If there’s one thing I can tell you with no fear of contradiction, it’s that children really do grow up fast. Your time traveling together will dwindle over the years, and that’s why it’s so important to make every trip count.

Whether you’re planning a traditional, yearly theme park trip or an overseas adventure, here are a few goals you could set for the coming year.

Learn something

Vacations can be an excellent time to learn something about your destination. You don’t have to enroll in a weeklong language immersion course either (unless you want to). If you’ll be in a national park, attend a ranger lecture. (At the Grand Canyon, we once learned that the horizontal jumping capability of a mountain lion is a chilling 20-40 feet.) If you’re staying at a fancy hotel, take a cooking class. Going to Hawaii? How about hula lessons. The sky’s the limit.

Be active

I love relaxing as much as the next mom, maybe more, but too much down time on vacation can get monotonous. Break things up by biking, kayaking or just exploring your destination on foot. You can also schedule a tennis lesson or try something completely new to you (like rock climbing or surfing). Teach kids that you’re not afraid to look foolish while trying something new.

Volunteer

Is there any way you can spend a day doing something nice for the community you’ll be visiting? You don’t have to structure your entire trip around volunteerism, but you might want to consider getting involved. You could help clean up after a natural disaster, help maintain hiking trails or even protect nesting turtles. As long as your children are old enough (and everyone is on board), a volunteer trip can be an authentic and fulfilling experience.

Stress less

Nowhere is it written that every vacation your family takes has to be a cultural odyssey, a wildlife safari or a rugged adventure. Sometimes trip planning can be stressful. Every so often it’s nice to just have a trip with no agenda beyond having fun. For spring break this year, I booked our family a weeklong trip to Phoenix where we’ll spend most of our waking hours relaxing poolside and rooting for our favorite baseball team in Spring Training. We’ve been to Phoenix a plenty of times before, so there will be no pressure to sightsee (unless we want to) or track down the best carne asada taco in town. It’s a little lazy, but sometimes that’s the way we like it.