Tag Archive for: vacation with kids

Travel, technology, and the children of St. Jude

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There are lots of reasons why I love working with Expedia on the Expedia Viewfinder blog, and the company’s commitment to supporting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital tops the list.

Naturally, then, I was blown away by this piece, in which my colleague Sarah Gavin shares her story about how Expedia recently leveraged technology to enable patients to “travel” without ever leaving Memphis.

No, the initiative isn’t family travel in the traditional sense. But considering that many of these terminally ill cancer patients will never leave the halls of St. Jude, Expedia has, in a sense, brought the wonders of travel to them and their families. I can’t think of a better use for technology. I also doubt there’s a better kind of travel.

Once you’ve read Sarah’s story, check out the video below. I dare you to keep your eyes dry.

The best vacation rental on Earth

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I want to stay here. (Forever.)

I want to stay here. (Forever.)

We Villanos have stayed at some pretty amazing vacation rentals over the years we’ve been traveling as a family. Never, however, have we stayed at a place like The Sweet Escape.

The house, available for rent on HomeAway.com, has 10 bedrooms, a five-acre backyard, and a pool in the shape of an ice cream cone. It has a candy-themed miniature golf course, playgrounds, tetherball court, full movie theater, and 1,400-square-foot karaoke club.

It’s also located just outside Orlando, a short drive from the Walt Disney World Resort.

A good buddy of mine—Spencer Spellman—recently spotlighted the house in a blog post for HomeAway.com. His piece does a great job of capturing the youthful exuberance of the home. It also includes a picture of arguably the coolest bedroom on the planet—a room with two bunk beds and ball-pit balls covering the floor.

The theme of that bedroom is lollipops. Other bedrooms have other themes, including a PEPSI bedroom with its own pinball machine, and a carnival games bedroom with its own carnival game booth.

The house is owned and operated by a man named Andrew Greenstein, who owns other notable homes such as the Ever After Estate, which was featured on HGTV’s “Most Outrageous Homes in America”; and the Great Escape Lakeside, another themed property that recently made Guinness World Records for having the world’s largest word search. As Greenstein told Spence: “I always dreamed of playing non-stop, so I wanted to create homes that reflect what I dreamed to be the ultimate place to live, laugh, and love.”

As for The Sweet Escape, the place sleeps up to 52, so it’s perfect for a REALLY BIG family. What are you waiting for?

Taking the kids with you, even when they stay home

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My phone, after L decorated it

My phone, after L decorated it

Most of my travel time these days is split between family trips (for this blog and additional outlets) and solo trips (to fulfill other assignments). When the kids come with me, it’s easy to monitor how they’re experiencing and internalizing our travel. When they stay home, however, this process becomes a bit more challenging.

Powerwoman and I have tried a number of solutions to overcome this hurdle. When she went to England with her oldest sister to celebrate their dad’s 70th birthday last year, she wrote the girls (just the big ones at that time) separate letters for them to open each day she was gone. When I traveled to Maui on behalf of Expedia last spring, I Skyped with the girls once a day so they could see palm trees and “feel” and “smell” the tropical breeze.

Both of these strategies seemed to work well. The letters, though asynchronous, enabled the girls to feel like as if were connecting with their mom even though she was halfway across the world. The Skype sessions were more interactive, though the kids’ attention spans always were shorter than I’d hoped.

On my next trip, for which I leave Thursday, I’m going to try something new: Text messages with photos.

This new approach is a direct appeal to spark additional interaction—L has become a wonderful writer and enjoys pecking out texts and emojis in response. The way we’ve planned it, I’ll send texts and images once a day. L will respond to hers directly. R will tell L what to type in response to the ones earmarked for her.

I’m eager to see how the girls respond to the texts. I’m headed to Vegas, a place I’ve covered as a beat for their entire lives, so they are particularly interested in the pictures I send back. (To be specific, they are interested in pictures of the private pool in our kick-ass suite, the giant televisions in the sports book, the bingo hall, and pictures of Daddy playing poker. This is what happens when your dad covers gambling.)

Normally I’d say this setup encourages way more screen time than I like my kids to have. In this case, however, I think the additional screen time actually may be a good facilitator for the kids to experience my travel vicariously.

The goal of all of this is to spark the same sort of curiosity that we spark when we travel with them. So long as the texts accomplish that, I’ll be happy.

How do you interact with your kids when you travel and they stay home?

