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Our flight was direct and only 7 hours, which by the end of our three week journey, involving multiple airports and cross-country road trips, seemed incredibly simple.

After a two hour car ride from the airport, we were back to our home in Germany on a sunny Sunday morning. The youngest two children, having been refreshed by catnaps in the car, went outside to ride bikes, while the oldest two kids and I closed the rolladens and hit our comfy beds.

We had completely skipped nighttime.

I awoke a couple hours later to find the two youngest still playing outside in states of rapturous delirium. I thought the euphoria would carry them through dinnertime.

I was wrong.

By late afternoon, supper was on the table, and the two youngest had crashed hard in their beds.

To wake or not to wake? That became the question.

I roused the princess, ensconced in her fluffy purple comforter.

“I’m so confused,” she cried, tears dripping down her cheeks, “Did we have night?” My heart broke, as the ‘bad mom’ alarm rang through my soul. After assuring her that she could go to bed right after dinner, I cautiously went to my son’s room. I tested the waters by saying his name.

Nothing happened.

I spoke his name while patting his hand.

Not one muscle moved.

I checked his breathing.

Rhythmic.

When I pulled the blanket out from under him, rolling his limp body sideways, his eyelids didn’t even flutter.

What’s a parent to do?

While there is no ‘right’ way to weather jet-lag, there are certain strategies that may help, depending on your child’s age and temperament.

Watch it!

Unless the new time zone ridiculously out of sync with your home base, try setting an extra clock to the current local time in your destination. As you move through your day, note the times of overlap (when you would wake, sleep or eat in either location), and ease your children towards the new time zone by incrementally keeping them up longer or waking them earlier in the weeks prior to travel.

Playtime!

Feeling that the body is off-kilter can be confusing and stressful for children, therefore, it is extremely important you give your child healthy outlets for stress relief before, during (if possible) and after travel. Unlike adults, many children, especially small children, cannot yet verbalize their feelings, so they relieve stress in ways that are not so pleasant, such as crying, being short-tempered or having complete meltdowns while in line for passport control.

Walking, biking, skating, swimming, running—whatever your child loves to do, make sure there is time in the schedule for stress-relief. Exercise during the daylight hours may also help the child adjust more quickly to the new time zone.

Let the Sun Shine In!

With the appropriate amount of sun protection, getting doses of fresh air and sunshine can help boost a body’s immune system, which is important both before and after air travel. Being in the sunshine isn’t merely a mental boost: it affects the body on a molecular level. Not only does sunlight increase levels of serotonin and endorphins, but absorbing more sunshine during the day has been shown to boost levels of melatonin at night, which can aid in re-setting the jet-lagged body’s internal clock.

Eat Plants—Lots of them!

If you are fortunate enough to be traveling to a destination where fruit can be plucked directly from trees, then you’ve hit the nutritional jackpot. Fruits and veggies are liquid sunshine, and the vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals consumed in their natural states cannot be matched by anything in a plastic-coated capsule. Serve your child as much fresh fruit as his system can tolerate—and don’t forget the veggies and a few whole grains too.

The vitamins and nutrients contained in whole, plant-based foods will help your body’s 50 trillion cells rid themselves of waste more efficiently and more quickly repair damage that may have occurred during the stress of travel. A body fueled with nutrient-dense foods will be better equipped to handle the physical stresses involved when jumping time zones.

Wake Them or Let Them Sleep?

There are times when an exhausted child needs sleep more than anything else. But when a mid-day nap appears to be extending into late afternoon, waking the child may help prevent middle-of-the-night playtime. If your child is wide awake in the middle of the night and has no intention of going back to sleep, try having a snack, reading quietly, or taking a walk under the stars.

The key is to be flexible and try not to have too much scheduled for your first few days upon arrival.

As for my jet-lagged son, I tossed a blanket over him, realizing at that point he needed sleep more than he needed dinner.

Jet lag in children is difficult to deal with—especially when the parent is jet lagged too. But knowing your child’s temperament, recognizing her primary needs, and taking preventative measures can help you through it. Remember, even the tough times will eventually become funny anecdotes—fond memories of the trip of a lifetime.

For more detailed information on jet-lag in babies, toddlers and children, check out our book Bottles to Backpacks: The Gypsy Mama’s Guide to REAL Travel with Kids.

What has your family found helpful when combating jet lag? We would love to hear your tips!

