Travel: Tips for Family Ski Trips, Going International, and More

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a 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 two hundred and eighty five, airing in mid January of twenty twenty three. Sarah and I are going to be talking about family travel, and particularly travel with bigger kids, which we are both entering into that world as our kids get older, as they will continue to do in the course of this podcast. We both also had some fairly big trips over the Christmas New Year's holiday, so we wanted to share some of our experience, says some of our tips, answer some listener questions about that. So, Sarah, how far ahead do you tend to plan your family travel? Yeah, so, I'm usually about six to twelve months out for any given trip. I do have a five year travel plan that I created that we've talked about on prior episodes, but that plan is certainly not set in stone. In fact, I'm already making some changes for next year. It's more set of ideas that go with various kids, ages and stages, so I don't lose track of those kind of one hundred dreams, like things that I might want to do in the future, but that's not like actual travel plans. Instead, I would say for a bigger trip, I'm about a year out perhaps, and for a more low key trip, I tend to be about six months out. I have found that with three kids, and you've done great even with a more short notice. But with three kids I find it a little more challenging to find housing at times, and so it has been beneficial to look for housing in particular that fits what we want budget wise and families set up wise, if I look farther in advance. So that's kind of what dictates it. It's not as much the airline tickets, and in fact I have found that sometimes my desire to really get my airfare figured out in advances backfired, like we definitely overpaid for our Montana tickets, which were not cheap because all the search engines said buy now, buy now, and then I looked closer to the trip and like, we shouldn't have bought now, But that's anyway. So yeah, I would say six to twelve months. And for example, right now, I have our spring break already booked for April. I have our summer trip pretty much it's booked, but like not entirely, like a lot of hotels and airfare have not been bought. And then probably the next couple months, I'm going to start putting together Winter twenty twenty three because spoiler alert, I kind of want to do a very similar trip to what we just did, and I want to make sure I can make that happen. So yeah, six to twelve months. And some of this is probably driven by making sure you guys have the days off work too, write like how far ahead do you have to ask for those? Yeah, So I've it's gotten to be the point where, just the way that my practice is structured, it's honestly best if I'm six months ahead on that. So I'm already trying to block off summer fall twenty twenty three. Right now, I have colleagues that have been disappointed that they can't go to various things, and I'm like, you absolutely need to have that runway because we're so booked as a practice right now that any time you want to cancel a day, you need to have places to put that day of canceled patients. And if every other day around it is full, even if that's three months away, it doesn't accommodate patients' needs. And I understand that. So that's why you have to proactively not have them booked on those days in the first place. And the best way to do that is again to stay about six months ahead. That's not every physician. That's kind of unique to what I do and how our practice is structured. My husband, for example, can be more like two to three months out and be okay. And in fact, he doesn't even get his call schedule until, like we just got the January through March one, so we can't always go so far in advance, but he can usually get what he needs to. And the school schedule obviously is the other big dictator of when we go away because it's usually spring break, summer trip, and winter break and winter break's actually pretty new for us because I feel like one of us has always been working and we haven't been able to make it work. But I am determined because those years are so finite and I want to make use of those lovely weeks that the kids have off. Absolutely. Yeah, we're pretty tied to this school calendar too, which I try to look ahead on, and we sort of have in our minds that we do something over Christmas, something over spring break, something in the summer, and that tends to correspond with when the kids are off. You know, sometimes we don't think about it until closer to or we have different ideas of what people want to do, so it's harder to make a decision our summer the travel. At least we know what we want to do that's pretty set for this summer. That's not always been the case of how far ahead we book. But given that I'm going to need to start constructing the kids camp schedule, it kind of needed to be done in the work organizing extended family stuff as well, so that had to get everyone signed off on, so that had to be done ahead of time. But we've done some more last minute stuff, like we took a trip last June that we planned I think at the beginning of May, and it was a pretty large trip. Some of that is more my husband's schedule of when he would like to plan travel, which is last minute or while you're there a time, a little bit less into planning while you are actually there, but sometimes it works. Sometimes we get great last minute deals, So I guess either way. We have a couple of times off that's been harder for us to use. So we get the major Jewish holidays off, so we always get two days off for Rashishana, and there's been some years where that is a Thursday and Friday or a Monday and Tuesday, and so then you have a four day weekend in early fall, which has been hard for us to for whatever reason. I think