How To Survive A Family Vacation

Is your annual family vacation an annual family ordeal? Would you rather suffer through a root canal than spend a week with your kids on vacation? To avoid the stress and disappointment that often accompany a family vacation, you need to keep your expectations realistic and do some careful planning. The following family travel tips will help relieve the stress and increase the joy of vacationing with your kids.

1. Plan on everything taking twice as long as you expected. This means scheduling 8 hours for that 4-hour car trip to visit the grandparents, or scheduling 4 hours to make the 2-hour drive to the airport. If you arrive early, great! Now you have a little extra time to let the kids run around before they meet the grandparents or get strapped into an airplane seat.

2. Map it. Sure, you think you know where you are going and how to get there. But a map sure comes in handy when the local bridge is out and you need to find an alternate route. A map also gives you extra freedom and flexibility if you suddenly get the urge to get off the expressway and take the scenic route.

3. Clean up frequently. A hot sweaty car trip leaves the entire family feeling dirty and cranky. A few wet wipes can go a long way toward refreshing grimy faces and sticky fingers. And while you are at it, take a moment to shovel out the trash from the car during each rest stop. Arriving at your vacation destination with clean hands and a clean car really gets your vacation off to a relaxing start.

4. Keep your sleep and meal routines. When you are spending the day at the beach or the amusement park, it can be tempting to skip your toddler's nap, but you are likely to pay the price the rest of the day. Either schedule your activities around naptime, or find a quiet place to give your kids a short nap and yourself a short break.

5. Keep activities short. By scheduling several short activities each day instead of one all-day excursion, you leave yourself more flexibility to maintain nap and meal schedules.

6. Schedule some down time. Kids hate to be scheduled every minute of the day. Make sure to keep a least an hour or two free each day for hanging around the campgrounds, or lolling around by the hotel pool. Each of your kids should pack a plastic shoe box filled with their favorite toys to keep them busy during unscheduled vacation time.

7. Bring snacks whenever you leave your room or campsite. Crackers and peanut butter make a great snack when you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam or in line at the amusement park.

8. Pack only enough clothes for half of the week and plan a laundry day. Laundry day not only allows lightens your luggage by half, it also provides a wonderful opportunity to take a break from the frantic pace of vacation. Let the kids play in the hotel room, or swim in the pool while you do laundry and read that vacation novel you have been drooling over.

9. Enlist your kids as photographers. The parents should not have to take all of the vacation pictures. Invest in a disposable camera for each of your kids and let them fill the family vacation album.

10. Keep laughing. Yes, something is bound to go wrong. It is Murphy's Law of family vacations that something will be forgotten, or run over, or accidentally dropped in the ocean, but the mess-ups make the best vacation memories. So force a laugh if you have to, but keep on smiling and your kids will, too.