Four Things That Saved Our Family Vacation

Yes, one of them is snacks.

On Saturday, we arrived back home after spending two weeks in Europe. It’s the first time we’ve taken the kids out of the country (except for the Caribbean) and by far our most ambitious family trip yet. I’m going to be honest with you — despite the amazing locales we were visiting (Iceland, London, Paris), I’d kept my expectations fairly low. Traveling with our kids has never been easy — my husband and I, on past “vacations,” have said to each other, “Why do we do this to ourselves???” — so I didn’t want to go into the trip assuming everything would be blissful and easy and then wind up frustrated.

My expectations were surpassed — by a lot. We had a blast. I’m pretty sure this is because we’ve reached the “sweet spot” with my kids’ ages: They are 9 and 12, so old enough to handle stuff and be flexible, yet not so old that they hate us. I’m sharing this not to gloat but to give those of you with younger kids hope: It really will get easier!

Indeed, our kids did great. Although they didn’t sleep a wink on the overnight flight to Iceland, they ambled through the next day just fine. (I mean, we had a meltdown or two.) Although they’re picky eaters at home — don’t get my 12-year-old anywhere NEAR a banana — they happily tried things like reindeer paté (in Iceland), spicy Indian food (in London) and even snails (in Paris — well, okay, my 9yo tried one, then spit it out, because THEY ARE SNAILS).

Yes: There were times when we lost our patience and snapped at each other, but for the most part, we actually had a lot of fun. In Iceland, we ran a multi-day trivia game, which got us through the long car rides. In London, we saw Wicked and my daughter and I swam in a famous “ladies pond.” In Paris, we ate our weight in croissants and took silly photos of ourselves holding baguettes in front of the Eiffel tower.

Today I’m going to share four things we did on the trip that helped make it a success.