Travel. Ep 83

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode eighty three, airing first in early March twenty nineteen. We're going to be talking family travel, which is always a favorite topic for us, but we're particularly excited about our guests this time, Jodie Robbins, who is an expert on Canadian travel, which Canada turns out to be a great place to visit, whether you're Canadian yourself or our American listeners. Pretty easy to get to and yet feels foreign in a little way, maybe slightly more exciting, but anyway. She's got a lot of great family travel tips as well as places we can we can visit in Canada. Which Sarah and I have both been a big fan of doing with our families. Yeah, we love Canada. Cameron actually went to school today wearing a Roots Canada hat. It's good, you know, it's like going to Europe without the problem. Actually it's not really like going to Europe. But anyway, but you wanted to share a passport tip. Right, Oh my goodness, do I have a passport tip? I guess we Well, it's good to get a passport for your kids, you know, if you've got some time to do this, Like maybe this is something you could do on a day that your kids are off school, but it's not like a real school holiday that the post office would also be off. Like this is when we've always done it. So last year, like President's Day weekend for some we got a half day on Thursday. It's not a holiday or the friday for anyone but the school. So we made our appointments at the post office, brought the kids in, you know, get their photos ahead of time. But the good thing about having a valid passport for your kids is that then you can do it, like then you can consider Canada or Mexico or Europe and as opposed to sort of artificially limiting your options just because you don't have it, And I swear it's not that complicated. I say this to somebody who's got four kids passports. Sarah's done three. But I like public service announcement here, because every time I go to get them done, the family before us are after us gets turned away, and I feel so horrible for them. It's really funny because we had the exact standing and then I was being really obnoxious and I was like, of course the dead didn't read the directions like that so sexist, like a mom could have just as easily not read the directions. I'm like, yeah, but it was yeah, And there's different reasons, like obviously if you're you know, a two household family, if you're divorced or not married or whatever, there's there's slightly more complications like the parent who's not the custodial parent has to notarize the forms within a certain window because they're trying to prevent child kidnapping, which makes total sense, but it does make it more complicated. But both arts have to be there if you are to gather as custodial parents, so that's complicated. Obviously, you have to choose a particular day for that, but you know you can often get Saturday morning appointments. Then bring in the forums, make copies of everything, your passports, your driver's licenses, the kids birth certificates, like everything, just anything you might need, bring it in. But when we've done that, it's actually been great. I often find I have more stuff than I need, but you know, having it done than you're good and then you can go, so go do it. If you haven't done it, please please go do it? All right off the soapbox. So do you have any are you going to be using your passports in the next years with the kids? Do you have your year kind of planned out travel? We might wind up in Canada. We went to the UK with the big kids last year, and we also took them to Montreal, both great destinations that require passports. We may wind up in Canada at some point this year. I'm not sure if we will. We haven't totally planned that out yet. But you've got some cool travel on deck. Look at what you're yeah, we're I mean, we haven't decided all of it, which I kind of think is fun and like the idea that we don't actually know what we're doing for summer. Yet we typically I would say our typical travel times are now spring break, kind of end of summer, like August, like right before school starts, and then winter break because you realize as soon as your kids are in school, like you're no longer able to just take some random week in the middle of May or something. You're kind of limited. So we're doing a Disney cruise for spring break, which was my first cruise, and I'm actually really looking forward to this because we're doing it with friends, which is I think we'll make it even more fun. We are doing we don't know what we're doing in August, and I'm hoping maybe I'm gonna get inspired by this episode because it does seem like another a time that might be a nice time to go back to Canada. And then in the winter maybe some kind of ski slash Philadelphia combo again that might be our new thing. And then Josh and I have a couple of couple strips coming up, one to Nashville, one in the summer to Colorado. I'm both for concerts. Oh my gosh, Genevieve, I know I was gonna say, Genevieve is already wailing about your leaving her for the couple strips, just like I can sense it, so I'm wailing in the background. I think you're right. Well, hopefully that will resolve itself. I've never been on a cruise, so maybe sometimes, you know, we'll have to report back on the Disney cruise because I'm sure that's the kind of cruise my kids would want to do, right Like, we went to Olannie two years ago, the Hawaii Disney Resort, and they love that, so I assume it's sort of very similar. Is like that only cruise ship form, So we'll probably weren't doing that at some point in our life. Yeah, we tend to do. We're probably not doing a big spring break thing this year because we're doing