Mom's Guide To Travel

Trip Planning, Expert Tips, and Fun Ideas For Family Travel.

Travel and Healthy Snacks

Traveling or being on-the-go doesn’t have to sabotage the healthy eater and dieter’s resolve. All it takes is some travel planning and preparation to manage a healthy eating lifestyle while away from home.  Having an idea of what healthy snacks keep you satisfied will help you stay on course.

The following is a list of snacks that I find filling and portable for either a road trip or an airplane.

  • Apples and Almond Butter
  • Baby Carrots/ Celery sticks
  • Hummus
  • Wasa Crackers/Melba toast
  • Protein Bars
  • Cubed pineapple
  • Sliced strawberries
  • Blueberries
  • Grapes
  • Raisins
  • Nuts
  • String cheese
  • Light Popcorn
  • Yogurt
  • Cottage cheese
  • Lean lunch meats
Healthy snacks for travel

Cheeses, lunch meats, yogurt, and hummus should be eaten fairly quickly in your trip. However, investing in an insulated lunch bag or cooler will help to sustain their freshness.

Friend and mother of two, Romica Brashear, also does a little pre-planning of her eats before she travels. She often carries “apple slices, grapes, oranges, organic cereal bars, organic graham crackers, pretzels and veggie sticks.”

Fellow fitness coach and health nut, Ange Anglade, says she likes to keep it simple when packing her healthy snacks. Although she generally stays away from fruit, she does like to pack a sandwich bag of grapes. In addition, she carries celery sticks, carrots, pretzels and hummus, a 100-calorie snack pack of almonds, and Zone bars.

Whatever healthy snacks you prefer to carry, remember that enjoying them in moderation is just as important as eating them. Sharing them with your kids will not only ensure that you get the proper proportion but will also instill healthy habits in them as well.

Taking Care of Yourself

One of the things about traveling that I tend to forget about is that it takes a toll on the body. I was kindly reminded of it this past week when my immune system said “nighty night” and shut down Sunday evening, mere hours after getting off the road from a weekend getaway.

The change in environment, introduction of new germs, lack of sleep, change in diet, exposure to more people are all leading factors to why we tend to get sick when we come off of a trip. I’d say the main factor is pure lack of sleep. It happens to me everytime. I go away, I’m pumped and excited to be somewhere other than the “4 walls” of my house, I stay up later watching t.v. that I don’t normally watch at home (although I get the same programming), and before you know it, “kachoo”, the first sneeze and accompanying sniffle make their way to the surface. Apparently it isn’t enough that I take Clorox cloths and wipe down various surfaces in the hotel room or that I travel with my own washcloth and sometimes my own towel or that I wear slippers in the room or flip flops in the shower or line the bathroom seat with paper. No, that’s not enough. Somehow, someway those sneaky bastard germs make their way through all of my other protective barriers and catch me through that one little crack…sleep.

Bottom line: I need to take better care of myself when traveling with my children. I make sure that they are in bed on time and that they’ve taken their necessary vitamins. I even try to maintain my workout schedule when I’m away from home. It’s just a challenge for me to wind down and go to sleep at a human hour…kind of like now. I was lucky this time around, getting over my sickness in a few days but it took discipline to do so. I went to bed before 11pm most nights this week; I didn’t workout before 6 am in the morning; I took either Nyquil or TheraFlu to have uninterrupted slumber; I drank 3-4 packets of Emergen-C a day coupled with double shots of vitamin C chewables; and I napped in the day, whenever my body wanted to say “nighty night”. I didn’t fight it.

Moral of the story: Go to bed! You’ll do your body good. Everything that’s there now will be there tomorrow. Traveling can be exciting and we may try to cram as much as possible into our schedules so that we don’t “miss anything” but what’s the sense in going away on mini-breaks or vacations if you come back sicker than when you left? None whatsoever.

So, on that note: Good Night.

Bathing Baby On Vacation While Away From Home

It’s always seemed a little stressful for me to think about bath time for my baby while we traveled. He’s still in the ducky tub phase and I can’t fathom putting my child down in a hotel bathtub for his evening ritual.

No matter how posh or seemingly clean a hotel room appears, I never take a bath in its’ facilities. I even make my husband and son wear flip flops when they take showers to protect their feet. I can’t even blame my germaphobia on the numerous hotel exposès I’ve watched on hidden camera shows. I just see my obsession as safe practices in health and cleanliness.

In the past, my husband and I tag-teamed showering with the baby. One person would hold and wash him in the shower while the other waited outside for the pass like a quarterback after the snap.

As my son has gotten bigger, maneuverability has become more of a challenge but he still isn’t ready for flip flop-laden showers.  

The solution was simple – invest in an extra inflatable tub for travel. They are inexpensive, lightweight, easy to clean, and familiar to him.  I can always keep it deflated and stored in his suitcase since we already have one at home and inflate it once we reach our destination.