If you’ve been dreaming of a big time adventure with your kids, perhaps spending a year or more in an RV exploring the USA, or Canada, or beyond then you’re going to find Kimberly Travaglino’s book a treasure trove of useful information.

She and her family have been living the dream, touring all across the United States for years and in the process they’ve learned a lot! In this book Kimberly shares her first hand knowledge of how to “Hit the Road” as a family, and this book really does cover it all.

What will you learn?

• How to prepare your family
• The importance of visualizing your journey
• How to get out of debt
• How to choose the right rig for your family
• Budgeting
• Working on the road
• The logistics and legal considerations of road schooling your kids
• How to downsize from your “real life” to your “RV life”
• Pulling together all of the details you haven’t thought of yet, like your mail, jury duty, and license renewals

On a personal note, our family has been traveling for almost four years across three continents and it took us two full years before that to “launch” and downsize from the static house-car-job American lifestyle. It was two years of solid work, weekly checklists and intense focus to transition to our dream lifestyle. I did it all the hard way (just like Kimberly!) If I’d had this book, it would have made the process SO much easier. So many of the issues I struggled with she walks her readers through, step by step. No matter where you’re at in your process, from beginning dream planting to weeks before launch, How To Hit The Road will help.

The Travaglinos are the founders of Full-Time Families, a community dedicated to providing support, resources and discounts for families who live, “full time,” on the road. If you’re considering launching for grand adventure with your kids, this is a great place to start!

“How do you do it?”

It’s the most common question asked:

• By young mamas pregnant with their first, hoping hard that their days of adventure aren’t drawing to a close
• By new parents with dark circles under their eyes, taking their first flight to visit Grandma
• By a Dad whose toddler is bouncing through a quiet museum
• By families feeling locked into their school or work schedules with only two weeks off each year
• By folks with teenagers who feel time slipping through their fingers and long for one last hurrah
• By families engaged in international adoption
• And people who’ve lost sight of their dream

But what they really want to know is…

• How we travel as much as we do with newborns through teenagers
• How to manage the logistics of travel with kids
• How to keep a toddler happy on a long flight
• How we get our kids to eat fried grasshoppers or tongue meat tacos when they’re served
• How to talk their kid’s school into an extended field trip
• How to turn their kids into FUN travel companions
• How to unplug their kids from a gameboy and plug them into real life adventures
• How to inspire their teenagers to love family adventures
• How to take that kernel of a dream and turn it into reality

Everyone has a dream

Many parents share the dream of traveling with their children:

• Climbing around Etruscan ruins in the hill country of Italy
• Snorkeling with your five year old and listening to him yell, “Hi Nemo!!” through his snorkel
• Wandering the halls of Europe’s great museums over a long summer holiday
• Driving across your own continent and back with all seven of your children
• Touring with Daddy’s band and being his biggest fan at every concert
• Sampling sausage at German street fests and mustards in Dijon, France

Everyone has a dream with their children. Then, somewhere along the way they trade their dream for the “reality” of life with kids and before they know it, they’re filling out college applications and have missed it. Too many people miss it.

You don’t have to miss it.

You can live your dream!

How do we know?

Because we are!

Keri Wellman is exploring Europe with her four kids from their base in Germany. She’s a fiction writer, a marathon runner, a laughing mother and has the soul of an adventurer.

Jenn Miller is in the fourth year of an open-ended world tour with her four kids, across three continents and fifteen countries, so far! She writes for the travel and home education markets, bakes a lot of bread and loves to climb things with her kids. She’s a second generation Gypsy Mama.

We’re here to tell you that you can travel with your kids and love it!

We’ll show you how!

You’ll learn the secrets!

Bottles to Backpacks: The Gypsy Mama’s Guide to REAL Travel With Kids is a book you’ll return to again and again as your kids grow, the adventures change and the dreams just keep getting bigger!

You’ll learn:

• The 7 P’s
• The One Bag Rule (and exceptions!)
• How to prepare for health care & emergencies away from home
• How to deal with jet lag, temper tantrums, picky eaters and scheduling difficulties
• To navigate taxis, ferries, trains, buses, planes & long lines gracefully
• Games to play at home to prepare for airport scanners, third world bathrooms & more
• How to develop a safety plan
• To talk the educational powers that be into granting you a long term field trip
• To quantify the learning that takes place outside the box in a way that the schools will credit
• To inspire your teen to LOVE family travel and invest in it
• To work up the guts to let your teenager travel alone for the first time

And SO much more. It’s 140 pages of travel wisdom, resources and encouragement from those who’ve “been there, done that” with every age group.

