Packing Light with Kids

I am a bit obsessed with packing/travel blogs.  I love, LOVE those pictures of what people carry in their carry-ons when they travel carry-on only, all those well-planned capsule wardrobes for every country or season, thoughtful recommendations for (usually MUCH too expensive) baggage and luggage, the endless lists of tips and tricks to make packing and travel easier, better, smarter, stronger, faster...you get the idea!

And there are lots and LOTS of blogs about family travel and/or travel with kids, but there are very few posts that cover any NEW ground for how to travel or pack light with kids, the holy grail of travel, as far as I am concerned.  Oh sure, there are posts that remind you diapers are available in foreign countries (duh), you can rent baby gear in the US and some European countries (only $10 per day for a car seat--are you kidding me?!), kids don't need to bring as much as you think (seriously, they don't), wear your heaviest clothes on the plane (check), and many, many posts about how to keep kids entertained during transit (two syllables: i-Pad), but even these kinds of posts seem to be missing something for me.  So I have decided to take it upon myself to write the post I want to read, specifically 9 Tips for Carry-on Only Travel with Kids: Europe in Winter/Spring on Budget Airlines.  (Why a subtitle?  Because I think I might make this a regular series, so we're starting with our most recent challenge, Paris and Barcelona during April.)

--Stay in locations with a washing machine.  This is absolutely my number one travel tip!  Find a place with laundry facilities, preferably a machine you can use yourself on your own time, but a laundromat or even a hotel laundry service will work in a pinch, though those cost more, of course.  We booked our apartments in Paris and Barcelona through AirBnb, and you can filter your results by whether or not a washer/dryer is available, which is exactly what I did.  If you know you can do laundry, you can reduce the amount of clothes you have to bring significantly, for both yourself and your somehow-always-dirty kids.  Then pack as few as 2-3 outfits per person no matter how long your vacation, knowing you will be able to wash as needed.  And bring your own detergent from home.  If space in your TSA-approved bag is at a premium, try something like these little packs of laundry soap sheets.  Very light and not liquid.  However, if you've got space for one more liquid, decant a little Method concentrated detergent into a spill-proof container.  A little goes a very long way!  Also, I always bring a travel bottle of fabric refresher like Febreze to freshen up clothes (particularly jeans) in between washings.  (Don't tell anyone, but sometimes you can skip washing jeans altogether on the road if you make good use of Febreze--shhhh!)  And for heaven's sake, skip the travel wardrobe capsules on Pinterest and only bring the clothes and (one pair of) shoes you will need for the activities you have planned--I have never needed a little black dress on any of my trips with the kids, full stop!

--Take quick-dry clothes as much as possible, which reduces both washing and drying times and helps in the event that you need to do washing in your sink for some reason (with kids, I advise against sink washing because it takes up too much time, but that's just me).  As a bonus, quick-dry clothes tend to be much lighter than non-technical fabrics, thereby further reducing the weight of your luggage.  For adults, quick-dry fabrics are available in pricey "travel wear" options, but I like to hit the athletic section of stores like Old Navy or Target instead for the same fabrics in much cheaper and often cuter options.  (However, I do adore the shirts I have from Eddie Bauer's Travex line and would love to have every piece if money were no object!)  Kids' quick-dry travel clothing is usually only available at a premium in high-end camping/outdoor gear retailers, but instead you can go to the activewear section of your local discount store to find sports shirts and shorts for kids that dry very quickly even though they might not be marketed as quick dry.  And be creative: for our trip to Sri Lanka last year, I went to various thrift stores in Utah while we were on vacation and found brand new quick-dry shirts and shorts for the boys for pennies.  And always pack swimsuits and shorts for everyone, no matter the climate.  We did bring suits that the boys used on the beach in Barcelona but neglected to bring shorts and were hit with an unexpected heat wave in Paris, so we had to make a quick run to H&M for shorts--oops!

