Reminder: Free Giveaway Ends Today

If you haven't had a chance to enter our free giveaway of a CARES Airplane Safety Restraint by Kids Fly Safe, now is the time to do it! The FAA Approved CARES Harness lets you leave your car seat at home (or check it) and still belt your child in safely on the airplane with his or her own five point harness. Our contest ends Monday May 5 at Midnight PST

Just visit this article: Giveaway - CARES Airplane Harness by Kids Fly Safe and follow the instructions.

0 comments | Posted on May 5, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Weekly Link Roundup: Why Travel, Where To Go, and More

It's been a while since I've done a round up of what's happening on other sites, and it is time for me to get back in the swing of things. Here are some of my favorite recent articles:

The article Baby On Board, Baby Abroad by Frank Bures over at WorldHum does a great job of explaining why we like traveling with our kids so much.

In Top Ten Things My Husband Loved About Our Recent Cruise Wendy Perrin writes about her family's recent cruise, why she chose to take a cruise to Europe with her husband and two boys, and how it worked out (they loved it). Her husband pitches in with his top favorite things about the cruise.

We're always looking for small local restaurants to take our kids to. The sort of places that serve great food to locals and nobody else. That's why I was excited to see this recommendation from Intelligent Travel for a hidden new Burger Joint in New York's Family Friendly Parker Meridien Hotel. It would be fun to find the secretive space with kids, and the prices ($6.50 for a burger) can't be beat.

Roger Sinasohn over at ParentDish has some great suggestions for Camping With Kids. He also points readers to REI's guide to camping with kids and GORP's Building Kids Excitement in the Outdoors

Can Parents Take Their Kids With Them on a Business Trip? asks Harriet Baskas. Of course. It requires some extra planning, but it can also offer your child a unique insight into what you do when you're away from home and a chance to bond during your off hours.

Arthur Frommer (Of Frommer's Travel Guides) highlights some Great deals on Vacation Rentals in the Caribbean and points out that a one week villa rental for $770 would enable a family to have a GREAT vacation even on a fairly tight budget.

Taking the kids to an amusement park this summer? MSNBC has a roundup of VIP Benifits at different parks. For example, some Disneyland packages include a "Magic Mornings" option, which lets you enter the theme park before it is open to the general public.

Vagablond has an article about Traveling in Style With Your Grandchildren. According to Vagablond, Washingtond DC based Grandtravel has a variety of different scheduled tours to destinations like Alaska, South Africa and Italy designed specifically for grandparents traveling with their grandchildren. The trips are designed for kids ages 7-17.

1 comment | Posted on May 3, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Welcome Consumerist Readers

You can view the Consumerist article here: Credit Card Class Action: Get More Money Back Using Your Digital Camera

If you're visiting from Consumerist, check out our Giveaway this week: Free Giveaway: CARES Airplane Harness for Kids By Kids Fly Safe or read some of our other useful links and resources on DeliciousBaby.

• Easy Ways To Track Travel Expenses and Stick To Your Budget
• Saving Money on Your Family Vacation
• Family Friendly City Guides
• Keeping a Child Busy on a Plane
• Air Travel with Babies and Kids
• Helping your Child Sleep on a Plane

0 comments | Posted on May 1, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Easy Hack for Getting a Refund from your Credit Card

If you've traveled internationally, your credit card company likely owes you money! And the deadline for filing your paperwork is just around the corner: May 30th! Here's our fun hack for getting the most out of your refund without tedious paperwork.

For years, the credit card companies have been double dipping -- they charged a 1-3% transaction fee on foreign transactions and inflated their base exchange rates before applying these fees. A recent class action settlement means we can all get a little bit back.

To quality, you need to have used your credit card in a foreign country between February 1, 1996 and November 8, 2006. To submit your refund, just go to ccfsettlement.com, where you'll find three options for claimants:

1. an easy $25 refund
2. a refund based on your estimate of the total number of days you spent outside the country
3. a refund based on detailed information about your annual travel expenses

I expect that many of my readers fall into the same situation as me: I traveled enough that the $25 refund seems low, but I don't keep the kind of detailed records required for option 3 (nor do I want to request and inspect 10 years worth of credit card statements). Option 2 seemed like my best bet, but remembering and listing each of the trips I've taken between 1996 and 2006 seemed difficult and error prone. Then my husband hit on a great solution...flip thru our photos!

We started with our digital pictures since digital cameras automatically record the date & time with each photo. Both Windows and Macs have easy ways to show these dates, and it gets even easier if you use a program like Google's Picasa or Apple's iPhoto. After that, we pulled our photo albums off the bookshelf and quickly flipped thru them to get a rough sense of how many days we'd been traveling. Suddenly, what seemed like tedious paperwork became a welcome trip down memory lane, and it felt like we completed it in no time!

