Traveling With Kids: Part 2- Hotel Tips

In Part 1 of Traveling with Kids, I talked about using Milestone Packs to keep the kids occupied and happy during a long trip. Well, once you survive that, you will need to survive the hotel! There are a few things that you can do ahead of time to make sure your hotel stay is nice and hassle-free.

One thing that makes a hotel stay better is to make a couple of checklists. One checklist can be used when making your reservation, and the other can be for preparing for your stay. I've compiled a couple of lists to get you started. These are things that I've learned over the years, and we use whenever we travel.

Traveling With Kids: Part 1- Milestone Packs

Over the years, my husband has had to travel a lot for work. Many Most of those times, the entire family travels with him. I have to admit that the long car rides have gotten easier over the years with things like hand held video games, smart phones, and portable dvd players, but sometimes, we just don't want to have to employ those "new age tactics" to keep the kids quiet and not ready to break out into a riot occupied and entertained. Before each trip, we make sure the kids have something to do in the car. We pack snacks, books, and activities. I recently came up with the idea of milestone packs.

Milestone packs are small bags of stuff for the kids to open at certain milestones (determined by you). You could go with every hour, every 30 minutes, or after every bathroom stop (because, if you have kids... you will be stopping!) Just figure out how long your trip will be, divide that by your child's attention span, and you will know how many milestone packs you will need (give or take.. lol)
So... what is a milestone pack?