--Select carry-on luggage very, VERY carefully.  Check out the carry-on dimensions on your airline's website, then pack your bags and measure them as precisely as possible.  (If you are flying on more than one airline, use the most restrictive guidelines.)  Traveling with only a standard sized carry-on and a "personal item" as we often do the States is really no sweat, but some budget European airlines do not allow personal items, and what constitutes the right size for hand luggage is much smaller than you are probably used to.  In addition, check the weight restrictions just as carefully. 10 kgs is not a lot.  And finally, practice, practice, practice.  Have children take their backpacks out on the town for a day at home.  Can they really manage to walk with their own luggage?  Would they be better off with a rolling backpack they can pack around when necessary and otherwise roll along? (HINT: in almost all cases, the answer here is an emphatic YES!) Most importantly, in the event of total meltdown, can you manage your luggage AND theirs?  Don't kid a kidder: you know those meltdowns happen, so see if you are prepared to pack your luggage as well as theirs when under duress.  We ended up carrying one boy's bad each up and down stairs a lot and I was glad that I could roll their bags with mine on my back when the going got tough for one or both of them.  For all these reasons, I recommend a bag with backpack straps for parents to leave hands free (with a waist belt if you are going to be doing any kind of trekking) and rolling, school-sized backpacks for children under 8 or 9 years old (preferably the cheapest kind of character backpacks because they are SO much lighter than the more expensive varieties).  Older children can use a regular backpack without wheels as well, but keep the contents to 10-15% of their body weight or under the airline weight limit, whichever is less.

The husband's bag this time around was the Stash
Duffle by Gregory, which can be worn as a backpack
or carried as a duffle and cinched vertically to be
made much smaller.  However, it proved not to be as
comfortable as my backpack, which was a huge bummer,
and makes it lot less useful in the end.

My bag was an older model, the Airporter by Guerrilla,
which I use without the pictured detachable daypack when
I am traveling light.  I LOVE this pack!

--Limit bags to no more than one per person, preferably even fewer if possible.  Anytime I have more than one bag or one purse for myself, I always forget something crucial (like the food/snack bag).  At home, this is annoying; on a trip, this can be the difference between a successful day and a horrible one!  So limit everyone to just one bag.  Then pack collapsible shopping bags or travel day packs or purses or whatever you like to carry on your day trips in that bag, to be used while your luggage stays safely stowed at your hotel or apartment.  The fewer bags you have, the more quickly and easily you can move when you're in a hurry, the faster you get through customs and immigration, the less likely you are to lose any of your luggage, and the happier you are in the long run!  We ended up with 5 bags, 4 backpacks and a cross-body satchel for snacks and passports, etc. which meant we didn't need to check anything, ever!  Huzzah!

--Start packing early.  While I simply cannot understand it, I know some people (the husband included) like to pack the night before.  I am not one of those people, particularly when traveling with children.  I prefer the long-term gathering method, in which I put everything I think I might need, as soon as I remember it, in a big pile in some out-of-the-way corner over a period of weeks.  I will most likely not bring all these things, but if they are all in one central location, my actual packing, which I start at least a week in advance, is much easier.  I also never, EVER pack without a list.  A list helps me to stay organized, which is sanity-saving, but when packing light with kids, a list also helps me avoid any overpacking, which is crucial.  There are packing lists available all over the web, but be sure to use these with caution (most are definitely NOT designed for traveling light) and customize them to fit your needs and those of your children.  Cut out as many non-essentials as possible to streamline both your list and your packing so you can get everyone down to just one bag, your ultimate goal.

--Bring a light-blocking curtain panel, some binder clips, and duct tape.  Wait, what?  Didn't I just say to cut out non-essentials?  Am I serious?  Completely!  Of all the things with which I travel, a light-blocking curtain panel has been indispensable, particularly in Europe, where it stays light for so very long.  My children do not need total darkness to sleep anymore (thank goodness), but they also can't get to sleep very easily when it isn't even close to dark yet.  In some areas, like Barcelona, we do alter our schedules a bit to account for the later nights, but generally we try to stay as close to our normal sleeping and waking times as possible, particularly on school breaks lasting only a week, to make transitioning back into school easier.  Enter the light-blocking curtain, which can help simulate evening light in a very bright bedroom.  Use the binder clips to attach the panel to an existing (almost always too sheer) curtain.  Alternatively, use the duct tape to attach the panel to a door or window frame.  (HINT: affixing tape to the upper ledge of door or window frames means that if any paint happens to come off, no one will see it.  And duct tape can also be used to repair luggage, clothing, and shoes in an emergency.) Sigh in relief as your children drift off to sleep in relative darkness.

