Traveling with children

This is a throw back to a former post, but since we are once again making a trek back to the US, I thought I would resurrect the blog with it.

Traveling with children.  . .

Those words, whether they excite you or send a shudder down your spine, are something that all of us with kids (at least those of us who live far from our families) have to think about. 

I am writing this post because in 6 weeks we leave for another trip back to the US to see our families.

I will begin by saying that my husband and I both love to travel. We love seeing new places, getting to enjoy new experiences, trying new food, and witnessing different cultures, all of which are things we want to pass on to our children. 

 It has added so much to our joy getting to be with them and seeing them experience different parts of the world.  However, it can still be difficult traveling with small children. 

Living in Australia, and not just Australia, but Western Australia (as my mom will tell you the furthest spot away we could possibly move and still be on dry land),  has given us ample opportunities to hone in our travel skills.  For us to travel back to see our families, we have to fly across Australia (5 hours plane ride), across the Pacific Ocean (13 hours plane ride), then across the US (another 5 hour plane ride) and that is just the flying time and doesn't take into account and of the layovers along the way.

 By the time we reach home, we’ve usually spent around 30 hours of travel time, have flown halfway around the world, lost a day in there somewhere, and to put it nicely are looking a bit haggard. 

This will be my fifth trip back to the states since we have moved here to Australia. We have also traveled to various destinations in Australia, Paris, Bali, and various other destinations with our small children.

We are blessed with 2 tried and tested pretty amazing travel kids, currently 5 1/2 and 3 ½ and this trip we will add for the first time our 3rd who will be 7 months old.   As amazing as the two older kiddos are they can still be handfuls, and still bring a whole extra level of craziness to travel. I will not deny that there have been moments where I have wanted to hide behind a pillar and deny they are mine, and moments where I would give anything for them to go to sleep so I can, but we have found that it’s worth the hard parts for the joy it brings. And let's face it, we can't just leave them here :)

So how do we cope? 

Over the next few weeks as we prepare for our journey, I’ll be writing some of the tips we use for traveling.  I'll look at how and when we go about booking flights, tips for getting ready, things we plan for the plane ride,  how we go about adjusting to jet lag,  and tips on traveling around different cities.  These are just suggestions and the ultimate thing is to be flexible and do what works with your family.

Please share any and all of your tips you have for traveling here as we can always use advice :)