I’m back from a weeklong, interesting, but not particularly relaxing vacation with the kids.

We ventured all the way out to San Francisco to visit my sister and her family. This was the first time that three of our children have made it out to the Bay Area, so of course, we tried to do a bit of sightseeing as well.

I have read all kinds of parenting tips about traveling with children. I have done it often enough that I could actually write a manual on family vacation planning. But theory and practice are always two different things. And no matter how much you try, you just can’t plan everything.

This vacation was clear across the country for us - and since we were combining visiting and sightseeing we decided to go for one week - Saturday to Saturday. I don’t usually like to take vacations that are longer than four or five days. It is just too long for our family. Eating out every day is expensive, not very nutritious and just like at home, it is hard to please everyone. One of our children has multiple food allergies and that makes it even more difficult.

Choose a Suite with Kitchenette Instead of a Standard Room
We took a step in the right direction by staying at a Marriott Residence Inn (they really rock!). In theory, the full kitchen and complimentary breakfast and weekday snack/happy hour should help with mealtime hassles.

In reality, the breakfast was fantastic and took care of one meal a day for us. And while the full kitchen was useful for reheating take out and late night snacks, we were out for most of the day. Without the proper utensils and spices/condiments and with no time to prepare meals - cooking was not a true option. Also, because we were out for most of the day, we never made it back to the hotel for the evening snack hour.

But all in all I would still go for a room with a kitchen or a kitchenette. We did save some money on breakfasts and snacks.

Choosing a Suite
Our family of six is a rather large crew. Generally we do not fit in one room when we travel. A two bedroom suite will often sleep six with two people in each bedroom and two on a sofa bed. Happily, I was able to snag a two bedroom suite on this trip. In theory, it would have been great.

The reality was that our suite was billed as a “penthouse” suite. Wow, penthouse sounded awesome - pretty luxurious, in fact. In actuality, the suite was called “penthouse” because it was a two level unit. The downstairs had one bedroom with a common sitting area (sofa bed) and kitchen. The upstairs was a loft that housed the second bed. This loft area was open to the floor below.

Thankfully, our children are old enough to respect the “power of the loft” and did not really pay much attention to the open to the floor below part. But a wiggly toddler, like my nephew, may just want to run upstairs, climb on the bed and hang over the edge while waving to mommy below. Not a good idea. Also, surprisingly, our entire unit was located on the second floor - with no handicapped access. Read, no stroller access either. Luckily, we are beyond the stroller phase as well.

One thing that the best of planning cannot eliminate are sibling squabbles. And even though each of the kids had a bed, they didn’t necessarily want to share it with a particular other sibling. So, many arguments erupted over who would sleep where. They just don’t tell you about this in Parenting 101. When we summon up the courage to tackle another family vacation (or when enough time passes that we forget about the bickering), I will make up a schedule before we leave home about who will sleep where. The younger kids each wanted to have a “sleepover” with mom and dad and to accommodate everyone, we needed the children to be a bit flexible about sleeping arrangements. We did not foresee this to be a problem. But it was.

Pool Required!
I found that a pool is still number one among parenting tips when planning a trip with kids, no matter what their ages. Our kids frolicked in the pool every night after a full day of visiting and sightseeing. Ask them about the best part of the vacation, and they will tell you it was the pool. No matter that we needn’t have traveled the length of the United States to go swimming.

Location, Location, Location
Our hotel was a bit off the beaten path so to speak. It was closer to my sister’s place but not near the sights. And driving everyday became a bit tedious (again, the sibling bickering). I don’t know if I would do it differently by splitting up the sightseeing portion of our trip and the visiting portion but it is something to consider.

And now, I have one cranky, jet lagged child demanding my attention. More nuggets of parenting advice from the trip to follow ….