it's because it's so soon after summer. And the same thing with President's Day, which we always have a half day on Thursday, the Friday off, and the Monday off, so you could pull the kids out for a half day on Thursday and have a five day trip somewhere, which we've managed to do a couple of years, like in twenty nineteen we did Disney over that like we left on Wednesday night, did Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then flew back Monday or whatever it was. But you know, many years it's just harder to get our heads around it because we're just finished with Christmas. So if we did something big with Christmas, like oh, nobody wants to plan it, nobody wants to pay for it. So we got to get better about those smaller, smaller ones. Yeah, oh, I'm jealous. I don't feel like we have a lot of We have a lot of one off days like teacher workdays or President's Day, just the one day, but we don't have a lot of decent stretches. We usually have one in March, which has become Josh and Cameron's mail bonding trip. They went snowboarding last year and I think they're going to do that again. So yeah, yeah, yeah. I wish there was sort of a mid late October longer weekend or something, because that's always good for go visiting the leaves, But that doesn't match up with Rashashana almost as always earlier, I think with the way the calendar works, so it's never time for that. We'd have to go to like Northern Alaska or something. To see the peak leaves at that point. But yeah, no. In this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about some recent trips and one thing, you know, people are always going to play like, well, travel is expensive, which is true, but this is actually an area where both our families have decided to spend more and maybe spend less on some other things. I mean, Sarah, you guys you calculated it what with travel versus housing? I did, so I went into you guys know, I use you need a budget to track all of our expenditures, which means I can do cool deep dives and reports into what percentage of our take home pay has spent on different things. It looks at take home pay rather than gross income because I put like paychecks basically into wine app and not like gross incum and put what taxes and whatever. But I can tell you that in twenty twenty two, thirteen percent of our take home pay was spent on travel, which is a lot. I recognize that I don't actually have the value for housing in twenty twenty two, and I will say housing was slightly inflated in twenty twenty two because that was the year we bought our house and we did the floors and like, so to be fair that that statistic may not be true for last year, but in general, yeah, I mean, I know because I allocate in the budget, I allocate more than that vacation slash travel category than I alligate toward our mortgage, and that is by choice. We also, like, I know a lot of people tend to spend a lot on like improving their homes or keeping up with cars, and like, those are also things that we just try to keep like zero basically as much as we can. And that's neither as right or wrong. It's just kind of like how we choose to prioritize. But I love taking trips with family, I love thinking about them, I love them while they're happening, I love remembering them, I love looking forward to them, and so yeah, that's kind of been a choice for us, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Yeah, this is a total all the money in the world kind of philosophy. If anyone read that book, which I realized not many people who listen to this podcast probably did, it's my book that sold the least. But anyway, I wrote a book on money many years ago, and one of the things I point out is that we have certain set percentages that people seem to think our right to spend on certain things, and so a lot of people have in their minds that housing is like twenty five to thirty five percent of their income, right, and that's perfectly fine, Like that's an option. But if you work out a situation where you can live somewhere that's you know, safe and good schools and all that, but spend less than that on housing, that opens up a fairly large percent for other things. I mean, the difference between spending twenty percent on housing and thirty percent is ten That could then go to things like savings and travel and little adventures and experiences and all those other things that on the most part actually tend to affect day to day happiness a little bit more. So I love that you're doing it. I think we definitely spend more on housing, especially this year because we've been renovating everything. It's ongoing, But hopefully that'll level out and maybe travel will will rise to the level of housing, because yeah, housing's not gonna fall. But anyway, we can go ahead and start on some of this. So, Sarah, let's talk about your ski notes. We're gonna do the frequently asked questions of Sarah's ski travel. You grew up skiing, right, Yes, so I went as a middle and high schooler. It wasn't my family that went skiing. My parents I don't think have ever been skiing. My sister I don't think has ever been skiing. But we had a ski club at Haverford Middle School that I joined as a sixth or seventh grader and went on frequent ski trips. And I swear they were like like thirty seven dollars will get you the entire trip, your rental, your lift ticket, your bus to camel Back Mountain or whatever, and we'd spend all day. We had to take lessons, and I mean I went fairly frequently, like you know, multiple times a winter. And then I had one my friend who I'm still in touch with today. I would sometimes go with their family because their whole family took up skiing, and it was super fun when I got to go along. And this probably happened you know, middle school, kind of early high school, and then college I went to a place I could have gone skiing, but I think I went once or twice and