Category Archives: News And Views

A Review Of 2009 On WanderMom.com

At the start of the year my husband and I were caught up in a Great Recession-fueled tornado. I think we’re just starting to feel like our feet are back on solid ground now as New Year 2010 approaches. During that time, I managed to keep up Photo Friday posts and not much more. But, since we had to plan for a trip to the UK (for a family wedding) in March, I also looked into public transport options from Heathrow airport to central London since the Heathrow Express maybe fantastically convenient but it’s also ridiculously expensive, especially for traveling families.

In March we spent a fun few days with family in Cornwall and Bedford (although we nearly didn’t make it when our flight with British Airways was cancelled at the last minute), but the utterly crazy happenings with the economy were obviously on my mind as I wrote 5 Budgeting Tips for Family Travel in Difficult Economic Times.

In April I finally got around to writing about the time we spent in Venice in June 2008. At the end of the month our planned relaxing long weekend at Lake Ajijic, Mexico (to welcome a new family member), went more than a little sideways when the fears about the Swine Flu pandemic infected media of all kinds worldwide. Since I really enjoy visiting Mexico, and think that it’s a great family travel destination, I spent a lot of May writing about our travels there just to do my little bit to counteract the “if you go to Mexico you’ll die of Swine Flu” theme which seemed to be circulating at the time.

My book, Traveling With Kids – in the Wanderlust And Lipstick series of guidebooks written by women for women – came out in April. That kept me a little busy too. Thanks to all my blogger friends who wrote a review of the book.

I had two of my most popular posts of the year in June. What to expect when you travel with children written in answer to questions from my friend Jordan and the much-tweeted Summer Family Fun In Seattle which I wrote in anticipation of my sister-in-law’s visit with her three little ones.

As a mom of two school-age boys, July and August are my silly season. When the schools are closed, out the windows goes any hope of a sane, normal day and blog post frequency drops. That said, I was very happy with the discussion in the comments on my post on Handheld Video Games, Kids and Travel.

In September, with budgeting still on my mind, I suggested that September was the time for planning family travel in 2010 – and get the best value for your money. If you missed that window, January is also a great time to think about your travel plans for the year and start watching out for special offers, reduced fares and other extend-your-dollar goodies.

After a low-cost but very fun weekend in Walla Walla, and with the winter fast approaching, I penned even more travel cost-saving ideas in October: Three tips On Choosing Budget Family Accommodation and Family Skiing: Three Cost-Saving Ideas – seems like I’ve got a theme going on here!

I was lucky enough to be able to take my boys to visit their new cousin in Sydney, Australia in November – mainly because I’d been watching airfares to Australia since January and was able to take advantage of a Qantas sale in June. Then, as you know, the rest of the year was all about Passports with Purpose. Thanks again to any readers of this blog who contributed to that effort.

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones and many happy travels – whether actual or armchair – in 2010.

Like what you’ve read? Subscribe for updates via RSS, Email, follow me on Twitter.

Share and Enjoy

NORAD Santa Tracker

4 Replies

I wrote this post for last Christmas, but I still think the NORAD Santa Tracker is a cool toy

Many of the folks who read this blog are Moms (and Dads) with little guys and gals who are bubbling with anticipation and excitement on this Christmas Eve. So, I thought I’d share a tech toy which I think is an excellent addition to the festive season. (Honestly, even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, this is worth checking out).

Continue reading →

Share and Enjoy

Photo Friday: The Deuter Kid Comfort II In Action

3 Replies

Michael Gonchar is the co-founder of Darn Good Digs, a guide to the best small hotels, hostels, and B&B’s around the world, all with rooms under (and often way under!) US$150. At darngooddigs.com, budget-minded travelers nominate their all-time favorite places to stay, and our editors carefully research each nomination to determine which hotels meet our highly selective criteria. When Michael read the review I’d posted on the Deuter Kid Comfort II, he contacted me offering to share fun travel-themed photos of their family using this child carrier. It seemed like a fun Photo Friday post. Enjoy!

This is my son Benjamin in our Deuter Kid Comfort II. Typically after fifteen minutes riding on my back, he passes out into a comfortable slumber. Here he is sleeping in Olympic National Park in Washington.

Here is Benjamin before I decided to take a break. He is a heavy load, especially when he is sleeping.

When he was seven months old we spent ten days traveling around Arizona. Here he is napping in front of Sedona’s Castle Rock.

In Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, he decided to get out and climb the dunes himself. He was three years old when we took that trip.

Those were mighty big dunes out there

Now that Benjamin is four years old, he’s too big for his Kid Comfort. – even though I wore it on my back just in case. He hiked up to this village on his own in Spain’s Picos de Europa National Park.