Disney in February. We have two summer weeks already planned their sort of beach weeks. One Michael's sisters lake house with sort of extended family get together, and then we're doing a week in the Jersey Shore, you know, And we'll probably wind up doing something that last week of August two just because nobody's working, so it's a pretty easy week to take off. But this does start adding up, Like I calculated last week, I probably took six weeks of so at least quasi vacation. I mean it's never one hundred percent for me. I usually do you know, somewhere between three and ten hours of work on any given vacation week from my time logs. But still it's a lot of time, and I'm not sure how sustainable that that is. So well, well, so we definitely don't have six weeks now, even with my schedule work schedule wise, so that's yeah, not gonna happen. It was. But the problem, I mean, we set this sort of bar like that. Now the kids are all like, well, what are our three trips we're doing over the summer? Who three? Like, no, not three trips, but oh well we've sort of overdid that. But yeah, no, it's just one sideling before we get into our guest. This is the last week before Juliette School of Possibilities comes out. Speaking of the Jersey sure, yeah, house, we're staying in them. It's semi the house that her School of Possibilities modeled on, only if the house was like four times as big. But it's sort of how I pictured the location. I am not renting a whole conference center in case anyone's wondering. But and the town are going to a start of the town that I based that on for the book. And what town is that is? That keep May Ocean Grove, Ocean Grove, but it's it's a fictional town in the book. It's called Mars, which just means s in Latin. So it's very just inspired by ocean, inspired by Ocean Grove. If there were a big conference center there, which there is not. But anyway, you can't you can't go wrong with the Jersey Shore, I mean, yeah, yeah. But just if anyone was thinking of buying the book, which I of course heartily encourage, you could still get the pre order incentives this week have a free ebook you can download if you fill out the form on my website Laura vandercam dot com that you pre ordered. Just go to the Juliette School of Possibilities page there fill out the form. And this ebook is some of my favorite life hacks. It's called Laura's Little Book of Life Hacks, one hundred and thirteen ideas for winning at work and at home and so just a lot of my favorite tips in one place. And so you know, again as We've mentioned in the past if if you're not quite sure about a fable, this is a way to sort of get another Laura Vandercam productivity related book and then think of yourself as getting the fable for free. So all you have to do is pre order it. So anyway, that'll be out next week. Thanks for letting me do that little commercial. Of course, I'm excited for you. I think it's going to be a great what's the word for like, what's the word for like premiere premiere launch book brook release day, launch day? Yes, exactly, exactly. All right, Well, let's get to Jody and learn about all things travel in Canada. Well, we're happy to welcome Jody Robbins to the program today. Jody will be talking with us about family travel and Canada, her area of expertise. So Jody, could you introduce yourself to our listeners. Sure. Yes, I'm a Calgary based freelance writer and blogger and I like writing a lot about family travel and wellness and outdoor adventure. My first book, twenty five Places in Canada Every Family Should Visit, is available on Amazon and it's a Canadian bestseller and I make a lot of mistakes when I travel. I'm certainly not perfect, so I share all of that in the book and on my blog, so hopefully everyone else can have better experiences. And when I'm not traveling, I have take care of my daughter and my dog, and I have a husband. We do a lot of snowboarding in the Canadian rockies. And I also like trying out wacky spa treatments whenever I get the chance. Maybe that's an upside of travel writing, right, you have a reason to go visit all hotel spas. I would like some more detail on the wackiness, but also how old is your daughter? My daughter is fourteen and I'm doing currently an article on wacky facial so I've had a lot of snail slime mucus on my face and a couple Wow that work. I don't know. What does that do for you? Is like the botox equivalent or something? I don't know. Yeah, it's really good. Actually it's got a like a hydralonic acid and colic acid in there, so if you're in a harsh winter climate, it's highly recommended. Oh interesting, cool, Well, your skin looks excellent. We have video for our listeners. We recently started using a new software program that allows us to see each other. We're not recording the video for putting out into the world, but it's kind of helpful for our managing our conversations because we can see who's talking and try to interrupt each other a little bit less. But yes, we can tell you that Jodie skin looks looks fantastic. So we'll put in the you know plug for snails. I was hoping it'd be more like chocolate or something you know or I know, especially at this time of years. So why don't we just dive right into some of the travel tips. So Sarah and I have both been looking through twenty five places every family should visit in Canada, which then also has a helpful section in the back of just family travel tips in general. And you have a couple of surprising things that you think people should bring, like on a road trip, you should bring a cookie sheet. Like tell us about that one. Yeah, well, cookie sheets are very multi purpose. But essentially what they are is it's like a little table for your kids, and because of the ridges