I spent 48 hours at Disney World as part of the travelingmoms.com retreat and since this was a working trip, I didn’t bring my kids. In fact, they weren’t invited, and even had they been, one kid is in college, one was skiing with friends and the youngest was on a bar/bat mitzvah trip to Israel.

But still, every time I go away for business, I go through a bit of an exit strategy. So if I were abducted by Martians, these are things my kids would miss:

Dinner. I cook dinner most nights, and try to make double what we need for favorite meals. Then I can freeze half, or we can eat it later in the week, and I only had to cook once.

Dessert. I’ve been baking since I was a kid, and one of the tricks my mother-in-law taught me was to freeze cookies or brownies. Whenever I go away, I leave a batch of peanut butter brownies in the freezer for a treat.

Bread. Over a year ago, I started a sourdough starter, and I’ve been baking bread regularly. I’ve got it down so I can mix a dough in just a few minutes, let the starter work its magic for a few hours, then do the next step when I have time. Although the quality of the bread degrades in the freezer, I leave a couple of loaves for the kids (and my husband) for lunches.

Math homework. I am the math expert in the family, and have had to explain corresponding angles and differential equations over the phone.

Shoes. My three daughters all wear the same size shoes as I do, so we trade footwear. When I go away, I sometimes take shoes that they want with me. When I go south in winter, I leave my boots home for the jackals to pick through.

Humor. We love to laugh in my family, and my kids definitely miss my warped sense of humor.

Compassion. One of my worst trips was when my youngest daughter, who was 5 at the time, had an accident. I was on a plane from Los Angeles and when I turned on my phone at JFK, I had an increasingly sadder series of messages from her.
Estrogen. Try as he might, my husband just doesn’t get it sometimes. When one of the kids has cramps or wants to rant about her period, I am there for her.

But since my kids are teens, and I rarely go away for more than a few days without them, they can handle me being away, reachable by phone, text and email. And when I am away from them, I can enjoy:

Sleep. Our bedroom is a floor below the girls’ bedrooms and we hear every floor creak, toilet flush and late night phone call.

A break from fights. As I said, it’s an estrogen -laden household. Maybe the Martians are interested in three teenage girls?

I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms blogging program, for a gift card worth $25. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

Disney Mars Needs MomsMars Needs Moms Trailer

Vegetarian in Vietnam

Ok, I haven’t actually been to Vietnam, but Hanco’s, in Cobble Hill and Park Slope, has Vietnamese sandwiches in three vegetarian varieties.

The traditional Vietnamese sandwich, banh mi, combines ground pork, ham, and pâté on a toasted baguette with cilantro, carrots, and daikon radish. At Hanco, the vegetarian variety has tofu, and with all the other flavors, plus the sweet/spicy Srichacha chili sauce, you really won’t miss the meat.

A vegetarian chicken and vegetarian pork variety use the same fake meat used in vegetarian Chinese dishes, and the different textures make these great choices for the vegetarian diner.

Best of all, Hanco’s now has whole wheat baguettes, giving the sandwiches a bit more heft and some fiber. All the sandwiches have mayo and butter on them, too.

The $6.50 sandwiches are perfect for lunch; if you want to have dinner here, you can add summer rolls (shrimp, lettuce, fresh mint, and vermicelli wrapped in rice paper, with a peanut hoisin sauce or garden rolls, swapping the shrimp for cucumber.

Salads have lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, carrot and mint topped with roasted peanuts, fried red onion, and scallion oil

Hanco’s also has a sardine sandwich I have yet to try, with tomato sauce along with the usual Vietnamese condiments.

Drinks include a large variety of bubble teas, with or without milk, (or soy milk, for vegans) all with large balls of tapioca. It is definitely an acquired taste.

Cold and Flu

If I ever waver about getting the flu vaccine, I think back to when my oldest daughter was a sophomore in high school. It was early in the flu season, around October, and we had not yet gotten our shots. She got the flu and missed a week and a half of school. It was not a kid’s dream vacation, watching movies and reading trashy books. She was really, really sick and when she finally got better, she spent weeks playing catch up with her school work.

My youngest daughter just recovered from a nasty cold - three days of missed school - and we even visited the doctor to make sure she didn’t have some strain of flu that escaped the vaccine. No, just a cold, which she has now passed on to me.