The Deuter Kid Comfort ii is Available on Amazon.com

Share and Enjoy

Traveling With Kids Author Event At Powells Bookstore

2 Replies

powellsbooks logo It’s one thing to come up with an idea for a book. It’s another to actually write it and see it in print. Both of these experiences are overwhelming and exciting and there are days when I can’t believe that I helped develop an idea and co-wrote a book.

Being invited to give a talk at Powell’s Books in Portland about the book, Traveling With Kids, is an entirely new experience. What? You mean me? Give a talk at Powell’s? No, really, you have to be kidding!

But it’s true. At 2pm this coming Saturday, November 14th, I’ll be at Powell’s Cedar Hills Crossing store. Yes, OK, it’s not the fabled downtown City of Books, but it is a 35,000 square foot store with the largest children’s book section of any book store on the West Coast. I think that’s worth noting.

My children are duly impressed. Powell’s is their favorite “attraction” in Portland.

traveling-with-kids

If you’re in the area, do come down and say “Hi”. If you have questions about traveling with children domestically or internationally, infants to teens, I hope I’ll be able to help you with them.

To help reassure you that this will be a worthwhile hour or so, I thought I’d share what some of the travel-blogging moms (and dads) had to say about the Traveling With Kids book:

From the TravelingMamas.com (now TheVacationGals.com): “Chapters include everything from Pre-Trip Planning to Flight Plans to Responsible Travel, which focuses on teaching your children how to respect other cultures and respect the environment.” Full review here.

From Travels With Children: “Written by traveling moms Leslie Forsberg and Michelle Duffy, Traveling with Kids will be a useful resource for families traveling around the world or within their home state.” Full review here.

From MotherOfAllTrips: “Reading it is like talking to a friend who knows you well, has been everywhere, and has all kinds of practical, realistic, and nonjudgmental advice to offer.” Full review here.

On the esteemed Perceptive Travel, editor Tim Leffel wasn’t quite so glowing, but he did say: “Despite a few quibbles though, this book excels far more than it sputters. Its 300+ pages of advice will help nearly any tentative mom prepare for getting away from home with one or more little ones along.” Full review here.

So there you have it, good reason to come on over to Powell’s Cedar Hills Crossing store this coming Saturday, November 14th at 2pm. I’m looking forward to meeting you to talk about Traveling With Kids – yours!

Share and Enjoy

Trekaroo’s KidsMobile Stops In Seattle

Share and Enjoy

Wandermom Is Moving

5 Replies

moving

The system fairies are at it again! This time, though, I’ll be arriving at a whole new space. In fact, a whole new website.

You’ll still be able to find me at www.wandermom.com, but it will look oh so different. Come back later this week and check out my new look.

In the meantime, you can still subscribe for updates via RSS, follow me on Twitter.

Share and Enjoy

Now Is The Time To Plan Your Family Travel For 2010

6 Replies

If you have children in school, you’ve probably got a calendar like this prominently located in your kitchen where you’ll refer to it regularly for the next nine months. What you may not have realized is that this is also your key to unlocking a fun year of travel for your family. Surprised? Read on…

Get To Know Your Calendar
If you’re a working mom like me, you’ll already have looked at the next two or three months on the school calendar and maybe added appointments to your calendar at work so that you have a reminder of school closure days ahead of time. As I explained to a friend who doesn’t have children recently, most schools within a district follow the same dates for major breaks such as Winter and Spring but there’s huge variability in when and how individual schools schedule conferences, teacher in-service days and other non-school days during the school year. Finding childcare or coordinating a work-from-home day with your employer can be painful. Picking out some of these dates and planning ahead to take mini-vacations over three or four-day weekends keeps me sane. Putting thought into how we will spend the longer breaks now has consistently helped me save money on my family’s travels and allowed us to keep traveling even though the children are at school.

Coordinate With The Teacher
Let’s say you pick a weekend in January where your child will have no school on Friday and the following Monday and you think a city break in San Francisco would be fun. But, when you look at airfares you find that flights on Monday evening are expensive and flying during the day Tuesday would save you $30-$50 – a decent savings when you’re buying four or more tickets. If you talk to your child’s teacher now he or she will appreciate the advance notice and you will both have ample time to ensure that your child can either work ahead or bring some exercises along so that he stays current with the class. We attended a family wedding in the U.K. this past April. I first brought it up with my child’s teacher when school started the previous September and we discussed how and what to do to make sure that he was in synch with the rest of the class when he returned to school. His re-entry was painless and he had plenty of time to get the required school-work done on planes and trains over the course of our trip.