along it, things don't fall out, So you can use a cookie sheet for magnetic play. You could use a cookie sheet you could cut up some felt and they can make pictures or just if they want to color. But it keeps everything contained. And if you're eating in the car, you can use it as a little food tray. Ooh nice, that's definitely good. The makeshift potty is another one, so for those with a younger, newly trained, newly potty trained kids. I guess how does one make a makeshift pody. Well, you get one of those giant plastic tubs of ice cream, the kind when we were kids, we could only buy ice cream that way, and you line that kind of a plastic bucket with thick plastic bags, and so you know, you can use it as a vessel to store things in your vehicle. But you know, when you are in need, you can pull over at the side of the road and that as a little makeshift potty. Yeah, or if somebody is carsick, right, I mean, I guess it's right, yeah. Yeah. And your surprise bag, what is a surprise bag involved? Well, people can use this for any type of travel, whether you're doing a road trip, run an airplane. But you make a bag for each child with items to surprise and hopefully delight them. And it doesn't have to be expensive, but it just it's more than novelty factor to keep the kids into attained so things like etch a sketch or pipe cleaners or dollar store treats or maybe even a piece of licorice, something that takes them a long time to chew. Now, some parents I know make these bags and keep them up front with the caregiver and only dole out one treat every thirty minutes, but others just deliver the bags to the kids as soon as they get in the vehicle or on the plane. I do feel like that's a nice festive way to start your trip, and the kids are probably be very excited about it. Although my true confession is my kids are typically most excited about the idea that they would get to use the iPad for like four hours on some flight, right right, right. I don't matter when you do it, it's just the whole you know, they do get excited about it, and sometimes they're like dying to get on the plane. You know, they don't want to wait for boarding because they know they're going to get that bag as soon as they sit down. Yeah, yeah, I think you had an interesting thought on the you know, doling out the screens that you might want to wait a little bit just to keep the novelty and sort of reserve it for the urgency time. SU sure, And it's tough to do if you've already established electronics, because kids no routine and they don't usually like disruptions. But if you have younger children and you've not yet gone down that route of handing over the iPad, my advice is to save electronics and any kind of device until the end of the journey, when nobody's fresh anymore. That way, they just get used to occupying themselves, occupying their mind. I remember when my daughter was little, we didn't have the option. I don't think iPads were out yet, and she would look out the window and she would tell me how much she loved watching TV in the car when it rained, and I had no idea what she was talking about, but she was making up little TV shows from the little water droplets and she thought that was TV so and that was you know. Obviously, she was quite young when she did that, but I was happy to have gotten that advice because we have I've got a family member who's a couple hours outside of town. We would visit often, and she would know she needed to occupy herself. And then the last sort of half hour in the journey when it was you know, really frustrating, and you know kids have a hard time being patient. When you dole out the electronics, then they're very useful and I think more effective. Yeah, now with your your daughter being on the older side, now, I mean one of your tips is involving older children in planning the trip and planning stops on a road trip or planning events if you're flying somewhere on the other end of it. So what does your daughter come up with that you've been surprised by? Well, I think it doesn't really matter how old your child is. It's really hard to avoid the are we there yet? Lines? But with older children you can really involve them in the planning process. So my advice is to have them plan the stops so you can use an old fashioned paper map. Those are often quite fun for kids to look at, or obviously go into Google Maps and have them plan out the stops. Say we're going from A to B. It's going to take approximately this much time. You figure it out. You look for green spaces, you look for interesting attractions or fun restaurants, maybe a cool donut shop. And when you give them that responsibility, they're more interested in the trip. It gets them doing a bit of research and they can print it out, they can make an itinerary, and then everybody knows, Yeah, we're going to be driving for the next hour and a half, that's when we're going to stop. Because I think when kids feel that loss of control, you know, parents control everything, where we eat, where you stop to go to the bathroom. It just makes it more enjoyable for them, and it's also one less thing you need to do. I love that. I always have these fantasies about, like I've talked about this in the podcast before, like a certain age that our kids are going to reach where I let them actually choose a trip like a destination and then like plant it around that. But that's like another You could do what you're saying at even a younger age, because I'm not necessarily going to trust my eight year old to plan out a whole week, but they could certainly pick which rest stops are as you said attraction. That's cool. Yeah, Now traveling with other families, Sarah's going on a trip upcoming cruise with another family. What are some