According to Dr Tanya Remer Altmann,a pediatrician consultant for Puffs, the common cold is “the most frequent cause of school and work absenteeism.”

Dr. Altmann offers these tips for avoiding colds:

Practice Healthy Habits (get plenty of sleep, exercise and eat your veggies!)

Wash hands early and often with soap and warm water for 20 seconds.

Soothe cold symptoms by drinking fluids and running vaporizers/humidifiers at night.

Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze and put your used tissue in the trash.

Soften-And Strengthen-Your Blows by selecting a gentle but strong tissue like Puffs Plus with Lotion to help prevent chapping from frequent nose blowing.

I tried Puffs Plus with the Scent of Vicks. It brought me back to my days of have Vicks VapoRub smeared on my chest and gave me the illusion of feeling taken care of. Because no sooner had I sat down, than my young patient bleated about needing a hot drink.

So is the flu vaccine worth it? Nora still got sick, still missed school. But she was out less than half the time, and by the middle of that third day, she was fine. Had freezing rain not been falling, we might have sent her to school in the middle of the day.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend vaccination for everyone 6 months and older this season. For more information, click here

Family travel: U.S. getaway

Having just returned from Puerta Vallarta, where my brother-in-law treated friends and family to a vacation to celebrate his 60th birthday, I was thinking that my ideal family vacation is one that I don’t have to pay for.

But I’ve taken a number of free vacations and some are far from ideal.

For my kids, now 13, 17 and 19, any adventure related trip is up their alley. They love to ski, and though we haven’t ventured out west, we’ve had great ski vacations at Mount Snow and Smugglers’ Notch. My husband doesn’t ski, and now that the kids are older and accomplished skiers, we don’t even have to put them in ski programs. They ski together and my husband and I cross country ski. We gather by a fire for lunch, have a hot chocolate break at some point, and eat for more than normal, since we are burning fuel.

We have also taken our kids on Backroads bicycle trips. These are great because all the planning is done by the Backroads team. You choose a trip and show up on the appointed day - your bicycle is ready to go, you get a detailed map and snacks, and meals and hotels are arranged. You even have built in friends - on family trips, the Backroads planners put together groups with kids of similar ages.

We are not the only ones who love Backroads. Last year, my siblings and their kids took a family biking trip out West.


But for my money, the best place for an active family to go to in the United State is the all-inclusive Club Med Sandpiper. We have been to several Club Meds, and the mixture of family time and adult-only time is ideal. Kids have their own clubs, where they hang with kids their own age.

My girls are addicted to the circus school, where they perform on the flying trapeze. And when it is too cold to swim - my friends went to Sandpiper over Christmas, during a cold spell - there are tennis lessons, sailing trips, fitness classes.

The food, for vegetarians, fussy eaters, hearty appetites - even dieters - is amazing. Maybe dieters wouldn’t be too happy about the preponderance of food, but if they stick to salads and fresh fruit, they can find low calorie food.

My husband and I have a major birthday coming up (OK, a year away) and we’d love to go with our extended family.

If only we could find a way for my brother-in-law to pay.

I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Alamo blogging program, for a gift card worth $50. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

Vegetarian in Mexico

At our first meal Puerto Vallarta, my husband asked a waitress if a dish he saw go by had meat or tofu in it. She laughed, “there is no tofu in Puerto Vallarta!” Yet we found tofu, and much more for vegetarians, at Coco’s Kitchen.

In fact, one of the dinner entrees, Coco’s Tofu Steak, had grilled tofu over Chinese noodles, with lots of vegetables. It was delicious. If you eat fish, you could have the Chiles Rellenos, with shrimp, mushrooms and cheese, or the excellent Mahi Mahi, served with jicama and a mango sauce.

There are a number of appetizers for vegetarians, including an avocado egg roll, with sun dried tomato and tamarind, and a simple grilled polenta with red bell pepper. Most interesting and flavorful were the tortilla tacos, with the taco skin made form sheets of thinly sliced jicama. These added crunch to the seared tuna or shrimp with ginger inside. Potato skins with tomatillo salsa or grilled eggplant are other vegetarian options.