that was it. And then Josh and I I think went like once and then I had kids and I hadn't gone for many, many years, so I had a ski background. I did used to ski all of the various slopes. I don't think I was ever comfortable like on black Diamonds, but I would sort of do them and survive back as a teen. But I was like, I have no idea if my body is going to have any recollection of skiing whatsoever. So I was pretty nervous going into this trip. I had a lot of trepidations about a family ski trip in I kept googling various articles from families like tips for ski trips, and like, you know what if I haven't been skiing for a long time. So I hope this is helpful to some who maybe skied as a kid, or haven't skied at all perhaps and are interested in trying that as a family. Yeah, it's funny to hear you talk about Camelback, and I know Blue Mountain is another one that you at big older Jack frostwe Mountain, Shawnee. I don't know if Shawannie is saying Bear Mountain. Did you ever go to Bear Mountain? That's like the smaller one too. Yeah, Blue Mountain is the closest to us, so that's where Michael will take the kids some weekend days, like if they go. They did the Blue Mountain ski team like one year, but that was kind of short lived. But yeah, that's cool. It's so funny that we have these same places, like of all the places and it turns out to be eastern Pennsylvania. But why did you guys wait to go till now? I mean, you know so you you haven't gone in a long time? Why did you Yeah, we hadn't gone in a long time. I think it's a fewfold. Part of its financial going skiing as a family. At least the way we chose to do it was very much not cheap, and I don't know that we couldn't have afforded it before. But I don't know. I hadn't made it as much of a prayer, or maybe I just felt like when the kids were younger, and it wouldn't have been that much fun for me. This is probably really what it is. If it wasn't going to be fun, if it was going to be more stressful and then fun while it was happening, and I was super worried about like daycare and kids getting sick and my kids not wanting to ski and having babies and dealing with that. Then I don't want to, you know, allocate so much of my funds and my time and my worry into doing it. So I think we might have gone like a year earlier, But really it was about waiting until it seemed like there was at least a decent chance that the kids would be able to, you know, take ski school and learn on their own and not be total pains during air travel and all of that, so that it could be an overall pretty pleasant experience. So I think if we had fewer kids, we would have taken the bigger kids sooner, when you know, just them when they were older. But we hadn't wanted to split up on this one. So yeah, five enough ended up being a fantastic setup for it not to be terribly stressed. Yeah, spoiler alert here. Michael took our two younger kids skiing over Christmas break, and I mean I think he had a good time much of it. I mean, he put Alex in ski school, Henry did daycare for a couple of days, then did half day ski lessons on when he was officially three, and so Michael was able to do some solo skiing on like the Black Diamonds that he likes to do or whatever. But I don't think it was easy. I mean, especially traveling solo with two small kids and all their gear and being in the ski place with the two small kids not easy. I mean partly that was just being alone adult with two kids. I mean, if I'd been there, it would have been probably easier, I assume, but also the ages as well. But you know, there are amenities in many of these places, and one of the recent families often do ski vacations is there tends to be a resort daycare, and there tends to be ski school for kids as young as three, so you can get some adult skiing and have programming for them and you know, have a family experience. We really have to look at. Yes, we need to take a break, and then I will have a note about ski school. We'll make it right back. So we are back talking family travel. Right now, we're talking about skiing since you know Sarah took her family skiing in Montana over vacation. So what were you going to say about ski school? I was just going to say that while we were at our trip, as one does. I started researching future trips, and a lot of places have done away with full on ski school and they'll just offer like two hour lessons. And I feel like, if you have younger kids and you ski, and you want to have some extended time to actually ski, it's important to look for a place that does offer full on, like look at the hours, look at what they actually offer, because it's not like necessarily a three year old going to be skiing the entire day. But you want a place that has a program that's from like perhaps nine to three or nine to four, with a lunch break and hot chocolate breaks and activities for if they get too cold, so that you can get some of your own time skiing and if that's what you want out of your trip. Because yeah, I was surprised to find that some of the bigger name, especially East Coast places, are like, oh, we have these two hour things, but they didn't necessarily have a school. Yeah. So that kind of leads me to the question that I planted here, How did you choose the location? Sarah? I could do the planted questions, that's fine, all right, I'm asking the planted questions how did you choose a location? Okay, so we picked Big Sky because we were going in December, although it was very late December, like Christmas week essentially, and I was like worried because you know, depending on the year, snow can be not that great in December you can have patches of brown still. It really kind of depends on where you go. It turned out twenty twenty two it was a fantastic snow year. But I didn't know that in advance obviously, So I had googled like best skiing in December early season skiing, and Montana came up, and