traveling with kids Archives - Mom's Guide To Travel

Jan 03 2014

Starting Off On A Personal Note: 2013 In Review

The first part of 2013 was a tough one for my family. We were still in the early days of our leukemia journey. We tried to travel but every time we pushed the button, life pushed back. My son sustained a fever every month so I became quickly acquainted with the struggles of trying to maintain a business while caring for a sick child.

There were sooooo many days when I wanted to give up, throw in the towel and just say “Ok God, you win. I’m not doing nothing!” But a voice in me kept saying “no, Tawanna. That’s not it. It’s not about you giving up. It’s about you surrendering.”

And so I did. I learned a lot about the importance of friendship, the simplicity of life, the strength of a 5 year old boy (today he’s 6!), and the power of love. I was humbled this year. Truly and honestly. I cried more in 9 months than I had in my entire life. I bore witness to God around me.

So, we didn’t stop traveling. We just put it off for a short while. I thought I’d go crazy (I don’t really like sitting still). But when I recognized what my #1 purpose was, I surrendered and I sat. My kids sustained me. Granted, I put my health on the back burner but I’m slowly bringing myself back around.

We were tested this year. My husband was deployed right after my son finished radiation and I had to hold the fort down on my own. And so I did. I put my big girl panties on and did what any mother would do, got down to business. I refused to complain about it – wasted energy. And then God stepped in again and sent an angel our way and got my husband back home early.

And then I decided to take a mommy break of sorts. So I picked up on my work and I traveled. And traveled and traveled. From September through December, I took six trips, three of them international. I was back in my happy place.

Most important of all, our once a month fever and hospital admissions dissipated after May. We stayed out of the hospital for the holidays and my sweet boy is laughing, eating, walking and talking under a bushel of hair.

He still loves his turkey sausages, chips, and ice cream. His weight is picking up and he is joy.

I don’t know what the rest of this journey will bring, whether it’s the journey of leukemia or the journey of life. I think the uncertainty of it all pushes us to strive to do our best. I struggle with being my better self everyday but I’m constantly working on enlightenment.

This is how travel serves me: It’s the exposure to new places, people, and experiences that pushes me to learn more. It’s the freedom that it brings. It’s the desire to show my kids there’s more to the world than just their immediate surroundings. It’s the wanting to make travel more accessible to people by simplifying it and redefining it. That is the pull of travel on me.

This year, in 2014, I look forward to more adventures with my family, a healthier year, and the privilege to make travel a reality for others.

Aug 11 2013

Traveling Solo With Kids: Managing Travel As A Single Parent

The blog has experienced an uncharacteristic length of silence because I’ve been in constant adjustment to managing a travel lifestyle as a single parent. Since my husband‘s work has taken him overseas a few months ago, I’ve had to get accustomed to traveling solo with kids. It’s not the first time that I’ve had to taken on single parent travel but the circumstances have changed – the kids are older, mommy is older, and life is more hectic in our home.

Managing a household, a business, two young boys, fitness, and travel has been inexplicably difficult. I’ve been faced with some challenges throughout my life but this is one that I can’t pick up a book and read about. Single-entrepreneurial-travel-traithlete-special needs-cancer management-motherhood hasn’t been published yet. I’m living out the chapters on a daily basis.

So why don’t I give up the travel thing? Two reasons, it’s my livelihood and it keeps me sane.

However, that sanity doesn’t come without a headache. It takes a bucket of coordination with other people outside my household (along with an inherent dependency), whether it’s family to watch the boys when I need to travel solo, or a nanny to accompany me when I need the extra set of hands for a family trip.

This past week, I took my 15 year old nephew with us for the first time and we road tripped to the Laurel Highlands and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The 4.5 hour drive with a 5, 9, and 15 year old was more pleasant than I’d expected. I love when my boys surprise me. I even surprised myself! I followed all the tips that I leave for families on my blog, tips like:

Use a packing list.
Dole out responsibilities to any able-bodied person.
Leave at a strategic hour.
Take your time and don’t rush to get to the destination if you can help it.
Pack plenty of snacks, toys, and devices.
Factor in those very important driving breaks every two to three hours.
Get a good night’s sleep the evening before.
Focus on the journey as much as you do the destination.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from the trip that I’d say is consistent with the obstacles I face in my life, it’s that there’s always a beginning, middle, and end. My goals should always be to live in the moment and focus on where I’m at.