Planning adventures for Yosemite 2016

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We'll be learning from the man who painted this

A Steve Curl original (from his site)

The family trip to Yosemite National Park has become a bit of an annual tradition around these parts, and I’m in the process of lining up specifics for this year’s adventure. This year, however, there’ll be some major changes:

  1. Powerwoman and Baby G are heading to Denver, so instead L, R, and I are taking my dad (who we’ll refer to as GRANDPA POWER), making this year’s trip a multigenerational one.
  2. Because of the ridiculous name changes inside the park (for more on that, click here), we decided to stay outside the park this time, in a two-bedroom family cabin at the Evergreen Lodge in Groveland.

The four of us also have signed up for a half-day art class—a workshop in watercolors. I was hesitant to sign up L and R for a five-hour class, but considering how much both of them love art, I figured I’d give it a try. The instructor, Steve Curl, seems pretty laid back, and we can pull the plug whenever the kids are ready. (I’m guessing that will be around noon, since that’s usually when they get hungry).

In addition to the art class, we plan to do some waterfall-spotting, lots of rock-tossing into the Merced, and lots of hiking. The girls also have been fantasizing about a return to the pizza deck at (the spot formerly known as) Curry Village.

I’m delighted to have the opportunity to write about the adventure for Expedia. My coverage will comprise part of the company’s #ExpediaLovesParks campaign to celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service. It also will be featured on the Expedia Viewfinder blog, a site for which I serve as senior editor.

You’ll hear more about our trip between now and when we go in April. Of course I’ll blog daily when we’re there, too. In the meantime, what family-friendly activities have you enjoyed in national parks?

Family travel with the cowboy centaur

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Family travel is one of the most important parts of our lives over here. Another major priority: Education. This is one of the main reasons why Powerwoman became a college professor. It’s why she plans special science programs every year for L’s charter school. And it’s why I’m on the board of directors of the girls’ preschool.

Every year, that preschool gets the bulk of its fundraising done at a dinner dance auction. This year’s auction was held last night. In an attempt to cut costs this year, the school board decided NOT to hire an outside auctioneer to run the live auction part of the evening. The alternative: Moi.

I did not take the assignment lightly. I studied bid-calling. I rehearsed for hours. I developed some of my own catchphrases. I also made sure I was wearing an outfit other parents would remember forever. So I hired a costume designer. And I had her build me a cowboy centaur costume. The result, dear readers, was one of the most amazing costumes I’ve ever seen. No, nothing about the experience technically related to travel. But I thought you’d appreciate it nevertheless.

Heaven Centaur and the Mrs.

Heaven Centaur and the Mrs.

Wandering Pod hits the LA Travel Adventure Show

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What to look forward to at the show.

What to look forward to at the show.

I’m taking the family travel show on the road this coming weekend, representing the Family Travel Association on a panel at the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show.

My fellow panelists: Jen Miner from The Vacation Gals, Colleen Kelly from Family Travel with Colleen Kelly, and Margalit Sturm Francus, from Autistic Globetrotting (you can read more about our panel here).

The subject of our discussion is a subject near and dear to my heart—yes, we’ll talk about family travel, but we’ll serve up “real talk” that doesn’t sugar-coat the challenges of exploring the world with kids. If you’ve spent any time reading this blog, you know I’m a big believer in keeping it real. I’m excited to hear what my fellow panelists have to say on the subject, especially given their different areas of expertise.

(For those of you going to the show, again, our panel is Sunday at 2 p.m. PST in the Savvy Traveler Theater.)

In advance of our panel, Jen is participating in a Twitter party during which she’s giving away four pretty cool prizes. The party starts at 6 p.m. PST Wednesday. To get involved with the Twitter party—and to qualify for the giveaways—use the hashtag #LATravelShow and follow @TravAdventure on Twitter. I’ll be participating as well, so be sure to direct at least a few of your Tweets my way!

Furthermore, on Sunday, Tweet your questions to me at @mattvillano (again with the hashtag, #LATravelShow) and I’ll answer them live on stage.

See you there (virtually)!

Update on Families Flying Together

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Earlier this month I shared some news about Family Travel Association (FTA) involvement in advocating for legislation to require airlines to keep families together on commercial planes. Well, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has marked up the FAA Reauthorization Bill. And we have both good news and bad news to share.

The good news: Legislators managed to include in the bill an amendment requiring that families with children are notified, before tickets are booked, when they are assigned seats that are not together on a selected flight. The bad news: Legislators were NOT able to include an amendment directing each air carrier to establish a policy to ensure, to the extent practicable, that a family that purchases tickets for a flight with that air carrier is seated together during that flight.