--Pack a poor man's noisemaker.  Years ago, we used to shlep around a machine that was supposed to be used in spas that contained the sounds of rushing water or crashing waves or what-have-you.  In fact, we still have one of those at my in-laws house that we use every summer.  However, when traveling internationally and when traveling light, those kinds of machines take up too much precious space and often simply don't work (we burned one out on our first overseas trip with J when he was a one year old).  Enter the lowly battery-operated clock radio.  We have a tiny clock radio that's about the size of a deck of cards that we bring with us everywhere.  We tune it to a station that's nothing but static and voila!  Instant white noise!  Not only does it help the kids fall and stay asleep, it helps us all to stay happily in one hotel room when we have to, because we are less likely to wake up the boys accidentally.  In both our apartments this trip, we were serenaded one night at bedtime by pianos somewhere in the building.  I just turned up the static, and they went right to sleep undisturbed.  And, in all honesty, after listening to noisemakers for more than seven years now, they help me fall asleep, too!  Everybody wins!

--And for heaven's sake, don't forget where you packed the ziplock bags you prudently remember to bring on every. Single. Trip!  (Not that that has happened to anyone I know recently or anything....)

--Invest in a scarf with a secret pocket like this one or these.  These are a GENIUS invention: if you get the right fabric (mine is textured black), the zipper is completely hidden and pickpocket-proof. You can carry passports, travel cards, cell phones, wallets, whatever you want in there.  We left our passports at the apartment but I carried my wallet, the husband's wallet, and my cell phone every day perfectly securely.   The husband even almost got roped into a street interview pickpocket scam but I wasn't worried that we would lose anything because he had absolutely nothing in his pockets, and no one would have guessed where we were carrying all our valuables.

It's hard to get a good picture of my scarf because so many of my
shirts were black, but I wore it every single day!

We're back!

Spring break and blogging hiatus over!  In the next few posts, I will recount our trip to Barcelona and Paris, complete with more pictures than anyone but us wants to see, and publish our newly revised packing post, but, for now, a few overall observations to get us going:

1. Airbnb is AWESOME!!!  Our two apartments were perfection and together cost us less than half the nights in one hotel room would have and instead we had kitchens, living rooms, washing machines, separate spaces for the kids, fantastic locations right in the heart of both cities, neighborhood bakeries steps away, and hosts who waited for us even when our plane was delayed.  When I knew we were going to get in late, I was worried for a while about putting someone out and realized that is the one difference between hotels and Airbnb: in the first place, you just call the front desk and tell them what's going on, and in the second place, it's someone who doesn't do this for a living you're dealing with, which felt a bit odd.  But when we arrived, our first host's friend, who had been assigned to greet us, couldn't have been nicer and wasn't bothered by our lateness in the least!  And the space!  I would trade just about anything for that kind of space!

2.  We need to prep our kids a bit more for museum trips.  They were troopers and really managed to stay interested much longer than I thought given how little we had prepped them for some of our outings, but I think if we had been more explicit about what we were going to be doing and when and emphasized the fact that all museum trips were followed by park/playground adventures in the afternoons, we would have gotten more cooperation out of them over the long haul.  Our bad!

3.  I've said it before and I will say it again, never, EVER leave without copious ziplock bags!  I brought some but then hid them in our luggage so smoothly I didn't discover them until the last day, so I first had to borrow some from our Barcelona apartment and then had to break down and buy a box from Monoprix in Paris so I wouldn't go insane without them.  When packing your own lunches for on-the-go budget eating in an expensive city, plastic bags are essential!  (I ended up leaving the unused half a box for the next visitors--you're welcome!)

4.  Paris is wonderful, but Barcelona is more my kind of town.  After about a day there, the husband was ready to move back after retirement, and he doesn't even speak Spanish!  Fabuloso!

5.  Note to self: coming back home at 9:00pm and then having to get your kids up at 5:30am for school the very next day is not such a good idea....oops!

Happy Easter!

Our Easter festivities were spread out over several days this year.  One of the results of living in a non-Christian country is that the Christian holidays like this one happen in fits and spurts, but that meant we got to celebrate for a long time.  First up was an Easter party thrown by the parents of one of J's classmates, which included pizza, egg dying, and our first egg hunt.  They couldn't find very many plastic eggs, so they did it Doha-style and bought the kinds of balls you use in a ball pit, sliced them open, filled them with candy, and hid those instead.  The kids were overjoyed and couldn't really tell the difference in the end!

On Easter Friday, when we celebrate here, the Easter bunny came bringing treats, books, stuffed animals, and a toy each, so everyone was all smiles!

The husband took some pictures with his new camera after church, after a busy Sabbath day during which the husband and I sang four songs with the choir in Sacrament meeting, and I taught the lesson in both Sunday School and Young Women's.  We were happy to be able to sing all the Easter hymns to remind us of the Atonement and the Resurrection and the real reason for this holiday.