If you dream of travel with your kids, you NEED this book!

Are you ready for adventure? Get the book!

Would you like to read what other traveling families are saying?

Hurry! Get the Launch Week Discount through December 3rd!

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“Can we climb over there?” eagerly asked my seven year-old, her pink straw hat casting dappled shadows on her freckled nose.

A row of arches, no longer bearing the weight of a roof, let the bright Italian sun showcase the etched pillars sticking out like ribs in the footprint of the villa.

Across the courtyard was a crumbling wall exactly like the one we had just stepped from. People paused to take pictures and wandered the path high on the bluff above.

Assuming the opposite side had an identical staircase, I said yes.

Before I could get my camera out of the bag, my daughter and nine year-old son were standing on top of the unfenced bluff.

“That doesn’t look right,” said my husband, as he dashed down the path.

It was only when I trotted over, I realized how high up the kids really were.

And there was no staircase.

My little explorers had climbed the edge of the crumbling wall up to what was once the top of a Roman villa. Ancient roof tiles stretched from the turf, where the kids stood, and extended across the broad expanse of the hill. In places, the herringbone pattern was disrupted by gaping holes, which exposed the sickening drop fifty feet below. Click to read more…

Imagine what it would be like to enter university as a freshman, full of hope, your sights set on your long term goal: Graduation and a degree in “doing hard things.” You’ve researched your field of study, you know what it’s going to take, and you know it’s not going to be easy. But, you know that in the end it will be worth the sacrifice and the uphill climb.

You dive in with enthusiasm and you work hard. You document your progress. You follow the prescribed course of study. You play by the rules that the controlling institution (your university) sets.You do everything “right,” and exceed every measurement, and everyone knows it.

Graduation day arrives!

You finish strong! Your friends, your family and all of those you’ve met along the way jump up and down and cheer as you walk across that stage. There’s not a dry eye in the place, you’ve done something amazing, something bigger than you thought possible, what’s more, you’re the first person in your family to do it.

But wait… where’s your diploma?

What?

The administration regrets to inform you that they won’t be issuing your diploma.

Why?

It’s not that you didn’t do the work, or didn’t pass the tests, or didn’t follow the rules. It’s not that you didn’t achieve greatness, they agree that you deserve it and you did everything they asked.

No, it’s just that somewhere in your third year of study they changed the rules, decided that because you were under eighteen they couldn’t reward your hard work, couldn’t acknowledge your accomplishment, and wouldn’t honor their end of the deal, even though you put in the time and the money and the work and honored your end.

Sure, you still did the work, you own the information and the accomplishment; nothing can change that. The diploma is just a piece of paper, but it matters to you, doesn’t it? It’s that piece of paper that represents your accomplishment to the rest of the world. Of course it matters.

Can you imagine the disappointment? Yours personally? That of your family and friends? That of everyone who supported you?

David & Daryl Vogel can.

These boys are friends of ours. They’re 13 years old and they just spent three years, a quarter (more or less) of their young lives, cycling from Alaska to Argentina. They were chasing a Guinness World Record for “Youngest people to cycle the Americas.”

They spent a year planning it, and three years pounding the pedals, up and down every hill. They followed their pre-approved route, logged their progress daily, dotted every i, crossed every t. They did it.

Their accomplishment is not disputed.

The Guinness people recognize that they did it, did it according to the rules, and met the prerequisite qualifications for the record. But somewhere along the way, they decided, without telling the Vogel boys, to discontinue the category of “youngest” to accomplish something.

Why? Because some parents are crazy enough to let pre-teens take off sailing around the world alone, or tackle some other similarly life threatening undertaking.

It’s probably a good choice, to remove that category, but is it fair to pull the rug out from under persons who are already underway in their own record attempts? Especially when the folks at Guinness have pre-approved the route and the attempt? Especially when, in this case, the minors in question were accompanied by and protected by their parents for every single inch of the trip? No, it’s not.

This post is part of a campaign to put pressure on the folks at GWR to honor their half of the bargain, to present the certificates to the Vogel boys, and to award them the World Record they were promised.

If we, as adults, or institutions made of adults, make a habit of changing the rules mid-stream we prove ourselves liars to the next generation.

If adults are liars and the rules are subject to change without notice, what incentive do young people have to play by the rules, rise above the challenges and do hard things?