The next step at this point is for the full House to consider the bill, which will allow for additional amendments. According to Ethan Gelber, the FTA’s editorial director (and also my friend), the failure of the Committee to approve the language means it is unlikely to move on the floor of the House should it be proposed there again.

As Gelber wrote in a blog post on the FTA site, “Another attempt could be made to get the language included in the Senate FAA bill, but there’s apparently little certainty about when they will move such legislation.”

Stay tuned.

Four secrets to wine-tasting with kids

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Lunch, after tasting.

Lunch, after tasting.

When you live in Wine Country (that’s where we live), you do what you have to do for a nice day on the town. Sometimes, that means taking the kids when we go wine-tasting. People think I’m crazy when I tell them Powerwoman and I do this on a regular basis. The comments I get are always the same. How do you keep them occupied? What do you do if they melt down? Wineries actually let kids in?

The truth is that wine-tasting is just like any other travel-related activity; you can bring the whole family, provided you plan ahead.

Of course the “planning ahead” part is where most people veer off-course. Some fail due to laziness. Others falter out of ignorance. Here, then in no particular order, are four of our top secrets to wine-tasting with kids.

Tip 1: Pick the right winery

Not all wineries are created equal. Some are snobby. Some take themselves way too seriously. These are not the ones to which you should bring kids. Instead, look for wineries that promote a more laid-back vibe, ones with outdoor seating, or ones that actually go out of their way to be family-friendly. Some wineries—such as Honig Vineyard & Winery in Rutherford—actually provide paper and crayons for kids who accompany their parents for tastings. Others, such as Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geyserville, have a host of activities for youngsters—everything from bocce to a big teepee with library books for perusal. If you’re not sure whether a winery would be good for kids, it never hurts to call and ask. Just remember: Don’t be intimidated by an attitude!

Tip 2: Pack distractions

Not even the best kids on Earth can be expected to sit still for an hour while their moms and dads get drunk. This is why distractions are critical to help them through it. The best distractions are the ones that elicit creativity—art projects, crayons and coloring books, card games (for older kids), or loom bracelets. Other distractions might include educational apps on a tablet or Mad Libs. (If you really must, technically you can stick your kid in front of a screen, but we are not fans of that approach around here.) The more distractions you bring, the longer you should have to linger with grownups. Just this past weekend, we visited Three Sticks Wines in Sonoma for a private tasting, and the glitter-sheets and sticker books we brought with us took up just the right amount of time.

Tip 3: Have a backup plan (and a DP)

If you’re bringing a finite number of distractions and it seems like one (or more) of the natives Is getting restless, it’s important to devise a Plan B. This can be as simple as using silly voices to describe certain highlights at the winery or as complicated as an exit strategy for dragging the family over to a vehicle across the street. At Three Sticks, where we plied the kids with arts and crafts, the backup plan was a sack full of Shopkins, and it worked like a little plastic charm (see what I did there?). Backup plans aren’t only good for the younger generation; they’re good for us grownups, too. It’s a good idea to always designate a “Designated Parent” who can stay relatively sober to deal with transitioning from the first distraction to Plan B. In our family we call this person the DP. (And, for better or for worse, I’m usually the DP.)

Tip 4: Reward accordingly

Once you’ve tasted your wine, once you’ve left the winery for the day, it’s important to reward your kids for good behavior. Not only does the reward celebrate their good choices, but it also makes it clear that they will receive benefits for good behavior down the road. The rewards can be different each time—sometimes we’ll take the girls to get ice cream; other times we’ll buy them each a (small and inexpensive) new toy (what are Shopkins anyway?). This past weekend, after our tasting at Three Sticks, we took the girls to a nearby playground and let them run around like maniacs for the better part of an hour. Then we treated them to a kick-ass lunch. They appreciated the indulgence. We grown-ups did too.

Over the years these are the secrets that have worked for us. Of course they’re not exclusive; I’m sure there are dozens of other good pointers on the subject of managing a wine-tasting with kids. If you have any other tips to share, please feel free to add them in the comment field.

UPDATE: A reader reminded me of an important caveat worth mentioning here: Don’t drink and drive! People who are not familiar with winery-hopping might not realize how much wine is poured and how quickly you can get tipsy. Also, remember that when drinking, you are setting a living example for your kids. This means it’s important that you sip and spit, have a Designated Driver, or hire a car and driver. These precautions always are important, but even more so with children. I’m just sorry I neglected to make this clearer from the beginning.

