Have a great thanksgiving

When it comes to vacation planning,  I’ve learned the hard way that spontaneity and children don’t always mix.

I’ve been to hell and back, including surviving several 24- hour plus plane rides to Australia from Washington DC. The worst trip was with 13-month old twins.

Most working moms only have ten days or so to enjoy each year,  so learn from my dumb mistakes to make yours the best vacation ever … whether it is Thanksgiving with your inlaws (hopefully better company than the trolls in the photo), celebrating Hannukah or Christmas, or escaping to the Bahamas or Mexico for some sun.

And see below for some of the great tips from our readers.

Try to:

1. Map it before you go with Google Maps.  We plotted everything before a recent trip to San Antonio, I made a map plotting where we were staying,  car hire location, the airport, restaurants we were going to try and the Alamo and the Poteet Strawberry Festival.
2. Organize your vacation calendar with this iPhone application. Only 99 cents.
3. Get where you are going without tears and tantrums. If you have a GPS, pack it. If you don’t, it is worth renting. Nothing like driving around a strange town at 2 a.m. in the morning with distressed children. Or get maps for your phone from Google.
4. Try TripIt or RoadEscapes to build an itinerary. The concept of TripIt is so simple, it’s absolutely brilliant, says  Woman’s Day. “You forward your booking confirmations— flight information, hotel details, dinner reservations, and so on—to this site via e-mail. Then TripIt creates your very own, private web page with all your details organized into one nifty itinerary,” raves Woman’s Day.
   
5. Get family ideas for vacation spots from TravelwithKids.
6. See what worked for  other families via TripAdvisor. This has been the best resource I’ve used. It tells you which hotels are good for which age, which resort has the best pool, the best water slide (very important to my seven year old boys), the quality of kids’ club, prices, etc.
7. Save money and get feedback from other families who’ve been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale via  WeJustGotBack. This site has tips for an affordable family vacation plus practical and bizarre tips, such as the benefits of denture cleansing tablets. They’re small, portable and  sterilize everything and anything from false teeth to baby bottles, etc.
8. Find a playground in a strange town with Kaboom’s map. Nothing like pulling into a park or a playground to take the edge off a horrible car trip or break up a day of visits to museums, etc.
9. Avoid in flight or en route tantrums by taking the right toys to preoccupy your kids on the plane, train and in the car.  I am a big believer in the power of a surprise toy (try Oriental Trading,  suggests Frommers.com) for when things turn ugly (and secret stashes of candy and other stuff that it usually off limits).
10. Pack to suit the weather. Try the Weather Channel’s what to pack tool and check out WikiHow’s list, which includes reminders like cellphone chargers, headphones and other useful things many people (cough, cough) leave behind.
    
11. Never pee in your pants or a bottle again. Don’t ask.  Find safe, clean toilets/restrooms at Safe2Pee.
12. Find fastfood with FastFoodsMap.  Or use McDonalds has a location finder. You can even  plan an itinerary to take in as many Golden Arches as you can.
13. What to pack for your pet? Here’s a list from Virginia is for lovers (and dogs, apparently). Tip: Leave the doggy tiara at home when you go on a family vacation.
14. Like camping or staying in a rustic cabin? I love this site, ReserveAmerica, which lets you find a park (public or private) and book online.
15. Hot? Find a waterpark with this directory that lets you search by state, zip or country.
16. Bored? Locate a theme park near where you are going.
17. Childproof your flight by reading this  FAA brochure before you go.  It pays to call or check the airline’s Web site to verify policies with strollers, car seats and back of seat video players (the latter is a godsend if you don’t have a portable DVD player or a laptop.)
18. Rent baby equipment. After some early disasters, we’ve hired strollers, pack n plays, cribs and the lot for long visits. This site, TheNewParentsGuide, has a state by state breakdown of where to hire stuff in the United States. Let me just say that putting small children in drawers of a hotel dresser may have worked back on the prairie but it was a bad night for me.
19. Take extra underwear for the kids on the plane or in your handbag. Say no more.
20. Take an extra shirt for yourself.  As my fellow blogger Renee reminded me, nursing boobs leak. Moms also tend to get all the love and all the vomit.
    A friend of mine packed extras for everyone else in her family but herself. She spent a flight from China to London wearing her kid’s inflight meal.
21. Get advice from your pediatrician on what medication you can use to get your child to sleep on a long plane trip or recover from jetlag. Please test it first. We discovered that one of our boys went out like a light while the other went feral on the same dosage.
22. Talk to your kids about what to do if they get lost away from home. Can they remember your cell phone numbers?  We often put a card with each child’s full name and our contact details in a pocket. At other times, we’ve written our phone numbers in pen on their bodies.  You may also want to give your kids a kajeet phone, like the one we’re giving away, so they can call you if something goes wrong.
    Tip: Enter your best vacation tip in the comments to win a cellphone.

Photo: Thanksgiving troll style by

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38446022@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

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