Planning vacations always get a lot trickier when you and your husband both have nine-to-five jobs in addition to the handful of kids you’re looking after. You just can’t take off any time you want to, and this leaves the weekend as your only free time to escape. With so little time to do the many things you want to do in addition to chasing after your tots, there’s a big chance that your much-awaited vacation in paradise will only end up being a highly stressful getaway.

Since we’ve pretty much established that weekend family trips can be headache-inducing, we came up with a few things you should remember to make this getaway as problem as happy and as problem-free as possible for everyone involved. Scroll through the gallery below for our tips!

(Photo by Patrick via Flickr Creative Commons)