Tag Archives: travel with kids

Not the Way You Want to Start Your Vacation

“Hope for the Best. Expect the worst.” I think Mel Brooks helped make those words famous. Or maybe it was the person, who typed them up on small pieces of white paper, and stuck them into fortune cookies. Either way the idiom often becomes my mantra when traveling with children. I just survived a 10,000-mile journey to and from Hawaii with my young daughter, and yes, I hoped for the best, but expected the worst. Shockingly, things went fairly smoothly… unlike past trips. Despite two delayed flights and a few shoulder blows courtesy of the guy sitting behind me, who … Continue reading →

Kids’ Car Seats in Taxis

We buckle up our kids in our own vehicles, have them wear lifejackets on boats and make sure they are donning helmets while riding bikes, but what safety precautions do we exercise when traveling with children in taxi cabs? No parent wants to skimp on safety, but there are many of us who don’t plan well enough for family vacations and are left compromising our children’s well-being as a result. For example, the state of Illinois recently unveiled a new safety campaign that reminds parents that taxis are vehicles too, and holding a child on their lap is against the … Continue reading →

Cruising Minus the Kids

As I mentioned in a previous blog my pal and her husband would never dream of going on a cruise without their children. Conversely, I know there are some travelers out there who wouldn’t dream of taking a cruise with kids. For the latter group there is good news today from Royal Caribbean. The popular cruise line, which markets itself heavily to families (almost as much as kid-friendly Carnival Cruise Lines), is taking steps that will undoubtedly please guests who are looking to sail the high seas minus the wails of screaming tots. Starting this fall, Royal Caribbean is banning … Continue reading →

Springtime in Chicago

I just returned from a family trip to Hawaii, which included connections at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. While there my 3-year-old daughter paid her dinosaur pal a visit in Terminal One and once again ran her little legs off at the “Kids on the Fly” play area. The 2,000-square-foot indoor playground features a two-story control tower, airplane with interactive cockpit and cargo hold, luggage slide, a ticket counter, a helicopter, and my daughter’s favorite feature a pint-sized ice-cream stand where tots can scoop their own mock sweet treats into paper cones. We had more than two hours to kill between … Continue reading →

Family Travel—-What You Can Learn at an Apple Orchard

We just returned from our annual trip to the local apple orchard and I’m staring at the receipt from our adventure. My 3-year-old daughter spent more than an hour happily bouncing from branch to branch plucking ripe red apples and placing them into her plastic bag. (This was after I convinced her that the farmer might ask us to leave if she continued to throw rotten apples into the nearby buffalo pen.) Gazing at my receipt it appears the hands on lesson in produce growing and harvesting was included in the price of the apples. The apples at the U-Pick … Continue reading →

Layover Fun

Last week our family had a three hour layover in the Atlanta airport. We went in search of something substantial for dinner because I’ve decided we all are better travelers with real food in our stomachs. We just happened to find a country cooking restaurant and were thrilled to order macaroni and cheese, green beans, corn bread, okra, and iced tea. Even though we weren’t staying in Atlanta, it was nice to share this taste of the south with my kids. For me, occupying children on layovers is one of the hardest challenges of traveling. After one flight, everyone is … Continue reading →

Making Car Rides Work For Your Family

How many hours per week do you spend in your vehicle? Do you often find yourself lamenting about living in your minivan? Do you spend your mornings carpooling kids to school and your afternoons driving one child to soccer, one to ballet, and the other to piano? If you answered yes to any of the aforementioned questions–don’t despair—you are far from alone. In fact, according to a recent SC Johnson survey, 90% of parents say they spend up to 20 hours per week in their car with their children (an average of two kids in the car on a typical … Continue reading →

Hold On To Those Teddy Bears

When my daughter was about 18-months-old she became enthralled with fish (actually, she loved anything that loved water). So I decided that we should celebrate her second birthday at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. I wrote about our experience in a previous blog, but what I failed to share was the incident that almost got us booted from the world famous facility. It happened near the beluga whale tank. We had just watched the dolphin and whale trainers give the animals their lunch and were leaving to get something to eat ourselves. The whales live in a gigantic clear tank so those … Continue reading →