things to keep in mind when you're traveling with other people. Well, I think, first off, you have to pick your vacation partners wisely, because families have different values, and everyone has different eating and sleeping and all those kinds of issues and things that have set their family up for success that are quite different, and you think it'll all be fine. But it's just a really good idea to discuss money, sleeping, eating arrangements prior to your trip. It sounds really nerdy, but if you can do that in advance, you'll save yourself a lot of heartache on the trip. It's also a good idea to plan for independence and to schedule alone time for your family every day. So I had a girlfriend who did this, and she was smart, and she told the other people she was sharing the house with that they were going to do that that every morning or every afternoon. Her family was going to take two hours to themselves. And it's good for a couple of reasons. One, kids often can use a timeout when they're with other families. It's easy to get over stimulated. Maybe they do actually need a disciplinary timeout, and that's time when you can do that. But it's also just good to reconnect, and sometimes when you're doing a group trip, you you go with the flow, and maybe you're doing activities that you may not want to do. So when you purposefully have this time set aside each day, you can get those things done that you want to do and just sort of take care of your family's needs. Yeah, and that probably goes for trips with relatives as well, although that's a slightly special put of traveling with other people. What what best practices do you have for those sorts of extended family trips? Yeah, those ones are are more challenging, I would say, because I don't know about you guys, but definitely in my family, I definitely revert back to my childish behavior, even though we're all shoulder atults now. Plus you don't get to choose your family members based on vacation compatibility, and the friends are probably carefully a curated bunch. Well, I think there's two kinds of trip with families. Definitely, those multi generational trips are just soaring in popularity, and they are fantastic because it's a great chance for everyone to reconnect. But also there's that built in babysitting. If you've got nieces and nephews or perhaps a generous grandparent who doesn't mind it. But so often family trips are what I call duty trips, and you have to go back to either your home or your partner's home and for a wedding, a funeral, what have you. And they're not really a vacation, even though we are using our vacation time and we're using our you know, cost money to fly across the country if you have to do that, So just really think if you need to do the trip. If it's a vacation, great, But if it's not a vacation and it is a duty trip, call it what it is and really consider do you need to bring everyone along? Do you need to schlup all your kids across the country if that's the case, and if you do, just again, as Laura mentioned, set some of those those ground rules and that schedule time for your family because obviously, especially if you're staying in somebody else's house, they're going to have different rules and maybe don't touch this unfamiliar food. You need some time and physical space for your family to chill out. Yeah, I agree with that, and and not to be shy about doing the time that you need as well. I mean, I know I've I may seem funny in my extended family trips of wanting to run every day, but I want to run every day. And I'm a much better person to be around if I have run. So you know, saying well, how can we make this happen? And you know, not making too big a deal out of it, but you know that's and it's hard to just coordinate everyone too. I mean, I it's a lot of people, and you know, every decision you probably have whatever emotional baggage has come in from like thirty years, forty years of togatheredess. You know, it's not just like do we go to the park or do we go to the museum. It's like and we fought as children, so right, I won't set up spreadsheets like Excel spreadsheets and they send them out to their whole family, And it's some of it is just for meal planning, like my family will take a day during dinner. Your family will take a day doing dinner. But it's also to slot in those activities, so Laura could slot in her run time there. If you do a bit of advanced research, maybe you're setting down, Oh my family is going to go to this green space or park. Everyone's welcome to join us. So the spreadsheet it seems very type A and perhaps it is, but if you throw it on the fridge, it gives everybody a good indication of who's doing what when. Yeah, and we loved your tip about you know, especially if you're have have had more of this duty trip, like doing something fun for you or fun for you and your partner shortly after returning. What's up with that idea? Yeah? Yeah, well yeah, duty trip or even a family vacation. I mean, a family vacation is not a couple of vacation. There are two very different things. But I think especially the first time or the first couple times you go on a family trip, you think it's going to be like it was when you were traveling pre child, and it's often not. So Yeah, my advice is to schedule some kind of a date night within a week of year return, so it could be going out for dinner, so you can, you know, do a data dump about the trip and talk about what worked, what didn't. Having a massage is a great one, especially now that there's so many mobile massage companies that can come to your home. You know, if you've been flying, you're probably full of notts and stress. But it's just also a way to end the vacation. It extends it just that little bit