Summer’s almost upon us, which means it’s time (at least in our family) for road-trips. In families with siblings—again, like ours—long hours in the car often mean yelling, whining, arguing, and fighting for the kids. This, in turn, means headaches, exasperation, and a need for Chardonnay for the grownups. Thankfully, Dr. Laura Markham has some […]
When we booked this family vacation to Los Angeles, it was supposed to be about togetherness, birthday celebrations, and outfitter-driven activities for all ages (available through my client, Expedia). So far, however, the trip largely has been about something entirely different: puke. As in, vomit, throm, throw-up, retch. All of the puke has come from […]
Sometimes you bring the kids to family-oriented hotels and it’s all about penne with butter and crayons and stuffed animals. Other times you bring the kids to grownup-oriented hotels and the kids hear a woman moaning loudly in the next room and ask if you should call the police to help her. Such was the […]
Squiggling and wriggling like a pudgy underwater ribbon, the pale-green moray eel moved along the coral reef quickly—almost too fast to spot. As a relative novice snorkeler, I probably would have missed it, had I not glimpsed a small school of tropical fish dart out of the way of the creature, fleeing for their lives. […]
As a proud member of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, I’ve always known I have a very skewed perspective on San Francisco. For us, it’s the Big City, a place with endless opportunities to keep our kids occupied, one of the greatest daytrip destinations on Earth. For people who live there, however, there’s a different reality. A […]
We humans express excitement in different ways. Some of us get smiley. Others get giddy. My wife likes to eeek. I, a verbal person, like to scream, “POWER” repeatedly. Then there’s the Big Girl, who conveys *her* excitement by jumping over and over again and stuttering uncontrollably. I noticed this tendency of my daughter’s on […]
By now you likely have heard of the Rossi family—the Pennsylvania family that pulled 9-year-old twins out of school to go and watch Dad run in the Boston Marathon earlier this month. Had they done this all quietly, neither you, nor I, nor anyone else in the United States would be talking about it. But, […]
Just about the last thing a family travel writer wants to hear from his kid is a request for a year off from flying. Yet this was our reality in August of 2014, after we followed up five months of living abroad (for the last half of 2013) with family trips to Hawaii and Walt […]
Tomorrow is Earth Day, which means it’s a perfect opportunity to teach kids about the wonder of nature what it means to respect the planet. We usually commemorate the occasion with a walk in the woods (which I’m doing with L, on a field trip through her school). This year, we’re taking our celebration one […]
Hawaii is a special place for everyone in our family. It’s where Powerwoman and I got married, where L said her first word (the word was, “again;” she said it at the ocean waves), and where R fell in love with the beach. It’s also a place to which we’ve traveled as a unit multiple […]