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Choosing the Perfect Family Beach House: Tips for Renting a Beach House
There’s a first time for everything, which means there’s a first time for renting a beach house. It’s easy to get pulled into the pictures of beautiful rooms and seashell decor, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the perfect fit for your family’s needs. Not all beach houses are the same. And not all families are the same. It’s important to really assess your needs and come up with some priorities before you turn on your computer and get hunting. House hunting fatigue can set in quickly and it can sap the joy out of planning, so we’ve come up with some tips for renting a beach house that will…
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Managing Jet Lag: Tips for Travel with Kids
The absolute pain of being awake when you just don’t want to be. I still have seared into my brain the discomfort of struggling to stay awake in high school classes, fighting to keep my eyes open in the passenger seat of late night car rides, forcing my eyelids open during early morning meetings. I would envision white, crisp sheets and heavy, down comforters wrapped around my body, lulling me. I’d get comfortable, then battle my way back to semi-clearheaded consciousness. It’s the same dreaded war I often wage when we travel (particularly when we fly east), except this time I’ve got kids. So, I’ve come up with some fool-proof…
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Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort in Lake Placid: A Family Friendly Place to Stay
We found ourselves arriving later than we had planned, which wouldn’t be a problem in the summer months. But this wasn’t the summer. This was a mere week before the winter solstice—you know, the shortest day of the year. So, leaving just an hour or two later could mean driving through the Adirondacks in upstate New York in the dark. In winter. In snow. With a minivan. Anyone with a minivan knows that those beasts of a machine are perfectly designed for road trips heading south, but they’re not quite ideal for those road trips heading north in December, like the one we had planned to Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort…
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Gifts for Families That Travel: Gifts for Every Age
Most families who travel (and a whole lot who don’t) will tell you that it’s the experiences that matter, and we tend to agree. But that’s not always an easy gift to give. It can be expensive, time consuming, and difficult to plan. Luckily, we’ve rounded up some of the best non-experience gifts for families that travel, no matter what the age. Infants (under 12) Muslin Blankets There is just no item as versatile as a muslin blanket. In a single layer, it is thin enough to let air move while still keeping little bub’s skin free from direct sun. Folded over many a time, and its thickness becomes an…
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Must Have Gear for Traveling with a Newborn
Traveling with a newborn is bliss. I mean, really, it is. I don’t think it gets any easier as far as traveling with kids is concerned. They don’t really complain. They have erratic sleeping schedules so are pretty happy to keep whatever pace you want to set. Food isn’t a problem because they have yet to disavow anything green and pledge their tastebuds solely to chicken nuggets dipped in ketchup. Their clothes take up practically zero space. But their gear? Well, the gear for traveling with a newborn, it, you know, takes up space. Kind of a lot of space. And that comes from someone who despises carrying more than…
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What to Do in Manchester, Vermont: A 3 Day Family-Friendly Itinerary
When we rolled up into Manchester, Vermont that first time, it was already a bit dark. We made a few wrong turns, but each turn took us back to a main road. With each quiet street we came to the realization that maybe Manchester wasn’t that big. Maybe it was small. Maybe it was the escape from our home in Brooklyn we were looking for. But what would we do for three days we wondered? Well, after the addition of three littles and after ten years of escaping the grit of NYC in Manchester, we’ve finally pegged exactly what to do in Manchester, Vermont when you’ve just got three days…
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Plimoth Plantation with Kids: the Perfect Pit Stop
We had no real plan on our weekend adventure to Plymouth, Massachusetts beyond going to Edaville Family Theme Park (also known in the Pre-K playground as ThomasLand). So what else should we do, we wondered…we had heard that Plymouth Rock was, well, just a rock. And Plimoth Plantation with kids? We had our reservations. Our middle little doesn’t understand the difference between yesterday and tomorrow let alone hundreds of years ago. Still, it was a sunny Spring day and we wanted to be outside. Plimoth Plantation is outside. And other than the basics of what we grown ups remembered from our elementary school days, we didn’t know much else. At…
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Three Kids and a…Time We Didn’t Stay (Our Family Travel Warning)
The view as we waited for the gate to be opened was breathtaking. And barren. It was a combination of our first stunned sightings of Mount Etna, its steam puffing into the dusk sky, and the damp dark rolling in over the empty, treeless hills we were perched upon. It was cold excitement, nervous anticipation. The views off the side of the hill probably seemed so inviting because the one before us, of shuttered gates and dirt roads disappearing around the folds of the hills, was so secretive. In retrospect, we should have known. We should have listened. But we didn’t, and, instead, we followed the man bicycling in torn…
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Massanutten Resort Review: 15 Family-Friendly Reasons to Book Your Stay
We’ve creeped and crawled our way up and down the east coast a million times this year…and last year…and before that. No matter which way we go, we always find ourselves in Virginia for…well…a lot longer than we had expected. The thing is, this isn’t because we make a ton of stops in VA; it’s because VA is deceptively large. Huge even. So there’s a lot of time to watch and think. As the road trip hours slide by, we inevitably have a conversation that goes something along the lines of, “Can we stop somewhere soon?” “I wish we had more time so we could make some stops in Virginia.…
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10 Travel Items We Can’t (Or Really We Don’t Want To) Live Without
I’d like to pretend we have this packing thing down. And we do. And then something happens, like a season changes or one of the little people gets a bit older and it’s like starting over again. Mostly. I mean, yes, there’s the clothes. Always the clothes. And the diapers. And the medicines. And all the other little travel items. But what about all that those other little travel items? Over the past seven years of traveling as a family, I’ve figured out that less is more. I always aim to bring just enough. Still, there are a few things that have stood out to us as travel items that…