my husband's cousin actually lived there, so we had a whole discussion with her about the Bozeman area and Big Sky, and so that's kind of I don't know. It also just sounded so exotic to me. It's a state I had never been to, something totally different culturally, so I was just excited about that. So that's why we picked it, and the fact that it seemed to have all of the kind of big, big resort amenities, like a full day ski school, but a lot of the comments noted that it was notoriously not crowded compared to some and that did hold true. The snow was excellent, and I basically never waited in a lift line like at all, Like you just would ski right up and get on the lift. I think there's some like super super advanced slopes with like lifts that kind of are underlifted for the population that wants to ski those specific areas, so it might be different there, but for where we were many many options, basically no waiting, and it didn't feel crowded at all. So yeah, that's why we picked it. The negative of where we chose is that there is very few direct flights, so you're you know, we talk about that later in this and how you really love to fly direct. But like we would have had to drive to Georgia, I mean there was no there's no way out of it. So we flew through Dallas and it was great. And I think there were some routes previously from Jet Blue and then some budget airway called a Vello that was serving Fort Lauderdale to Bozeman, but neither of them exists anymore, Like the roots still exist. Yeah, the Fort Lauderdale Bozeman route has a well I would have done Miami or Palm Beach like those are our three reasonable airports that I would drive to. Anything else is more than three or four hours away, but none of them. Yeah no, Montana can also be cold, as you discovered. But but yeah, no, there's something to think about. I mean, I know my family has done some Colorado resorts, but none of them are very close to the airport. I don't think whereas Salt Lake City in Utah, there actually are some major resorts within an hour of the Salt Lake City airport. So just something to think about as you're doing your research. If you do want to fly to a major airport and not have to then drive two to three hours on the end of it, that kind of will dictate which major resorts you can go to. In some states like Utah, Montana maybe easier than others. So when did you book it and did you stay close to the mountain? I mean, because it's always I think, do you want to be at a place where you can ski and ski out or you know, are you do a cheaper place farther away or you know? What was the choice there? Yeah, we opted for convenience. I felt like since it was the kid's first time, I didn't know how hard it was going to be logistically to even get their gear on and stuff. I wanted to make things as easy as possible, and I think I'll probably do that the next time as well. It was just so nice to be able to walk out and be right at the mountain base. And I think there are some resorts where the only accommodations at the base are super swanky resorts that are completely out of my price range. But Big Sky had some that were reasonable right there, so that was another huge plus. And I booked a trip around July, so about six months in advance. I probably I could have done it even further in advance. And when I say I booked it, I booked the hotel, I think our airfare shortly thereafter, and then also the lessons because I had heard that some lessons, you know, sell out, and I didn't want that to be a limiting factor. So I just did it all and this year I probably will do it even earlier so I can get our choice of room and everything. So you would do a big recommendation for that for being near the mountain, yes, okay, oh, and I would, especially if it's your first time. I think, once you've done it, and then you feel like, oh, you know what, I'd be fine driving, like I know how the process works. Then maybe subsequent trips you could add that layer of complexity. But I think if it's your first and you have any trepidation, then look for something easy. Yeah, and now the ski school and lessons, how much did you wind up doing for the kids because they didn't do it every day all day while you were there? Correct? We thought through this for a while. Cameron had snowboarded before, Annabelle had never done anything, and Genevieve had never done anything. We decided to put the big kids in two days of full day ski school, thinking that by the third day they could like ski with Josh and me, and we put Genevieve in three days of half day ski school. We'd initially planned four day skiing, thinking that by the fourth day we could all ski together. That was a miscalculation. She's five. She was not ready to like go on a big mountain by day four, although the big kids were completely ready by day three to at least ski greens and Yeah, So the only miscalculation I made was that Genevieve loved ski school and would be sad when it was over. And wanted to go back for the afternoon. So next time I will be putting her in full days and the big kids probably in half days because they can ski with Josh and me in the afternoon. And Josh and I also took two days of lessons. As I mentioned, we hadn't skied in forever. The lessons were super helpful. On the first one we just did like basically the kids hills and like remembered how to do everything. And by the second one we had an instructor who was very best at both worlds. I might add she was an attorney a form of big law attorney now doing consulting and then teaches ski on the side, and she had kids. She was awesome and she took us on you know, a bunch of greens and gave technique pointers and stuff, and I felt so much more confident by the end of our session with her. So highly recommend taking lessons if you haven't done it for a while. And how about the equipment part. You rented stuff there? And oh yeah, we just rented