A tip from a European friend who was looking for a kid friendly, PADI certified, dive site - www.dive-urge.com .  No personal experience with this, but she thought to pass it on.  Thanks very, very much!
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Even if you don't find yourself in Asia during Lunar New Year, if you are in an area with an Asian population and any special events for the holiday, take your kids to them!  How can kids not love a celebration that includes fireworks, food, loud drumming, and dancing lions?

Our first Lion Dance was in Malaysia; two amazingly athletic guys under a red costume that looked like a foo dog danced to the accompaniment of multiple koto drummers.  The lion was spinning and leaping on poles 30' off the ground, and the kids loved it when he would pose and snap his huge jaws.

This year, one of the local schools hosted a two-day festival put on by the local Chinese chamber of commerce.  They also had a lion dance (although not on the high poles, and the drums weren't painted with cigarette ads), music and dancing, and lots of activities [...]More

We chose London as a destination because we were making this trip all about the kids.  London was also the one place that we could go that had no connections en route and had a daytime departure and arrival.  Well, it was the one place that we would want to go from Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia since we wanted to go somewhere vaguely civilized.  And being an English speaking country was an added bonus.  

So departing at a civilized hour of the morning, rather than those dreaded 2am or 4am departures, we flew into Heathrow.  Terminal 5 was not open yet, so it was busses from the tarmac, but we were one adult per child, so no worries at all on this trip.  We were officially on vacation.  We’d checked one bag and had one carry on each, so the amount of stuff was even manageable.   One of our strategies for traveling with children is to spend all the money on the hotel, since we retain our nap, snacks and bedtime schedule, so we do tend to spend quite a bit of our time in or near the hotel.& [...]More

Living in New York City, we don't own a car.  The only times we rent one are for traveling, either up or down I-95 to visit relatives, or up to Canada for the summer.  D has no concept of a car ride lasting less than 4 hours.

Nevertheless, since he's in the car so rarely, he's not used to the carseat, and sometimes has trouble falling asleep. 

The best solution to this is to persuade a third adult to ride with us to sit in the back and amuse him while DH and I concentrate on navigating and driving, respectively.  Since this is not always practical, we have turned to audiobooks.

Not, as you might think, audiobooks meant for kids, though we do have a couple of Dr Seuss collections just in case.  But on our last big trip up to Canada, we discovered that the thing which will really knock him out is nonfiction aimed at adults.  While DH and I were immersed in the charming and fascinating The Map That Changed The World, D wanted nothing more than to sleep through the [...]More

This post has taken me a long time to write, because it was a point of high expectation, that turned out quite differently than planned. You see, dear reader, prior to becoming a parent, years before I became a traveler, I was a book-hound. I love looking at bindings, papers, and inks; I revel in font choices; I soak up the typography. The rarer the book, the longer I want to stand near it and gaze.  (I know, silly.  But there it is.)

So, this summer I took my family to Dublin for a short climb in part of

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