Take vacation when — and where — you can find it

I'm a lucky guy.

How, you ask? Well, in many ways.

But as I write this, I'm thinking how lucky I am to have great in-laws.

My father-in-law just retired from a long career with an international company. He and my mother-in-law have been wonderful second parents to me, and outstanding grandparents to my children.

And for the last few months, they've offered a unique escape from everyday life for my family and me.

Last fall, they purchased a retirement home in the Midway area. They plan to spend summers there, when it's just too hot at their Houston home, as well as a week here and there in the spring, fall and winter.

But even when they're not in Utah, they've made it clear that our family is welcome to use the house at any time.

We've taken full advantage of that offer, spending several weekends at the house during the last few months. It's been a wonderful getaway for us, not just from our home in the Salt Lake Valley, but also from the world of technology.

Because my in-laws haven't really "lived" in the house yet, they haven't hooked up a phone, or satellite TV, or the Internet. We still bring our smartphones and iPad with us, and we can get online in a pinch. But for the most part, when we spend time at the house, we play games as a family, take naps (well, at least the adults in the family do), read books and have "family movie night" with DVDs we bring along. The children invent games to play with one another and run around inside and outside.

We're less than an hour's drive from home, but we might as well be in another state. It's great!

We have cherished these stolen weekends. I truly believe the time we have spent at the house in Midway has helped us grow closer as a family as we enjoy each other's company free of many of the distractions of the modern world.

As I pondered this, it reminded me of a column I wrote a few weeks ago about vacation time. I asked then whether readers were vacation hoarders or time-off takers.

Several of you responded with interesting perspectives. For example, Butch wrote in an email that he works for a large corporation and receives four weeks of paid vacation and several days of "personal leave" every year. However, he struggles to take that time off.

"I can take a day or two once in a while, but I have my corporate cell phone on constantly and rarely miss a call," Butch wrote.