longer. I hear you on this one. Number one, I love having a buffer day, so not going back to work the day immediately after the trip. But I found that that date night, if possible, is really really important because there's no time that we need to reconnect more than after we've just spent sevent days, like twenty four to seven childcare. So yeah, so true. So why don't we pivot here to talking about Canada, which is Jody's particular area of expertise. We have a lot of international listeners as well, but I think the bulk of our listeners are in the US like we are. So why you Canada? Why? Why is Canada a great destination for us to visit? Well, I think it's it's familiar and so it's very I think easy to get to. That's the first one. So most US cities have direct flights to Canada that I think people don't realize. But it's easy travel. So with the exception of Quebec, there's the same language. But even in Quebec where they speak French. You'll find many are bilingual. But there's the familiar food, there's the high health and safety standards. So I think there's that love of comfort which Americans like. I think certainly more Americans visit Hawaii than they do Mexico for those reasons. But most importantly, it's it's on super sale for you guys. With the exchange rate between the dollars, it's thirty percent off, so you can stay at a top end hotel or you know, you can go from a pharamonut to a four seasons to even a Super eight. And it's in Canadian dollars, which currently is thirty percent less than the green back. Well, you never know. By the time this podcast airs, that'd be pretty quick quick. But no, but I see what you're saying right now. It's a goodbye right now. That's really yeah. And I think people don't realize how much of how much it is on sale. Certainly, I know, Sarah, you were in Whistler area, and they do get to go. The American visitors. The prices are adjusted a bit accordingly, but in the majority of Canada you will find a significant discount. Yeah, which is always a good thing when it comes to uh, well, it is funny you said the international miss cities have flights to Canada. I awys laugh, and I say, some small airport that calls itself the whatever international airport, and it's usually because they have a daily flight to Toronto, one flight. It's like, well that we could call ourselves international and uh, you know, okay. And the funny thing is they don't even actually have to have the infrastructure for having the international stuff then, because the Canadians deal with the customs on their side when you get there. And then the US has stationed customs officers in most Canadian airports so that you can clear customs on the Canadian side. So by the time you land, you're landing is if you were landing from a domestic flight. So you can be an international airport here without all that. So it's uh, you know, if if your local airport calls itself international, you might look into it because there probably is one Canadian flight so you can get on that one. So give us some of your favorite destinations. You would broken this down to into some categories, like for people who are looking for differings and so why don't you run through those. For US, well, that's just it. I mean there's no one size fits all and Canada is so much like the US, is just very regional with from big cities to the varying landscapes. So if you're looking for a city break, my top wrecks are Vancouver, just a very beautiful, clean city where you can surf or ski, but also Ottawa, which is the capital city of Canada and most people Ottawa's not on most people's radar. It's between Toronto and Montreal, and fantastic museums and lots of outdoor adventure to be had there too, so those are Yeah, Vancouver is awesome. Will I will testify to that beautiful, beautiful city. A lot of outdoorsy stuff there, you know, craft beer, coffee, you can bike or run on the water. Absolutely beautiful. How about for our skiing listeners, where's your best ski destinations? Well, I have to recommend my province of Alberta and Bamf National Park. So there are ski resorts just outside the town of Banff and in Lake Louise. And what's great about the ski resorts in baff is that it's in the rocky mountains, so very similar to Colorado much more affordable than skiing in Colorado. We have champagne powder because our climate is quite dry, so the snow is very nice. If you've skid in Whistler or Mammoth, that's like a more wet, heavy coastal snow, and then when you go to this kind of champagne powder, it's just there's no comparison. So it's fantastic. And actually in March is a great time to come skiing during spring break because our temperatures oh wow, yeah, a lot of people don't know that, and our temperatures typically don't get into the deep freeze. They're very moderate in March, but we get heaps and heaps of snow in March for the past five years. So definitely I would consider skiing in Alberta Lake Louis Ski Resort or Sunshine Village. Those are the two most popular ones. The airport for that is in my hometown of Calgary, and so baff National Park is only an hour's drive away. But also in the other direction. A lot of people don't know we have this huge job dinosaur fossils in Alberta. So many of the dinosaurs that you do see at the top American museums have come from my province of Alberta. And you know what, kid around five years old isn't a major dinosaur fan. And we have this provincial park called Dinosaur Provincial Park and it has the most number of species, the most number of fossils out of anywhere in the world currently. That is awesome. And how about if you're looking for sort of a more culture, different kind of experience on that point, I mean, obviously what they said, a lot of Canada