Start Bargain-Hunting Now
If you plan to travel during the major school breaks – usually busy travel periods – a little legwork now may bring significant savings. Use a tool such as Yapta.com or Hotwire.com’s Trip Watcher to leverage technology to do most of the work for you. If you know where you want to go, start by saving a search for airfares or accommodation on one of these services now. You can configure email alerts on price changes so you know the best time to buy. If you’re not quite sure where you want to go, sign up for email offers from your favorite airline or with a consolidator services such as Travel Zoo for deals on every aspect of travel from accommodation to airfares to tickets to a concert or show. I’ve been using this approach for a few years now even before these tools were available, although manually keeping a constant watch on airfares on a chosen route was time-consuming. However, it meant that when we traveled to Italy in June 2008, I spent $300 less per ticket by buying in January than my friend who waited and purchased at the best available price in April. This year I’ll be using Yapta.com’s automated search since with their excess fare refund I win even if I don’t buy at the lowest price.

Find The Perfect Vacation Rental Property
Properties at popular resort areas sell out fast during holiday periods. By searching early, you’ll have the pick of the crop – I’ve got a beach house in Florida booked already for Christmas week. Now I can relax and look for the best deal on flights to get us there. The property owner was very happy to confirm a rental so far in advance and told me that in his experience this property is usually gone by early September.

So there you have it. I know you’re still adjusting to the rigor of the school schedule and probably coordinating carpool and sports schedules too. But take a minute and see how you can use the school calendar to your advantage. You’ll be glad you did.

Like what you’ve read? Subscribe for updates via RSS, follow me on Twitter.

Share and Enjoy

Travel Alternatives – Inviting The World Into Your Home

3 Replies

As the summer winds down and the school year starts up again with a vengence, I can’t help but stop a moment and think of how much the school calendar restricts the travel plans of many families. So I offer an alternative: sometimes it’s fun to invite the world into your home. I don’t mean by reading books, watching movies or even just talking about other countries. I’ve had plenty of fun doing all of these with my children, but last summer we hosted two Japanese exchange students and this is the experience my boys are still talking about.

Two of the boys in the photo above stayed with us for ten days. I’ll be honest, it was a challenging week-and-a-half. No-one in our family speaks Japanese and their English was halting at best. The kids were intrigued by each other and played well together but cultural differences flashed, if briefly, every so often – although nothing that a common love of Nintendo couldn’t resolve

As you might expect, the Japanese boys were huge baseball fans. In his capacity as host, my young Irish-American tolerated just one game with them at Safeco Field. Language aside, I think he might have learned more about the game from them than he ever did from either of his parents.

Food was the most challenging aspect of the visit. Since I’m the one who does most of the cooking in our household and my culinary skills are really quite limited this was hardly surprising. One of the boys willingly tried everything I offered. The other was obviously a fairly picky eater and barely ate anything. As any mom charged with the care of another’s child might, I lay awake worrying about this. So, on their last night as our guests we went to a sushi restaurant. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a kid put away so much sushi at one sitting!

We hosted these boys under a summer program sponsored by American Cultural Exchange. We replied to a request for host parents which had been sent out to the parents at CAM’s middle school. Have you hosted an exchange student? How did you find the program? Did you have a good experience? Leave a comment with your story.

Share and Enjoy

Mom's Top Questions About Family Travel

8 Replies

I came home from TBEX last month with a head full of questions about my motives and intentions for this blog and what I’m really trying to do with it. What are parents looking for from online travel blogs and websites? What can I offer in that space (in addition to the Traveling With Kids book, of course)? One of the things that I learned while working at Amazon.com is the power of data-driven decisions and so, this weekend I spent some time looking for data on questions parents are asking online about travel with their children. Since I know that many of the readers of this blog are people who also write about travel or family travel, I thought I’d share my findings.

I started my search by looking at portal, community and social media websites for moms. The most recent data set I could find was the Nielson Power Moms report from earlier this year (May 2009) – particularly the ‘Portals and Communities’ list on the last page of the report. Since I have some issues with this data (I’d prefer something more like the Invesp.com’s Blog-Rank which shows data from known sources such as Alexa and Compete), I also used the round-up of social networking sites for moms by socialmediamom.com (from January 2008). I visited each of the websites listed on these rankings and examined their travel offering looking for data on questions or comments submitted by readers on this topic.