• I have had the privilege of sitting around campfires with the Vogels, and watching their boys sword fight with mine.

• I have the benefit of knowing these kids first hand and, more importantly, knowing their parents first hand.
• I know that this record chase was done fairly, safely, faithfully and was enthusiastically the dream and the effort of the boys themselves.

Won’t you join me in calling on GWR to play by their own rules and honor the accomplishment of these inspiring young men?

Visit their website and encourage the boys as they challenge their denial

Here’s what Nancy (the boys’ Mom) asks that we do:

1. Blog about it - anybody who has a blog or knows anybody who has a blog, please do a quick write-up about this issue and it’s unfairness. I think we should be grandfathered in and then they should close the category. We understand the record the boys broke no longer exists; we would be happy with some sort of official recognition from Guinness – maybe a certificate stating that they met all the requirements as laid out in the guidelines they gave us?  I would be happy to talk with bloggers, but most likely will not consent to interviews with the boys.
2. Social media is powerful. When I got a letter from the director of Guinness World Records this morning he mentioned all the heat on Twitter, so I know it’s working. They have a facebook page (search Guinness World Records) and their Twitter account is @GWRnews Flood them with messages about this.
3. Contact the press – if you have a good, trustworthy source. This is one of those stories that could easily go haywire and I don’t want it twisted every which way. If you know someone in radio/TV/newspaper/magazine media, please contact them. But – don’t just throw it out there for all the kooks to pick up.

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The last wispy streak of plum faded to black on the horizon, while the city lights glimmered more brightly on the darkened lake. The kids were playing cards in their room, and as my husband and I sat on the balcony, raising our glasses of Sangiovese, music punctuated the quiet lakefront.

Audience members yelled, chanted, cheered or cried over the tones of technopop. The overly-exuberant voice of the DJ pierced the night in three languages, as he led the children’s dance party.

While I was mildly annoyed at the intrusion into our tranquil night; I was more struck by what those families had willingly forfeited: a glorious sunset, a still lake, swooping bats, quiet family time, stars appearing one by one—all traded for the sake of entertaining children.

We had opted to stay at the “family friendly” end of the lake, but what does that phrase really mean? Click to read more…

A friend introduced me to Stephanie, in the virtual world, some time ago. I instantly loved her heart as a Mom, her zest for life and her passion to make the world a better place through the influence of her little family.

Then, when I found out what their “next big thing” was, we became instant friends.

Imagine renting your house, walking away from everything you’ve known to live in a camper and travel the continental USA for a year… with two toddlers, and a mission!

Tim & Stephanie Shaeffer and their girls, aged two and four, are the one family dynamo known as “Give Every Day” and they’re on a mission to do just that as they move across the country. Click to read more…

Not long ago we encountered the Hudson Family, Michael, Nadine, Desmond (10) and Lenny (8), when they left a comment on one of our posts. Their international family is on an open ended world tour that currently has them in Mexico. We’d love to introduce them to you! Click to read more…

“A flower garden? Sounds like a chick trip to me,” said my husband, peering over my shoulder as I clicked the ‘English’ icon on the Dutch website.

Having been born and raised in Iowa, I recalled the hubbub that occurred every spring over the Pella Tulip Festival.

Now, living in central Europe, I had the opportunity to visit a place that had been exporting its bulbs before America was even discovered, the garden that started it all—the Keukenhof.

The words “tulip garden” inevitably conjure the image of old ladies trailed by reluctant husbands who shuffle from bench to bench, as the women chatter and snap photos for their scrapbooks with disposable cameras.

Despite initial misgivings (and groans in more than one quarter of the household), the Keukenhof Gardens near Leiden, Holland, turned out to be one of the best trips our family has ever taken.

Granted, the park contains more retirees than a Florida golf course, but in the presence of such vibrant and unusual flowers, it is easy to feel you’ve been transported to a land more wonderful and magical than even L. Frank Baum could have described.

If you think the Keukenhof is just a bunch of tulips, take a closer look. Click to read more…

Cool mountain air rushes in through the open window of our rented van. High among the mountains of Guatemala we wind along the paths, going higher and higher. Our destination lies at the top of one of these steep roads in a tiny town called Pixabaj (Peesh-ah-bah)

We pass some farmers toiling in their fields and they wave.

Most people living in Guatemala spend almost all of their lives doing hard labor jobs that make very little money with which to sustain their families. Today we are going to visit an institution that is actively working to give families an option with which to break the cycle of poverty. Click to read more…