Do You Vacation While On Vacation?

Remember riding hip to hip with your brothers and sisters in the back of the family van, eating the snacks too soon, fighting over the music selection, losing tiny, indispensable pieces of travel games?

Or maybe your family was not of the road trip ilk. Perhaps you remember exciting trips on airplanes, a special pin from the stewardess, watching the clouds take shape out of your own oval window, your grandparents waiting feverishly for your arrival in the sprawling Portland or Poughkeepsie or even Paris airport.

I remember the hip to hip bit quite well and it never failed that within about a block of leaving our house, I would start balling my eyes out because my siblings were putting the squeeze on me for car space.

But the point of this article isn't about that. It's about taking a vacation -- a real vacation -- and carving out time for your friends, family and your own well-being.

Take a break to read this article and see if you find yourself in it. If you do, plan to get away to relax, rejuvenate and explore what the world has to offer outside of work.

Take an escape break

Weather in Chicago is windy, chilly (7 degrees below zero wind chill factor) and snowy so what better thing to do than to take an escape break from everything -- including work -- to enjoy what mother nature has given us. Here are a couple of photos taken along the Chicago lakefront and not too far from where I live and work. The snow angel just happens to be wearing my ski hat.