Balancing living with paying the bills

One of the hardest things about MM entering our lives 20+ years earlier than the average is that we are still
in our "wage earning" years. Translated: while we would just LOVE to make the most out of every day and
do the whole "live like you were dyin' ' thing, we have a mortgage, daughter who has not been through college yet, and bills to pay and no way to retire and afford living in northern NJ and keep medical insurance. Every summer, we have the same problem. Our daughter is off school and we would like to hit the open road, but Tim is too busy.
I have always wanted to show Tim and Olivia some of the places I saw in '77 when we trekked across
this beautiful country in an RV. Unfortunately, summer is Tim's crazy time. Many people want to get their wood floors done when they, the kids, and the animals are out of the house, so they purposely book the
jobs on their summer vacations. Almost 100% of Tim's work is referrals from his customers so blocking out
4 to 6 weeks of the busy season has a snowball effect. He has turned down about 4 jobs in the last month
or so because he is overbooked. The problem is the jobs you lose because of those 4 you didn't do. And then the jobs you lose from those recommendations too. Every summer, we go to Cape May, NJ with my folks and then spend a week in VT with his folks. I've squeezed in a few days here and there to other locations within those 2 weeks but Tim always winds up pretty depresssed at the end of the summer that all he did was work and not spend enough time with Olivia and not nearly enough time on vacation. How the heck do you change this? Our employee needs rotator cuff surgery. This summer would be the perfect time to take off.
Alan could recover and collect short term disability and we could travel the country. Problem is, Tim is booked
like crazy and we just can't lose the momentum because we might wind up haivng his business slow down markedly because of it. He has been very fortunate to stay busy during this whole economic downturn. He hoped to hire someone else so he could step back some but it's not easy. We hired a nice kid but he kept coming in hung over and we had to let him go. Lots of flooring companies have gone belly-up and a friend of ours sits home most days wondering why Tim is so swamped when his business has pretty much dried up.I guess being swamped with work is a nice problem to have but with Tim's health, the bucket list can't be put off indefinitely. I think I'm gonna sit down with him tonight and ask outright if he wants to take a month off and do this thing. I don't know how far we can make it but we can see a lot in a few weeks. I'd be happy with making it to the Grand Tetons and back, seeing a bunch of stuff on the way out and back. Ya know, if fate was gonna send cancer into your life, at the very least, it could include a winning lottery ticket with it so you can concentrate on what's important in life instead of worrying about money. Is that too much to ask?