stuff there. It was super easy. We ended up being able to get it on the first day because we didn't ski that day because it was negative thirty to decrease fahrenheit. But we were able to take our time get it all fitted. We stored it in a locker right at the base. In retrospect, we could have just worn our boots to the hotel because we didn't realize if there's like a boot room, like right where you go outside, that's okay. And they have what's called a ski valet, so you can leave your skis right at the base and then like walk on the path, you know, the one hundred feet or so back to your hotel. So very easy. Did a rental for the whole time. Definitely not planning on buying anything. And if you haven't skied for a long long time, like me, you're going to be so impressed because I felt like the boots are much more comfortable than they used to be, and the skis are just better, like they're curved and they're shorter, and they're easier to use. And the kids learned without poles, which is I learned with poles back in the nineties. But it was great not to have to worry about them losing poles and dropping them off the lifts and things like that. Yeah, I feel like the poles can all go terribly wrong and the package. Yeah. Well, by the way, so she said in passing, there the minus thirty degree fahrenheit, So our American readers know that there was a polar vortex that went through much of the country shortly before Christmas, that there were minus thirty degree temperatures out in Montana. Was definitely like it was like minus ten in Chicago. I mean it was even five degrees where we were. I mean it dropped a lot everywhere. So clearly that was not tenable for skiing, Like, you're not crazy, and they closed the lifts, right, they did close the lifts. So I was panicked watching the weather as we went, and it turned out to be Okay. We did miss a day of skiing, but honestly, in the grand scheme of things, we didn't have our travel disrupted or anything like that, so it worked out. The days that we did ski it was like lows in the high teens to twenties and highs in the twenties and it was it was great. That was perfectly comfortable. Yeah, so what did you pack for that level of cold? Like what winter gear can you tell us about? So underlayers for everyone we went with like inexpensive lands and ones. For the kids, I got Smartwall, which was amazing more definitely more expensive, so I wouldn't get that and if kids are going to outgrow it, but it was fantastic for me. We had balaklava's for everyone. The helmets are quite warm that you rent, so that kind of helps us. Another layer. We got lined ski jackets for everyone. For the kids, we did Eddie Bauer, which was a recommendation from Beth who writes the blog parent Lightly. She's an expert in ski stuff and so I took a lot of tips from her. We got good ski mittens I actually bought from Outdoor Research on her recommendation and they were great for me. I also used handwarmers. We did the full on cushioned ski socks, and yeah, I did actually create if anybody he wants like links and stuff, I did make a page on my blog just because people were asking, so that is available if you want to see what we use. I'm obviously no expert, but this this did work for us on our one off experience so far under pretty cool conditions. Yeah. Yeah, and you made everyone try everything on before you left too. Yeah, we made we took pictures. We made everyone put everything on head to toe and then kind of set that up next to their suitcase. What I do not recommend my I I do not do is don't work a full day the day before you leave if you're leaving early in the morning, because it made packing such a night. Like I needed a day to pack. I needed a day to pack in an organized fashion. Josh ended up doing most of it, and he did a good job, but I was like anxious about it, so I would build in that buffer or leave on a you know, a Monday, so you can pack on Sunday or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, And Sarah was starting from scratch here with the cold weather gear because they're in Florida, so they can't like borrow it from neighbors necessarily who just have stuff sitting around. But this is something that you probably can get like used kids stuff, fairly easily because as you can imagine, there are a lot of people in the world who do one ski trip a year and their kids grow as kids do, and so the market of secondhand kids ski gear is you know, more brisk than many other things there might be. And you guys stayed at a place with a little kitchen and you're a person. Yeah, So we kind of did a combination between going out to dinner, which I did reserve in advance. If you're going skiing, know that they're going to be busy during the winter and it's probably going to be an area with lots of families. So I highly recommend, like two months in advance making any reservation that you want to. That turned it out to really pay off. So we kind of alternated going to nice local places and then cooking total basics in our room, and I feel like that was a nice balance because sometimes you just want to be lazy and watch home alone and heat up a frozen pizza, and other nights you might want to have a fun, festive dinner out. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that Michael took the two kids to the burger place right behind their resort. All nights that they were there. They had mac and cheese and every night, so they were they were perfectly fine with that. I'm sure they were happy with that. Yeah, very cool. Anything else you want to throw in there, yeah, just do it if you're worried about it, but you have kids who enjoy outdoor activities and being active, or even if you haven't skied before. I just think if it's in your budget and you want a really nice kind of like bonding opportunity, I just I've like never felt closer to my family than this trip because it was just like we were outside, we were like learning together, like there was something very special about it. So highly recommend excellent, well vote of confidence there for skiing. So yeah, the second half of this, I'm just going to share some stuff from our recent trip. So yes, international, we're gonna pivot. We're gonna pivot. We're gonna pivot. Well yeah, I mean pivoting slowly because Michael took Henry and Alex skiing. So there was a ski trip. But we've done this a few times in our family that we've split it up because you know, as listeners know, I have five children. They range in age from three to fifteen. And traveling internationally, long hall flights with a three year old, two year old, whatever it is, it's challenged. It's like very challenging. The seven year old is also he likes his sort of stuff like certain foods and what you know, he's harder with sleep as well. It's just going to be more challenging to have them along for what they'd get out of it. But if we waited to travel until they were older, then I mean, Jasper will be out of the house. I mean, it's just the way it works. With this broad a rate change rage, we kind of needed to do something different. So we've done this. In spring break, I took the older three kids to Paris, and so over Christmas break I took the older three to London and it was a good destination. We had a really good time. We saw a lot. Because they were older, they were able to deal with stuff that would have been slightly disastrous if I think they were younger. I mean, so there was this whole problem with there were strikes that he throw and so the British government had asked the carriers to stop selling seats into Heathrow, and I think they had changed planes for stuff. So anyway, I have high status on American and I had had my seat's book, but somehow they took them away from me, and so I wound up like with no seat assignment and needing to have kids in various places on the plane, which it was okay. I mean, so I had, you know, two seats that were right behind each other. So I put right in front of me, and then I put the boys off on their own, you know, of the plane, and she wound up being able to move to an aisle seat last minute. I had the fun of the middle seat all the way to London. Awesome, but it was, you know, just like, how would that even work if I have like a five year old. I could put a five year old off on their own somewhere on the plane. So it was I mean, I presume somebody would have switched with me in that situation and we would have been a bit more belligerent about it, but it was. It was fine because you have older kids and so that we could roll with it and roll with it, and so they watched movies and whatever, so it's okay. Just you know, make sure you have lots of headphones and chargers and whatever else, you know, the appropriate at electric converters for whatever country you are going to, in water, and snacks so nobody gets desperate on the airline. I would also just my packing tips, like don't check bags if at all possible, Like, obviously you're skiing, you've got giant gear. There's nothing you can do about it. You're gonna have to check bags because you're not gonna be able to get that stuff into a carry on. But if you're going to a destination where you don't need serious outdoor gear, which London in December is like a normal city. You know, it was forty degrees every day fahrenheit, so you just pack normal winter clothes and that you can do in a carry on for five six days without an issue. So I had the kids do that. They each had one carry on and a backpack, so we didn't have to check bags. And you know that way, like, there's only so much that can go wrong if you fly direct and if you don't check a bag, because you have your stuff and you're either at your house or at your location, right and so there's no way to be stranded without your stuff in some other place, I mean, unless something goes terribly wrong, but that's you know, your flight's diverted. But that's a whole different thing. Whatsoever, Sarah, you're getting passports for your kids now, right, Yes, I'm in the process of doing that in preparation for our summer trip. So I was having the lovely looking up all the guidelines, printing out those lovely pdafs I had to like do one twice because I didn't put the state of where I was born or something like that. Like it's a meticulous process. It is meticulous, and it's funny because I think I had to reprint it once too, because it's like on one page of the form, it's like you put the date of the birthday, first the day, then the month, and then on the other pages the month and then the day. I mean in that lovely way that internationally it's always you know, day and then month, but Americans do month and then day, and it's like a weird mashup. So you just have to pay attention because if it's the wrong date on your passport, you'd have a horrible term. But uh yeah, I know we've had to do this. Our kids are in batches, so child passports are only good for five years. If anyone's going into this, just get the all at one time because of the age difference in the kids we are, you know, have batches of two, two and one, so we have to do this every two years roughly, which is all sorts of fun. But otherwise they wouldn't have valid passports, right like I mean, so you know, it's the key thing is that both parents need to be there. And every time we go to get this, we're always good. We always get ours and it's not a problem. But I swear almost every time we go, somebody before us or after us is rejected because they have not done X, Y or Z in this process. And a lot of the times it's that they don't have both parents there and then they haven't filled out all the paperwork correctly to you know, have it notarized within a certain date or whatever with you know, so even if you're a divorced like you both go and you know, even if you're not in speaking terms or