Jul 18 2011

Why You Should Get Your Child That Passport

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post and it’s mainly because I’ve been going through the vacation travel planning process. One thing I’ve learned about myself during this process is that when I’m under heightened levels of stress, I retreat. I am super focused, I’m quiet, I just don’t talk. I don’t want to have a conversation. I don’t want to say anything about anything until I’ve achieved the goal that I want to achieve and I am out of that stressful situation. I’m thinking to myself, why didn’t I get my child that passport?

Planning my trip to the Cayman Islands has been more stressful for me than I thought it would be. My stress started with purchasing tickets in the time frame that I originally intended and ended with getting my kids their passports.

I guess I take having a passport for granted. And I’m really going to date myself here by saying this: traveling to the Caribbean used to be carefree, passport-free, more specifically. When we were thinking about this trip back in early May it didn’t click, “Oh, let me get my kids their passports” because 1.) my husband and I have passports and 2.) my oldest son had a passport (though I forgot it expired back in December). It used to be that when you traveled to the Caribbean you could just show identification like a birth certificate and poof! you were on your way. We don’t live in that world anymore. But that’s what I remember and unfortunately, the nostalgia of it all was still in my head.

Getting back to the drama….

So, when I purchased my tickets, as I’m on the phone with the travel agent giving her my information, she says, “Ok, now I need your passport numbers.” I was like, “Oh shush! Okay…I don’t have passport numbers for my kids.” At that moment, I said to myself, if I had realized that I didn’t have their passports and the appropriate amount of time to get them processed stress-free, I probably would’ve never booked the tickets. Mind you, we were 19 days out from our trip and the expedited process time (via mail) was 2-3 weeks! We were right in the middle of that “funny” place of do you take the gamble or not.

I wasn’t willing to gamble on our vacation thus, the mad scramble for pics and a regional agency appointment began. The thing about the process that probably annoyed me the most was making the appointment with the agency. I had to wait until I was within the 14 day window to make an appointment – so this meant that I had to wait an extra 5 days until I could call and get an appointment! When I did call, the earliest appointment I could get was 4 days before my trip!! [yes, double exclamation point]

I literally could feel the grey hairs sprouting.

Although we’re lucky enough to have a regional passport agency just an hour away from our home, lugging the kids into the city through early morning rush hour traffic and forcing my husband to take a day off from work is not my pre-paradise cup of tea. It’s more like an extra serving of headache sauce.

The way you have to approach traveling with your kids when you’re in a really stressful situation or when the circumstances are non-optimal is that you have to take it step by step. “We’re going to cross this part of the bridge first, we’re going to cross that part of the bridge next, and we’re just going to check off each part as we cross it.” Whenever I have huge obstacles before me that’s what I do. Alright let me do point A first, let me do point B second.

[An aside: as I’m audio-recording this post I’m actually sitting in traffic on my way to the passport agency to pick up these passports which should be ready by 2 o’clock. And I don’t want to be in traffic, because traffic makes you crazy. So even now I don’t even want to be talking about the situation. I wanted to talk about it in retrospect but since it was on my mind, still fresh, I figured while I’m in the moment I might as well go ahead because this is what families go through, and what families need to hear… the pain of the situation, the pain of “oh my gosh, i don’t have this, I don’t have that, I only have this amount of time, what am I going to do with the kids, blah blah blah blah……”]

So there you have it. That’s where I’m at, that’s what I’m doing – I can’t wait to write my post where I can say, “Hey, I got everything, everything’s cool now, we’re just packing, I’m in a good place” because right now I’m not in a good place. My heart is higher in my chest than I’d like it to be, my throat’s a little dry, and I’m more stressed than usual when I’m traveling or preparing for travel.

Let my pain be a lesson for you. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think you’re going out of the country this year – just go ahead and get your child a passport. You never know when you might want to take a spur of the moment adventure. If you’re a crazy woman like me and you enjoy spontaneous trips, or you see some deal that you just can’t pass up – if you don’t have that passport, guess what, no flying by the seat of your pants for you!

Bite the bullet and get your child’s travel documents in order – no matter how young they are, no matter when you think you’re going to travel – because you just never know.

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