Everybody loves sledding

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L at top, R at bottom.

L at top, R at bottom.

The one winter sport everyone in our pod loves: Sledding.

We’ve been in Lake Tahoe for three days at this point, and we’ve managed to hit the sledding hills every day.

Our sledfest began yesterday in the backyard of the house we’re renting near Carnelian Bay. I built L and R a course and they spent the better part of two hours slipping and sliding all over it. Some of the runs they used the saucers we found in the shed. Most of the runs the girls just went down on their bellies.

Yesterday, we took the show on the road, heading over to North Tahoe Regional Park, where a friend (and local public relations maven) said the hills might be good. Inside the park we came across two separate hills—a considerably steep one that dropped almost straight down into a cul-de-sac and a less formidable one that bottomed out into a snowdrift.

Naturally (see this post), the girls opted for the easier hill. And after some hemming and hawing from L (she was frustrated her younger sister was so good), both of them got busy.

The next three hours were highlighted by cheers and giggles and wipeouts and declarations that each girl was “the best sledder in the world!” Powerwoman and I had a blast, too, taking turns holding the baby while the other could careen down the hill after our other kids.

In one sequence, R and I went down the longest of the runs on the easy hill and wiped out into a tree. I feared my middle child was hurt. Until she turned around and told me “crashing was awesome.”

By the time we had to leave for lunch, none of us wanted to leave. So when we got back to the house, the big girls and I hit the backyard course again, incorporating a beach ball into the fun. Years from now, when my kids look back on this trip, something tells me they’ll remember the sledding above everything else. I probably will, too.

What are your family’s favorite winter pastimes?

Testing limits on a family trip to Lake Tahoe

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Big Girls. Waiting for a tether to the top.

Big Girls. Waiting for a tether to the top.

The last eight hours of our Lake Tahoe sojourn comprised an exercise in testing the limits of the big girls’ comfort zones.

There were tears. There were laughs. And everybody learned a bit along the way.

The scenes played out at Northstar California, a great ski resort outside of Truckee in the northern part of the Lake Tahoe region. We were here last in January 2015 (I wrote about parts of that trip in this Expedia Viewfinder piece), but L and R really didn’t do more than drink hot cocoa. This time, I was determined to get them to do something different. I was determined to get them out on the slopes.

I knew neither of them would go for skiing—L is way too much of a control freak to surrender to gravity, and R is scared of anything she considers to be “fast.” So I told them snow tubes were like giant pool floaties, and convinced them to go snow-tubing.

Before we could go tubing, however, we had to get ourselves up the mountain. So we hit the gondolas.

I could tell when we approached that both girls had serious misgivings about the ride. R kept asking if the gondolas ever fell off the cables. L kept wondering whether we sat or stood. Thankfully, because the gondolas move (slowly) as you embark, the girls had no time to overthink it when we boarded; they just got in and sat down. As the gondola started climbing up the mountain, both kids relaxed considerably. They smiled. They laughed. L marveled at the silence. R hooted at some skiers below.

When we arrived at mid-mountain, I led the girls hand-in-hand across the ski slopes to the snow-tubing center. We checked in at a yurt. We walked out to the tubes. We clipped in to a cable that towed us about 600 feet up the hill. Through this point, the kids were having the time of their lives, giggling and joking about the giant floaties in the snow.

As we walked over to the top of the J-shaped snow-tube course, their moods changed considerably. L asked how we’d get down. R wondered if the floaties tipped.

Just as I was starting to wonder how I was going to talk them through the experience, the man who was helping people into their tubes suggested that the three of us go down together. I thought this was a great idea. The girls were too petrified to respond.

So he used our tethers to tie us together. Then he pushed us down the hill.

What followed was, quite literally, a blur. I remember our flotilla spinning and banking high up a wall at the bottom of the run. I remember noticing both girls had their eyes closed. That’s about it.

When we came to a stop, both girls were bawling. As I helped them out of their tubes, L hit me a few times on the arm, yelling about how she’d never forgive me. R just kept asking: “Why did you make us do that? Why, Daddy? Why? WHY?”

Looking back, I guess maybe the snow tubes were a bit adventuresome for my kids. Still, IMHO, the only way they’re going to appreciate new experiences is if they try ‘em. Once the tantrums subsided, both girls were excited to take the gondola back down the hill. That’s a victory in my book. And hopefully the start of some limit pushing we can extend next winter.