like, have somebody else like be a go between and like both of you show up, because otherwise it's not going to work. But you're also just trying to show that the kids are yours and that they are citizens. And so if you think of it in that light, all the documentation and you have to bring is to show that. So if you have the parents' passports, that shows that you are citizens. If you have the kid's birth certificates, that shows that they are yours, right, and so between the two of that demonstrates that they are US citizens and yours and that's how you get the documentation. So just you know, and always expedite that you can pay an extra fee to have it go faster, even if you're like, oh, well, we're not traveling for six months. I feel like the State Department in the US. I don't know how it is in other countries. It's like they put them in totally separate systems if you're expedited versus not. So we got Henry's passport right as the world was shutting down for COVID. Obviously it wasn't very useful then for like another eighteen months, but we got it back in three weeks, even as like other people were talking of like months long delays or whatever because you know, things weren't operating. So we've just always done that. As for the travel itself, so we wound up using a travel agent for this London trip. I know there's always a question people like, well, why would you use a travel agent when you can book your own stuff these days? And absolutely you can book your own hotels, you can book your own flights, but knowing where to book is often half the battle. And so if you aren't looking forward to doing a ton of research and asking people you know, and especially if it's an international destination where you don't necessarily have friends and family there or people who've gone recently, it can be helpful just to have somebody else looking into that and then giving you options. So like, okay, you have four people central London. You can't have more than three people in a hotel room, so you're going to need two rooms. You don't want to be apart from your kids. That narrows our search to central London hotels where you can get to adjoining rooms like they will you know, have that, So that was really helpful to have travel agent finding that for us. She also did a zoom call with me. This is by the way, it's Mimi from Truve Travel if anyone wants to look her up. But she did a zoom call for me where we talked about the kid's interests and so she knew that one kid was into like World War two type stuff, you know, that they liked art, that they liked cooking. So we wound up doing a spray like spray art type thing where we got to make our own graffiti and this tunnel. That was kind of fun. We did a baking class where we made our own scones and shortbread for tea. We got a behind the scenes tour of the Churchill war rooms where we got to go in the map rooms where you could see the pushpins where they were marking where the ships were, and like you see like Churchill's actual cigar stains. It's really kind of ridiculous, but you know that they preserve that. But anyway, that was some of the things that we probably wouldn't have figured out on our own, and so that can be an upside of doing that. You know, some stuff we would have like Harry Potter, like we wanted to go Harry Potter studios, but when you would have figured out Yeah, but the rest I never would have thought of how expensive is it? Do They charge usually an hour And you don't have to answer specific to yours, but like, is it usually an hourly rate? Is it usually commission or is it usually like a package that you kind of buy for them to help you plan? Because I've never actually used to travel agent. I know the Disney ones are generally kind of free because they have some commission deal with Disney, but I assume for other trips there's some kind of arrangement. Yeah, it depends. I think if you're having an agent book a hotel or airfare, in many cases they are getting commissioned from those people, so that it's just whatever the fair would be or whatever the hotel would feed in. The hotel then does a kick back to them for having brought them business. Right, if it's tours that you are booking, then there's usually like just an add on fee whatever percentage, and they'll put this in writing for you, you you know, whatever percent they are adding on as their commission for doing this. Some might work on an hourly basis. If you are doing a having somebody do a lot of research for you, maybe somebody would then work on an hourly basis to do that. So it kind of depends on what you worked to do. And some travel agents sort of expect you to spend a certain amount to make it worth their while if they're getting the commissions for it. So you might want to ask into that too, because there's people at all different budget ranges, so you know, ask around or you know, if you have friends who've used one or whatever, that's a good way to find one. There One thing I will just throw out there as another European travel trip with kids, is they tend not to like museums that much. I mean, there are awesome museums and you can be in them for a little bit, but you're not going to be able to spend the whole day, like even the Louver when we did the Louver in Paris, like which I'm saying that wrong, say the right, this French accent, but we were there three hours and they were definitely not happy at the end of it. Now, obviously you can spend three years in the Louver, right, So it's it's you're just going to have to like be okay with that that you're going to see the highlights. Event we wound up doing the British Museum, Sam and I the other two were like, no, we're doing the British Museum. The Salm and I went and we saw the highlights or the Parthenon stuff, the mummies. So get your head around that. Go just with adults. If you are going to want to spend all days in restaurants, oh sorry, in