The next day, Saturday, was another day full of adventure.  We started with an egg roll and egg hunt and Easter cookie making at our neighbor's house.  Later, we attended an Easter Tea at a local hotel for yummy food, a visit from the Easter bunny, face painting, Easter egg decorating, and yet another Easter egg hunt.  The boys got second place with 21 eggs!

Almost leaving on a jet plane (well, make that 6 jet planes)

We are counting down to Paris and Barcelona!  I have been and will be spending this week packing, repacking, and repacking, as I am wont to do, particularly when we are flying carry-on only.  I have a whole packing post ready to go for when we return, edited to include what worked and what didn't and what I wish we had done differently.

In the meantime, there is still much planning to be done, including, in no particular order:

• Communicating with our Airbnb hosts.  Thus far, I have been very impressed with the communication tools.  You can exchange emails through the website, and the responses show up as texts on your phone, as well, which will be very convenient when we are on the go.  Our Barcelona host seems a bit more comfortable with the process than our Paris host, but both have answered all my questions quickly and comprehensively, and I'm looking forward to our stays at both apartments.  Just to clarify, since someone asked, we are staying in apartments that don't have any current tenants in both cases.  I decided that for our first foray into Airbnb, I wanted to have places that had a few things as possible in them for the boys to disturb!
• Determining the metro stops closest to our attractions of choice.  I like to have at least some idea of where I am headed, even if we end up changing plans/route on the fly.
• Deciding whether or not if would be to our advantage to get a multi-day transport pass.  Right now it looks like Barcelona, no, Paris, yes.  Paris has an option that is exactly what we need for considerably less than the individual metro trips would be, while in Barcelona we will simply get a few ten-ride passes and use those instead.
• Hunting down restaurants near our chosen destinations.  This is really just a back-up plan in case inspiration fails us while we are out and about, or insane hunger hits and we haven't seen anywhere that looks like somewhere we want to eat, or we forget that almost everything is closed in Barcelona on Sundays.  Our plan is to eat breakfasts on the go from bakeries, lunches out, and dinners back at our apartments, but we are ever flexible on meals and will probably end up doing a lot of snacking all day long to keep the boys energized while we are walking from place to place.
• Marveling at the euro!  I have never traveled to Europe when the euro has been this low in comparison to the dollar and that fact, combined with coming from uber-expensive Qatar, suddenly makes Spain and France seem like bargain lovers' paradises--what the what??  I may actually do a little shopping beyond souvenirs this trip, something I have never, ever done in Europe (except for that little but totally necessary bit of shoe shopping we did in Frankfurt last year).  As one of my friends put it recently, all of Europe appears to be on sale!
• Figuring out the boys' travel toy situation.  I usually make them a flight pack with new pens/markers, a new notebook, a new little toy and some old favorites, and some special snacks, but our first flight out is a very red-eye (we are leaving at 1:50am because I have a hard time reading the 24 hour clock--whoops!), so they won't need much to entertain them at first.  However, since we will be in apartments, they will need some toys for playing with when we are back for the evening, so I will be deciding just how many or, more accurately, how few of those we will be taking.  I don't usually bring Legos traveling because they really aren't the greatest airplane toys, but they entertain the boys for so long and in so many other situations, I may resurrect our Lego travel boxes I made a while back.  We shall see....

Through all of this, I will be trying very, very hard not to be nervous about flying in the wake of the recent Germanwings disaster.  We will be flying almost that same route twice, from Paris to Barcelona and then back again.  It is so shocking, as it always is when someone kills others wantonly, but, in a post 9/11 world, using a plane as a weapon makes us all just a little bit more...afraid? worried? sad? fatalistic?  I don't know.  I wish these kinds of tragedies were becoming fewer and farther between instead of more and more frequent, affecting more and more innocent people.

Roughing it in the desert

Last weekend we went camping, our first time in the desert, and our first time as a family.  The husband has taken the boys camping several times before in the States, but I have managed to avoid going every other time (what?  There have always been scheduling conflicts!  Yeah, right!).  To say I'm not a huge camper is a huge understatement.  The husband, on the other hand, has a long Scout and family history of camping and cabining and all sorts of out-of-doors pursuits, so he is always enthusiastic to go and give the boys that experiment.  This time, we jumped on the bandwagon of a father/son or Scout campout that turned into a much bigger ward campout at the last minute.  I think there were more than 60 people there in the end.

