Patrick Mahomes is somewhere on a practice field in St. Joseph, Missouri, and his wife just posted the best vacation content of anyone in the NFL this summer — his response in the comments, one red heart emoji, might be the most romantic thing I’ve seen all year.
Brittany Mahomes posted a Hawaii vacation carousel to Instagram this week, kids in tow, and it plays like a highlight reel for anyone who’s ever wrangled three children under six through a theme park. Sterling Skye, five, apparently decided she’s done being scared of the ocean. Bronze Mahomes, the middle kid at three, decided mascots aren’t so bad after all, which is a real character arc for a toddler who reportedly used to lose it at the sight of Mickey. Golden Raye, eighteen months old, mostly just vibed through the whole thing at Aulani, which is the correct toddler response to Disney’s Hawaii outpost.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DbqnbQAoJnT/
Brittany Mahomes is having the best summer of anyone in the NFL right now, and it isn’t particularly close. She’s meeting Moana and Stitch at a Disney resort in Hawaii while her husband sweats through fundamentals in Missouri.
Patrick, meanwhile, is grinding through two-a-days in Missouri heat at Kansas City Chiefs training camp in 2026, held at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph. This is his tenth NFL season, which means he’s done this dance enough times to know August doesn’t care about anybody’s family vacation. He reported to camp on August 4th. Brittany’s Hawaii carousel went up the following day.
The Chiefs’ own account posted video from that same practice of Mahomes finding Travis Kelce on a seam route in 7-on-7 drills, and it’s a pretty good visual for what he’s actually doing while his wife is at a Disney resort.
https://twitter.com/Chiefs/status/2084669986941931925
That’s the version of Mahomes that exists from late July through mid-January: pads on, throwing to Kelce, building toward a season, while the version of his life that includes Hawaii carousels happens without him for a stretch. The heart emoji is doing a lot of work.
AOL reported that Patrick’s entire response to the whole Hawaii vacation was that one heart, dropped in the comments from wherever he found a spare minute at camp. No caption competing with hers. No separate post explaining he wishes he were there. Just an emoji, because when your wife nails the summer that hard, you don’t try to write your way into it — you just cosign it.
She also posted a separate photo dump the same week, captioned about her babies, and it’s exactly the unbothered, chaos-positive parenting content that’s built Brittany Mahomes her own audience independent of being Mrs. MVP.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbqy1SZIBtx/
She’s not exactly sitting by the phone waiting for a call from St. Joseph. She’s teaching a toddler to high-five Stitch.
None of this is unique to the Mahomeses, and that’s the actual point. Kelce was back at a Florida facility eleven days after his own wedding, because that’s what August does to every guy on this roster who has a life outside football. The NFL calendar doesn’t do honeymoons or vacations. It does camp, and everyone attached to a guy on this roster either builds a summer around that or spends four months miserable about it.
My dad’s had Jets camp reels playing on a loop all week while my mom’s group chat blows up about some friend’s trip to the Cape, and he hasn’t looked up once. Different team, same August.
Reality Tea framed it as Brittany escaping Kansas City for a Hawaii vacation while Patrick stayed behind, which is technically accurate and still misses the point. She took the kids somewhere fun during the exact stretch when he’s unavailable anyway. Good scheduling, not avoidance.
Pads on in St. Joe. Stitch in Hawaii. One heart emoji holding down an entire marriage for a week.