museums. Restaurants was the thing in retrospect, I'm not sure I would have been trying to solve for our pickiest eater. I mean, we wound up eating in some places where no one was truly thrilled, but they were more expensive, and so it was sort of like her heart geez. You know, one night we just ate it like Pizza Express, which is a chain in London, and everyone was thrilled because they got their pizza and it was like the least expensive night we were there. So I don't know, you know, I like having reservations places, but sometimes the recommendations you get are going to be on the higher end because that's what people want to do when they come to a foreign country or go in a big city. And if you're going to do that, like you probably just choose ones that you truly want to eat in and like force the kids to eat plain rice or pasta or whatever, or have a big snack beforehand, or leave them at the hotel or else just go more down market and figure you're eating burgers and fries and pizza or whatever. I feel like with kids, and I imagine internationally I would feel this way. Maybe not, but I either want a reservation each night or a loose plan of like, okay, we're going to go to like a pub in this area around this time, Like have a place in mind that doesn't need reservations. It's more casual or pizza express like whatever. But kind of knowing that I have a place to aim for because there is that horrible feeling when your kids are like getting angry and you're in an unfamiliar place, like that would make me happy. Yeah, I don't know. So in London, because I was told it was gonna be very busy, and I think it was, like I think a lot of places were booked up. We did make reservations ahead of time, and I liked knowing like we will have dinner at seven and this is where we will be going, because it gives the day, the end of the day some structure. Then you're not fighting about it like well where do you want to go? I don't know where do you want to go? And wandering around trying to find if people have places available. But where we stayed in Paris, there were just so many restaurants along the major route where we were that we could just find a different sort of bistro every night. And the downside is I didn't eat in any of the like nice Paris restaurants, like I ate at like whatever place was offering pizza and pasta and steak, and you know that was around the corner. But we managed to find places that had space every night very very easily, so that was fine for that. Oh that's great, Yeah, pleasantly surprise. So yeah, and we would generally aim to not start before ten am, just because with the jet lag, people don't want to get up at the crack of dawn. That allowed us to have our hotel breakfast and then get started. Generally did activities from about ten to four four thirty and then have an hour two hours of downtime till dinner, do dinner, come back, chill, you know, give kids time to read or play their electronics and then yeah, I guess I made my bonus tips as our love of the week. I mean, my personal favorite love of the week right now is melatonin. So you're tired the first night in Europe. So if you're coming from the US, like you haven't slept on the plane, even if you nap two hours, by the end of the day, you're tired. So you're gonna fall asleep and you'll probably sleep okay the first night. It's the second night that you're just you would be up at two am, up for three hours, finally crashing at like five am when your body thinks it's midnight or left, and then you're not gonna want to wake up until one pm because that's what it's six am in the morning, So you know, it's just you can wind up really in a bad state with that. Whereas if you have melatonin, you can take it before you go to bed and either it keeps you through to that wake up time that you would or if you wake up in the middle of the night, you can take half a melatonin and go back to sleep. And you know, older kids can take it too, and it's fine, So that can help if you have older children and everybody wants to sleep. Also, lots of chargers and electronic converters because the kids do like their devices and want to charge them. You know. How about you, Sarah, what's your love of the week? Well, I was just processing what you were saying and thinking, I need to go to Europe because it's the one place where, like, I feel like I could adapt so easily because normally I get up so early that I could just get up at like a reasonable hour and then be like a cool, fun person at midnight, Whereas at the homely. Yeah exactly, so me up up till midnight and sleep till nine in the morning. Yeah exactly. I could barely anything. So okay, that's noted. My love of the week I will go on theme as well was our hands and footwarmers. I don't have any specific brand recommendation, but if you're like old school and you haven't you you know, didn't grow up using them, They're amazing, highly recommend That is actually my one of my goals for winter. Like on my winter fun list, I bought this huge thing of handwarmers and my goal is to actually use them. Like I don't know, I'm always like, oh, I shouldn't waste them on this trip, I'm like no, No. If I am going outside for any length of time in the winter and I get miserably cold, my hands get I don't know what I have in the bad circulation, they get white, I get hives. Anyway, I'm like, no, I'm going to use these handwarmers like every day. It'll be great. You deserve it. I deserve it. And if I run out, I can buy more. Like that's the thing, Like they don't have to last all winter, Like you can buy more, correct and they're not expensive. They're not expensive yet. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking family travel, especially with older children. We will be back next week with more and making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox 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.