Unfortunately, the social networking, portal and community websites which do cover travel as a separate topic do so in a magazine-style format with a rolling list of archived posts under this topic but no further categorization and it looked like brute force (i.e. reading post after post) was going to be the only way I could come up with any initial quantitative data. Cafemom.com was a slight exception in that they also maintain a list of sub-categories: International Travel, Road Trips, Cruises, Military Travel, Disney Vacation but there wasn’t any easy way to count the number of posts, questions or comments within these topics. Finally, I hit pay-dirt with Mamapedia.com where they’ve tagged all the discussions with multiple tags. This led me to ‘Traveling & Kids‘ containing 1400+ questions – submitted by and answered by real moms – grouped into five general topics as shown in the chart above. I considered this a worthy, if small, sample to examine further.

Using Car Seats on Trips – Particularly on Airplanes (43%)
How to Entertain Children While Traveling (34%)
Potty Training While Traveling (14%)
Kid Travel Health (6%)
Vacation Destination Recommendations (1%)

I have to admit that I’m surprised by this break-down of topics. Who would have thought that car seats would rank so highly? I’m not surprised by entertainment ranking as a ‘hot topic’ since I’m regularly asked about how I keep my boys entertained when we’re traveling (books and games and the odd electronic indulgence folks). Car seats and Entertainment account for 77% of the questions submitted whereas only 1% of questions relate to destinations or activities at those destinations. This is very intriguing. Are moms of older children (who don’t need car seats) using social media less or do they not research their vacation destinations by posting questions on discussion boards on social media websites for moms (parents)?

I believe that there is another potential data source for study of parent’s questions on family travel: the discussion boards on travel websites such as Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree or the Traveling With Children message board on Bootsnall. I plan to do a follow-up study using the data from these sources and compare the results in the near future.

Leave a comment and let me know if you have any questions about this little research project or any suggestions on where I could find better data to supplement it (the internet, you know, it’s never-ending…)

Related Posts:
Handheld Video Games, Kids and Travel

RSS, email or follow me on Twitter.

Share and Enjoy

Flying With The Army

2 Replies

OK. I didn’t really fly with the Army, but it felt like I did. As I waited for my flight to Chicago last week, I began to notice that a significant percentage of the people around me at the departure gate were obviously military. Some of them were in uniform, some were in street clothes but carrying an army backpack, and some were neither wearing nor carrying anything related to uniform but were betrayed by their haircut or the people they were with. Seeing military personnel at SeaTac Airport is not unusual – it was the sheer numbers of folks in uniform which was remarkable.

And so, with time to kill and no kids to attend to, I people-watched. Oh my, they all looked so young – painfully young – but strong and vital and exuding vigor and the indestructibility of youth. Watching them gathering at the gate area made my heart ache. I had no idea whether they were about to leave on a mission to Iraq or Afghanistan but it was very obvious that they were not returning from a tour of duty. They were too happy and too confident. I looked at them and saw the hurt and pain which was in front of them on their chosen path. My geeky brain started calculating the probability of how many of them would be dead or maimed within six months or a year of deployment.

I guessed at an average age of 21 and this in itself was the thing that drew me into these dark thoughts: if the bright young men and women around me in fatigues were, on average, 21, that would mean that in 2001, when this whole mess started they were about 13. The same age as my CAM is now. That’s a frightening thought. Time accelerates when your baby becomes a teenager and he starts to make his own decisions. I would cheer if I saw my baby looking as strong and as fit as any of these kids, but I would cry in fear if I saw him in fatigues – as I’m sure their mothers have done. I wondered about their individual motivations to join the army and whether they really had any idea about what they were getting into.

While boarding the plane, I overheard a kid with an army haircut in front of me say “No, I’m just a sophomore in high school, but I want to sign up when I graduate.” My heart almost stopped.

On the flight, with a sleeping soldier on my right and an obviously ready-to-chat soldier on my left, I retreated into my book. I was afraid that if I started talking, I might overload him with questions. But when drinks were served, he struck up a conversation and happily answered all my questions and then some. Yes, the average age of the group was about 21. Yes, they were returning from a training session at Fort Lewis. Yes, when they were done with training, many of them would choose active duty. Yes, many of them had signed up as a way – the only way – for them to start or continue college courses in their chosen discipline. And – most terrifyingly for me – many of them had never been outside the US (he had). I can still remember the eyes of a soldier who trained his gun on me at a stop light in Belfast in the late ’80s. I was just 18, he wasn’t much older. Neither of us really knew anything about geopolitics or barely even local politics. I fear for these kids walking into similar situations where, as the guy I spoke to on the plane said “everyone is carrying a kalashnikov or an M-16.”

I applaud these young men and women for their bravery and courage.
I worry for their safety.
I empathize with their parents and loved ones.
I can’t help hoping that the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan come to an end soon.