Inventive salads included mixed greens with mango, goat cheese and alamonds, and a spinach & strawberry salad. I thought the latter would be too sweet, but the gorgonzola cut the sweetness, and the caramelized pecans had only a touch of sugar.

The simple beet carpaccio, with mandoline thin slice of beet and parmesan cheese, and basil, was perfectly prepared. Meals starts with pita crisps, and a yogurt/garlic dip, gratis.

The corn and bell pepper soup, creamy and not too rich, was perfect on a night where the ocean breezes cooled us. Coco’s only has outdoor seating, open to the street or in a rear patio, under fig trees. With candles and fresh flowers, the restaurant offers casual romance, at reasonable prices.

122 Olas Altas, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Saving Money

One of my new year’s resolutions is to find new ways to save money, and many websites offer money-saving ideas, even when traveling.

Blackboard Eats provides free coupons for restaurants in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. If you live in one of these cities, or happen to be planning a trip, you can sign up for free and get one of the 30% off pass codes, sent to your phone, to use on your travels. We have gotten a couple of these to restaurants we already frequent, so there has been no downside. One caveat: you get just one code, good for one visit, and they are limited.

jDeal has discounts on Kosher restaurants, hotels and more, just in New York right now, but expanding to Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Israel, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The site is geared towards Jewish consumers, but anyone can eat a Kosher restaurant, and the discounts range up to 50% off. Like Groupon, you buy a discount coupon; unlike Groupon, you won’t find deals on cheeseburgers or pork cheeks.

Use those gift cards. My kids get a ton of gift cards, and when they lose them, the money is gone. A free way for them to keep track of their cards is to download them to an iPhone or other Smartphone, using the free SWAGG app. You just show at checkout. If you don’t have a Smartphone, you can still download the gift cards to your web browser and shop online. Did I mention that this is all free?

Another cool thing - you can exchange your gift card, free, if it is one of SWAGG’s participating retailers. Let’s say your tween suddenly hates Wet Seal. She can swtich to American Apparel. Or use it to buy her mom flowers at 1-800 Flowers. Well, a mother can dream, right?

Finally, New Jersey based Daffy's Daffy’s offers discount designer clothes, but this store saved me when I took my niece to Philadelphia. She had forgotten her pajamas, and right across the street from our hotel, a large Daffy’s had a good selection of socks, underwear and PJs. Daffy’s also has a number of stores in New York City, and if you are lucky enough to be traveling someplace warm, they have swimsuits on sale..

Looking forward to 2011

For years, my kids have been the focus of my life. Even while I worked full time, I made being with my kids a priority, bringing work home and staying up late so I could attend a winter concert or a soccer game.

And about that soccer - while all of my kids played, my middle daughter played at the most competitive level. This meant weekends traveling to soccer games all around the area, plus out of town tournaments that consumed family vacations. She also had practice several days a week, meaning late or disrupted dinners. Though I coach recreational soccer, travel soccer took over all our lives.

As you can see in the accompanying photo, plenty of parents show up for soccer games. In fact, when I didn't show up, people would question me.

Now my kids are getting older; the oldest is a sophomore in college, and next fall, the middle daughter will start college and the youngest will go to high school. Though my kids still mean the world to me, I think that next year, my husband and I will have more free time to pursue our passions.

I have often crammed exercise into times that are convenient for my kids, going to the gym early in the morning or late at night. I truly hate exercising at these times, but I don’t have any other time. If I am not spending my weekends driving three hours to a soccer game, I can take long bicycle rides, and maybe even train for the marathon. I don’t know if I can actually run a marathon, but training may be enough.

2011 will also be the time when we go through our house, getting rid of long outgrown toys like a play kitchen that as been abandoned for years. The books that the girls no longer need can be donated to a local literacy program, but I want to keep the special children’s books that I read to my daughters before putting them to bed.

There is one small wrinkle in the plan. My soccer-playing daughter has friends in college and the parents would actually drive to college to see the soccer games! They went to games that were six or seven hours away. My daughter does plan to play soccer in college, but I have to put the kibosh on this weekend spent watching someone else have fun. I think we deserve a break.

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network blogging program, for a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.
Oprah Winfrey NetworkThe New Oprah Winfrey Network