I have no qualms about placing the inflatable tub in the hotel’s tub (though I may spray the tub down with disinfectant first) and resuming to our normal business.

Granted, the bath is an abbreviated version of our normal tubby time – devoid of songs and play. However, it gets the job done, relieving us of both back strain and an argument due to my slight case of OCD and my husband’s frustration with me. Poor guy.

My hang-ups as a mom are always backed by good intentions. I just want my boys to be as safe and comfortable as possible so that they can enjoy all aspects of the travel experience.

Next time you travel with your baby and have a question about how you’re going to be bathing baby while you’re away, consider using an inflatable tub as well. Then let me know how it works out for you.

Tips For Family Day Trips: A Simple Way To Start Traveling With Kids

I don’t know about anyone else, but there’s a time for jumping in the deep end of the pool and a time for taking baby steps. Family day trips are a tip-toe way to travel for new families.

You want to take things slow when you’re venturing out for the first time with your new child.

Why? It takes the pressure off of what should be an enjoyable adventure, setting the tone for life-long exploration for years to come.

tips for Family Day Trips
Start off small with your family travels – Go by car

In my quest to stay as young-looking as long as possible, I try not to provoke the dormant gray hair follicles just waiting to pop up from an onslaught of stress.  Even when mom is planning a vacation for the family, she also has to keep her self-care in mind and keep her stress to a minimum.

So when it comes to traveling with small children, I prefer to tiptoe my way from the shallow end of the pool to the place where I can tread water and then break out into a full backstroke. Enjoyable stress-free travel with small children is all about the p’s: practice, planning, preparation, and patience. And family day trips are a perfect way to practice traveling together

Before I take my two young sons, 5-year-old AC and 1-year-old AJ on their first world tour, I will be mastering the family day trip with them. I want my boys to get accustomed to being on the go. And I’d like to fine-tune a rhythm for traveling with them. Day trips are quick and easy and serve as practice for the longer trips waiting in the wings. They require a certain level of planning all unto themselves. In essence, they are easier to plan for than overnight trips but you still have to plan accordingly because you’re trying to pack as much fun as you can in a shorter time span.

One of the easiest ways to plan for a family day trip is to jump on the computer and do all of the research several days before so that you can psyche yourself up for the adventure ahead.  One of my favorite sites is tripadvisor.com because I appreciate opinions and reviews when I am unfamiliar with a place or a property. Shoot, most of my home shopping decisions are done by reviews from everyday folk and that’s exactly what you get on Trip Advisor.

Some of the reviews are comedy but sometimes you get a perspective on a hotel or a restaurant or an attraction that you would have never expected.

A couple of years ago, my husband and I decided to take an impromptu trip to Ft. Lauderdale with AC and I planned the whole trip based off of reviews from Trip Advisor. Since I was pregnant at the time, my main focus was the best places to eat in the Ft. Lauderdale area. My husband was shocked that our schedule was packed and that I had done so much planning in so little time. I find the site to be an invaluable gem for both day and overnight trips.

I’ve also found that preparing for my day trip with the kiddies goes so much smoother when I write down exactly what it is that I need to do in order to get out the house and on the road as quickly as possible.

My life as a mother is ruled by To Do Lists. When we’re going on a trip I write up at least 3 different lists: a general list, a what-to-pack list, and a food list.

With everything on my mind, I’m bound to forget something. This is why I also created Family Packing List cards when we have to take a longer trip.

If I don’t write things down, forget about it, I either a.) Never make it out of the house on time or b.) End up either turning the car around our going back and forth from the car to the house at least five times because I forgot something. I make my To Do List either the night before or right after I’ve showered and have gotten dressed for the day. I make the children’s breakfast quickly, treading that fine line between ensuring that they are full enough to make it a few hours before asking for a snack and being overly full such that we can’t make it out of the house due to bathroom visits. Once they’re fed breakfast, I start checking off my line items on the To Do List. It makes me feel accomplished when I do so. Here’s an example of one of my general day trip To Do Lists:

  1. Wash up and Get Dressed
  2. Make Breakfast
  3. Pack Snacks (don’t forget mommy’s too)
  4. Take GPS
  5. Pack extra change of clothes

Simple. Then, I make a list of the snacks that I plan to take so that I don’t forget to put something in the cooler for myself. We moms always forget about our needs but if we don’t take care of the ship’s captain, guess what? It’s bound to sink.

Last but not least, I down about three 12-ounce glasses of patience. Did I mention I have two young boys? Oh yeah, I said that already. Okay, so I drink one glass after I’ve finished my To Do List, take a couple of sips of my second glass in the car and then finish it off once we reach our location, and finally drink the third glass at the end of our day when everyone is tired and we’re heading back home. Those three glasses make the day more enjoyable for everyone involved and keep me excited about continued travel with my kids. Do you remember your first family day trip? What was it like?

Photo credit: Cathy Yeulet.

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