By the way, we were shocked and impressed by how many days we spent out of the country during that period: 385 days. It definitely helped that we did a 6-month trip around-the-world during that time. ;-)

Update: Several clever readers at consumerist have pointed out that passports are a great way to do this too. That's very true. There are a couple reasons why our photos worked better for us: (1) living in Seattle, we drive to Vancouver, Canada a lot, and immigration rarely stamps passport at this crossing, so these trips abroad aren't reflected in our passports; (2) we have so many stamps in our passport that it's tough to match up entry and exit stamps to get trip dates, whereas iPhoto and Picasa make this easy; (3) many of the stamps are tough to read, so we couldn't read the dates. Nevertheless, a passport is a great way to do this for some travelers.

Related Links:
Official Currency Conversion Fee Antitrust Litigation Site
Claim Form (can also be submitted online)
DeliciousBaby: Easy Ways To Track Travel Expenses and Stick To Your Budget

0 comments | Posted on April 30, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Picture of the Week: Seattle Airport (SEATAC) Playground

At SEATAC (Seattle) Airport near the food quart in the C Concourse is this great playground. We arrive a little early for each flight, buy the kids a snack or meal, and let them run off some steam before we board our flight. Sitting and watching the kids give us a chance to regroup and recharge after passing through security too.

Seattle isn't the only airport with a play area, for example the San Francisco airport has a "Kids Spot," and Aquarium and several nurseries.

You can find out about playgrounds and other attractions on each airport's website, or by asking at an information desk once you arrive at the airport.

4 comments | Posted on April 30, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Whistler Family Travel Guide Is Posted!

I've just finished writing our Whistler Family Travel Guide. It lists our favorite kid-friendly restaurants, hotels, and TONS of fun activities.

Thanks again to everyone who sent me suggestions before our trip. We had a wonderful time!

0 comments | Posted on April 29, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Easy Ways To Track Travel Expenses and Stick To Your Vacation Budget

Most families need to stick to a budget when they travel, but tracking your daily expenses, especially in a foreign currency, can be tricky. Here are some easy tips to help you keep track of how much you are spending.

Before You Leave:

• Create an email folder for your trip. Each time you make a booking, place the itinerary confirmation and receipt into the folder. You can use the folder to help you build your final itinerary before you leave too.
• Set an overall daily budget for your trip that includes lodging, food, transportation, and entertainment. During the trip you can track your spending against this goal
• Find out how much it costs you to get your money (and know which source is the cheapest). For example, what fees does your bank charge for using an international ATM and withdrawing foreign currency? What about your credit card? What is the exchange rate? If you expect to travel a lot, you might consider opening Capitol One Credit Card with no international transaction fees.

On Your Trip

• Develop a rule of thumb for converting between currencies. You'll do a better job of reigning in your purchases if you know how much you are spending. Your rule of thumb doesn't need to be exact. For example, at today's rate of 1.563 US Dollars to the Euro, I would multiply any price I saw by two and then subtract 20%. (Meaning a 30 euro item is approximately $60-$6=$54) This accounts for any transaction fees and slightly overestimates the cost of each item so that there aren't any nasty surprises when I return home.
• As you get receipts write on each receipt what it was for.
• Bring an envelope for receipts. if some expenses are deductible, reimbursable or shared, bring separate envelopes for each type of expense. At the end of each day, empty your receipts from your wallet into your envelope.
• Keep the cash for the day separate from the rest of your cash. For example, you get $300 out of the ATM and you want that to last you 4 days, so, that's $75/day... Put $75 in an easy to access part of your wallet and you put the rest in a harder to reach spot. If you see yourself going into the hard-to-reach spot, you know you're going over budget.
• If you need a more detailed accounting that includes smaller cash transactions, or want more accountability, carry a small notebook with you each day. Record each transaction in the notebook (including snacks, bus rides, etc). At the end of the day, total up your expenses and note where you wasted money and can do better the next way. This tip helped us cut our budget significantly by doing things like buying bottled water and snacks in a local grocery store and carrying them with us when we travel.

Not only will having a detailed accounting of how much you spent on your trip help you keep expenses down as you travel, it will help you do a better job of estimating expenses for your next trip before you leave home.

Filed Under: budget

1 comment | Posted on April 29, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Is Travel With Three Kids Possible?

Lately it seems like three kids is the new two. For many parents, travel with even one child seems insurmountable, and sadly parents often put aside their travel dreams until their kids leave home.