So we loaded up our car with everything we could think of that we might need (and a little bit more) and headed out to Zekreet, a beach on the other side of the country, about an hour away.  And, of course, the boys LOVED it.  Zekreet is filled with huge limestone monoliths, perfect for climbing up and semi-sliding down.  When we finally got out to our campsite after a 15 minute off-road ride along the beach and had been unloading for a few minutes, I looked around for E and found him almost at the top of the huge wall of rock behind us, happy as a clam.  He must have climbed up and down the rock face 20 times in the next 24 hours, if not more.  J, who started out getting to the top and then getting stuck, conquered his fears and was up just as often.  Both boys were basically running wild all evening and all the next morning, happy to be doing something new.

 We did the whole nine yards: s'mores, food cooked by the Scouts, an enormous breakfast with pancakes, eggs, breakfast burritos, and BACON, and looking for shells and playing in the water at the beach.  Our night sleeping in the tent went relatively well: we separated the boys, putting J on the edge and E in between us, which was good choice since E turned into a whirling dervish at night and ended up perpendicular to the husband and I, at our feet.  He did sit up suddenly at one earlier point and launch himself across where I had been sleeping and onto J's chest, but he was still asleep and I was able to wrestle him back to his sleeping area before J woke up enough to get upset.  Must have been having a really vivid dream of some kind, perhaps about flying?  We were with a mixed group of campers, so the teenagers stayed up far too late for me and the tents around ours had even younger kids, some of whom had rough nights of coughing and crying at various points, but we all managed to get some sleep, which I consider a win!  Maybe we will try this camping thing more often next winter when it cools down enough for it again (the hot weather is almost here, so I think we might be out of weekends for now).

E on one of his many climbing adventures up the hills.

Here we are in front of our little blue tent.  We ended up taking the rain flap off and sleeping on top of our sleeping bags and blankets for most of the night since it was cool out but there wasn't much of a breeze...until it started blowing so hard we thought our tent was going to fly away at 3am!

Eating fruit cocktail out a can, cuz I'm classy like that!

E with his favorite band of brothers!

Pensive  or mesmerized J at the bonfire. 

Did I tell you the husband got a new camera?  He spent lots of time working on taking shots like these of they boys and their glow sticks!

A blurry shot of them at the top of the mountain.

A clearer picture of their "boys' club," which Mommy quickly shut down when the little girls climbing up made it to where the boys were.   No girls allowed?  I don't think so!

A partial family shot courtesy of a friend who got us before we left the next day.

Chinese New Year

A few weeks ago we were invited to a Chinese New Year party with members of the Emergency Department.  We had never been out with these people, nor to this restaurant, nor even to a Chinese New Year celebration before, so we didn't really know what to expect.  Not surprisingly, we had a great time!  The restaurant was fun; we had a private party room, but there was also a kids' room with movies and video games, not that our boys ended up staying there for too long--there was food to be had!  So much good food!  The boys made me proud: they complained there weren't enough dumplings and ate their weight in Peking duck!

The restaurant was above some luxury car dealerships
(and E and I were searching for a potty at the moment).

The restaurant looked a little like a bordello, no?

There was a LONG wait before we ate, so the iPads appeared. 

The boys LOVEd their envelopes with eight brand new one riyal bills!

The Peking duck station.  This woman was a genius, so so fast!

Look at all this fabulously yummy food!  Delicious!

Life shots

Time for some more pictures to try to help those of you across the many ponds get a sense of life here in Doha.  

What's this, you ask?  A picture of sour cream, finally back on the
shelves after a mysterious and almost devastatingly long
absence, of course.  Random shortages happens a lot here,
so when you find something you've been missing, you will
often take a picture to share with all your friends.  I mean,
it's Sour Freaking CREAM!

And these are camels.  I still can't get over seeing camels!

Remember when I mentioned the rain?  Well, one of my
least favorite quirks about construction here is the endless
fascination with polished marble, which is hazardous enough when
coated with the ever-present layer of fine dust but positively
life-threatening when it rains! 

Another shopping shot: lamb brains, anyone?  No?  But they're
from Australia and everything!

This might only be meaningful to those of us living here, but we recognize the uniform
(or some variation thereof) every single immigrant worker who lives here 
wears every day, even in the middle of summer, at the hottest part 
of the day (which is representative of the entire gamut of human rights 
questions here)...only this isn't a worker, it's the construction 
site equivalent of a scarecrow, meant to demonstrate (I think)
proper safety attire...or possibly to scare people away from the entrance!

What's this, snow? Oh no, just a bunch of soap suds outside of our Honda Dealership.
Because it rained a lot and there's a soap factory next door.  What's wrong with that?!