is a lot like the US, but there are parts that aren't right. So Quebec is a great example, so French speaking province, it's so much like Europe. Cobblestone streets, great great culinary scene, people speaking French, historic buildings, but unlike Europe, it's much easier and closer to get to and a lot more affordable. So lots of different places in Quebec. You can have chic city breaks in Montreal, very beautiful historic vacation in Quebec city. But outside all these major cities there's so much. When it comes to outdoor adventure, they do also have skiing. Their wonderful warm lakes in the winter time, they have these toboggan runs, so it's like a sled and it's essentially down a ski slope, so imagine like a seven kilometer long sled ride. And they have outdoor Wow, you no, super fun. I just did it last winter and really epic, really great for kids. And unlike other winter activities that you would see at other resorts, they have tubing. So snow tubing you're on these inner tubes and it's at a former water park, so those water park slides you're actually going down on snow tubes. That sounds awesome. Yeah, we went to Tremblant outside Montreal a couple of times and that was great. You know. I love the tradition of putting maple syrup in the snow and making your own candy. That was pretty cool. And then I was a big fan of the outdoor hot tub in the snow. That's just a you know, a special treat to have a very cold nose and a very warm body, like sitting there with my ski cap and an adult beverage in a in a hot tub outside as the snow is falling down. So you guys don't do that, not not so much. I you know, I don't know it's a big thing here. But that they do in the Midwest, they have to. I bet you maybe Minnesota they're all about the outdoor hot tub. That could be true, that could be true. And so then for obviously the Vikings fans, not Vikings as in the Minnesota Vikings, but as in the ones who came over from Iceland. Where can we go to the historical places for that? Yeah, a lot of people don't know that. Like half a millennium before Columbus arrived, the Vikings made landfall in Northern Canada in Newfoundland, sorry, Atlantic Canada, not Northern Canada, but it was in Northern Newfoundland that they made landfall several times, about a dozen times they came over, and yeah, their remains are there, their their buildings, their artifacts, so really really fascinating to see many of them have been replicated, these buildings and they have character period actors there robing around. I didn't expect it to be as interesting for my daughter as it was, and she loved it and she was fascinated. And Newfoundland, that sounds really cool. It's very cool. And Newfoundland's a bit separated physically from Canada, and it was the last province to join in nineteen forty nine and it's just a very different culture many people still is it hard to get to No, No, there's direct flights there, several directs. Yeah, very easy to get to, and in fact, direct flights from Newfoundland to New York to London. And incidentally, you know after nine to eleven, the majority of flights went to Gander, Newfoundland and that story is told in the Broadway show Come from Away, So if you're familiar with Come from Away, that tells a story about Newfoundland hospitality and they're really just a wonderful type of people. Definitely a little bit of different Canadian culture that you would you can't experience anywhere else. Well wonderful. So those are some great ideas for our listeners and people are looking for a last minute trip from March, maybe get up there to bamf and get some get some skiing on the champagne powder. I had not know that that phrase before, but I love it, so Jodi. We always end each our guest segments with our love of the week. So something that's really cool for us. Right now, Sarah and I can start, so you can think about it while we're going. First to Sarah, what do you have for us this week? Mine is not on theme at all, sorry, but I just consider round up of work pants on my blog for anyone interested, and I will do a shout out to what I consider the popular winners. And I wore them yesterday and I really like them. They're the Everleen work pant or the work pant. They come in different lengths, they are only fifty dollars. They are side zip, they're quite they're fitted but not tight and that perfect kind of straddling the line there. And Everleen does have fairly sustainable and transparent work practices compared to some other companies. So I am soul. Yeah, my love of the week is actually the post office, which Jody, before we had you on, we had an opening segment about the fun of getting kid passports. You know, we've always gone to the post office to get our passports or get them renewed, and I got to say, I don't understand why people, you know, complain about the post office. Everyone I've gone to has been amazing, and in particularly the ones who've dealt with my kids as we've been getting our passports renewed and things like that. Although as we also joked about in the beginning. We always have the families next to us wind up getting turned away because they're missing something. So maybe it's not the same experience for everyone. But I've been doing a lot of stuff with the post office with mailing things related to my book launch and it's they're great. I love my local post office. So all right, Jodi, how about you? Yeah, this is killing me because I listened to a podcast every week and how did I not know this question was going to come up? So, because we're in the middle of a bit of a cold snap here in Canada, I have to say. It's my Surreal winter boots and they're in their third year and they've really held up well. And I was at a backcountry lodge over the weekend where it got down to minus twenty fahrenheit and quite cold, and my boots, yeah after about an hour. Sure, my tools were cold, but to be able to be out in the cold for that long, they were just fantastic. Yeah. I don't think i'd want to be outside for an hour and minus twenty four minutes. The boots did that for you. That's that's a pretty good selling point right there. All right, Well, this has been Jody Robbins talking about Canada and all things family travel. So Jody, thanks much for joining us. Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Well I learned a lot from that. And so here we're going to our question part of the program. This is from our survey. Sarah sent around a great survey and the fall we got tons of responses, very useful. We to found out what you guys like, what you don't like, which we're working on, I promise, And we got a lot of great questions as well. So this one from a listener says, I work from home and part time, so I'd love to hear how you use down time with kids when you're watching them but could also be doing other things. I have a mobile one year old at home who plays well by himself, and I feel like I just waste time on my phone while watching him. Focused worker reading is too hard while keeping an eye on him. And while I know this is just a phase, it is several hours of the day, I feel I could be using better. All right, So what do you think? Well, first of all, I think that is just amazing that he plays well by himself, because I think your one year old doesn't you know, actually she's probably one of the more into dependent ones of the three, but it's varied and it depends on the day. And the fact that she's already got that with her first kid is impressive because actually I think that I think that the more kids you have, the more likely you are to kind of let them learn to play by themselves or they're forced to, Whereas when it's your first kid, that's a little different. Maybe it's not her first kid anyway, so I digress. But my ideas are podcasts always a fun way to, you know, learn something. You could be listening to us just a suggestion. You could do some organizing projects, so like maybe now is that perfect time to like go through the spice drawer and get rid of old things or whatever, because you don't really need your full attention for that. You can still have an eye on your child. I love to do face time with my family when the kids are kind of playing, because then I'm talking and they can be watching the kid, but then I'm also connecting with others. You could read something really light on a kindle. You could do a cooking project, and you know, maybe especially if you can kind of see where they are from your kitchen, and I guess I would also say that it's okay to sometimes just watch them stories if you're enjoying that and let yourself enjoy it. Yeah, you could do the analog version of that too, like paging through magazines that you know, sometimes you can get through an article in something, or you know it might not be for brows through the pictures in real simple, browse through the pictures in real simple. It's just something fun like that. And you know, magazines are actually really good cheap entertainment. I mean, most of the subscriptions you can get for about a dollar an issue if you get sort of the rolling or specials or whatever, if you if you look for deals, or you might even be able to use like frequent flyer miles for it if you don't have enough for a trip, but you can cash them in for magazines or something. But it's just such, it's cheap entertainment, and yes it's fluffy, but it might be mildly more interesting and uplifting, like you're looking at good photography, hopefully reading professional writing, versus like on Twitter where you're looking at people calling each other names, so you know, it might feel slightly more edifying. With this time. I was gonna say, you could get some exercise in, you know, like if you're inside, like push up set ups, do a few of those plank poses. Just you know, you could go outside to you some of this time. And like just stroller walks I always thought were like the best thing ever with mobile one year olds because they're strapped in so you can sort of zone out during this time while you're you're doing something you know, good for yourself and feeling energized with the fresh air. And so you could do a stroller walk in the mall or something if you're in a place where it's snowing and sleeping and all that, or you know, come up with a hobby like crossword puzzles. I mean that's something you could do in like little bits of time or adult coloring. Adult coloring, yeah, you know, do some art with that. And you know, again, yes, it's gonna be brainless, and it needs to be something that you can look up from every like minute to check if if the kids, you know, decided to suddenly go grab a fork and sticket in the like pocket. But like you know, it's uh, I totally get this, And I struggled with this as why I don't think I ever came up with a good thing to do, but you know, I still don't. I will sit watching Alex play downstairs, and I wound up getting him all these blocks because I actually like building blocks. Same thing with puzzles. I like kind of like puzzles. So it's then mildly entertaining for me. And then he'll either do it or won't do it with me, and he knocks over my block towers, which I'm sometimes sad about. But you know, if you enjoy coloring, like you know, coloring with the kid is is great. But yeah, the magazines are often good too. Awesome. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking with Jodie Robbins about travel, family travel, and Canada visiting Canada. So we'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together,