One of my goals with DeliciousBaby is to make travel with kids more approachable for families of any size, so I was happy to see this discussion at Lonely Planet on travel with three kids. While I can't speak from experience, I'd say that you can do pretty much anything you set your mind to, including getting on an airplane with three kids. It was nice to read comments from experienced parents who said that in some ways traveling with three was easier than traveling with two.

Want more inspiration? Check out these great round the world travel blogs by parents with more than two kids:
Four Go Round The World
SixInTheWorld

2 comments | Posted on April 29, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Giveaway - CARES Airplane Harness from Kids Fly Safe

I'm delighted to have a product for our giveaway this week that we own and use ourselves when we travel.

Kids Fly Safe was kind enough to send me a CARES Airplane Seat Harness. The harness is FAA approved, easy to set up, weighs only a pound, and fits in a 6" stuff sack. It has made getting through the airport much easier than it was in the days when we brought a car seat. The harness is appropriate for children who are old enough to ride in a car forward facing and weigh over 22 pounds. Best of all, we know that our son is seated safely and he likes having a little more space than his car seat would allow.

This Giveaway is now closed. To learn about new giveaways as they become available, please  Subscribe to our feed

I will be giving this CARES harness away to one lucky reader.If you'd like a chance to win, leave us a comment before Midnight PST on Monday May 5 and tell us what (besides giveaways) you'd like to see more of on DelicousBaby.com. If you win and wish to be contacted by email, please include your email address in the comment form (your email isn't shared with anyone). Otherwise, you must check back here to see if you've won.

We'll choose a winner randomly and announce the results here on Tuesday May 6. Many thanks to Kids Fly Safe for generously sponsoring this giveaway.

If you have family or friends who you know will love this giveaway, just click the "share this" link at the bottom of this (or any) post to email it to a friend.

Rules: Please, only one comment per person per giveaway post. Duplicate comments and Anonymous comments will be discarded. Please make sure that the email address in your comment is valid (email addresses are never public). Winners must claim their prize within three business days after the date of notification of such prize. A Sweepstakes winner's failure to respond to the prize notification within the specified three business days will be considered such Sweepstakes winner's forfeiture of the prize and an alternate winner may be selected from the pool of eligible entries. If an entrant is found to be ineligible, an alternate winner may also be selected from the pool of eligible entries. To enter, you must be a U.S. resident, age 18 or older. Employees, partners and vendors of DeliciousBaby and their immediate family members are not eligible to enter. We will disqualify any entries that we believe are generated by scripts and other automated technology. When applicable, the winner may be required to execute and return within five business days an Affidavit of Eligibility and a Liability and Publicity Release to be eligible for the prize or an alternate winner will be selected. All prizes will be awarded. No substitutions including for cash are permitted, except that DeliciousBaby reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater monetary value for any prize. Winners shall be responsible and liable for all federal, state and local taxes on the value of their prize.

101 comments | Posted on April 28, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us

Healthy Travel: Airplane Drinking Water Warning

According to the Washington Post, The federal government is asking airlines to upgrade the quality of drinking water on planes after EPA tests found 15 percent of the aircraft they tested carried water that tested positive for coliform bacteria. Coliforms can signal the presence of dangerous bacteria like E. Coli.

While there is no proof that airline drinking water has made anyone sick, the EPA Cautions:

Passengers with suppressed immune systems or others concerned should request bottled or canned beverages while on the aircraft and refrain from drinking tea or coffee that does not use bottled water. While boiling water for one minute will remove pathogens from drinking water, the water used to prepare coffee and tea aboard a plane is not generally brought to a sufficiently high temperature to guarantee that pathogens are killed.

What does all this mean for parents traveling with babies, toddlers and small children? Babies and young children are more susceptible to bacteria like E. Coli than adults. Typical symptoms would include nausea, stomach cramps and diarrhea. Young children are also at greater risk than adults for developing severe symptoms like kidney failure (Mayo Clinic). Parents should take care to avoid using tap water on airplanes to fill or clean bottles and sippy cups.

• Bring bottled water for your child to drink (or to mix with formula) on the flight. If you run out, make sure the flight attendant gives you bottled water... even if they are serving tap water in coach there is often some bottled water in first class.
• Bring enough baby bottles for your flight (to avoid washing them on the plane). For older kids, use take-and-toss sippy cups. They nest inside eachother, saving space in your carryon bag.
• If you must wash a bottle on an airplane, try to use bottled water. If that's not available, choose the hot water from the tea service over the tap water from a bathroom.
• Nothing beats soap and water for hand washing after a diaper change, but consider using antibacterial gel as a final step after washing hands in an airplane bathroom.

Note that the new standards will impact only US based carriers, so even after they are fully instituted, parents with young children should continue to use caution.

Filed Under: safety

2 comments | Posted on April 27, 2008 | Save to del.icio.us