took her through open waters known for sharks, high winds, and the jellyfish that had ended at least one of her previous attempts to realize this record-breaking accomplishment.

Consider what really happened here:

• Nyad crystallized the dynamic of concurrently working alone and being totally dependent upon a team of others.
• Along with swallowing a great deal of seawater, she swallowed her pride, and in the most public of platforms took on a challenge at which she had failed 4 times previously.
• She allow the ticking clock to motivate her, not disarm her.

Nyad explains, “The thing about aging is, it’s true that the clock seems to be ticking faster as you get older. It isn’t, but it seems to be. Time seems to be running out. And I wanted to swim this endeavor not to just be the athletic record. I wanted it to be a lesson for my life that says, be fully engaged. Be so awake and alert and alive every minute of every waking day, because that’s where I had to be for these fortunately years to get this done.”

Wherever you are in life’s journey today, set aside the past, the incumbent, and even the logical, and allow yourself the space you need to be amazing. Life is both complex and short. But there’s no reason it can’t also be rewarding and truly amazing.

We shared the news yesterday that Festiva Hospitality Group has added 5 new resorts. (See: Festiva Timeshare Takes You to New Vacation Destinations). Here are more details (see video) about these new vacation destinations and some of the many reasons you may want to start planning a Festiva vacation  getaway.