Hi. I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing in sort of early mid June of twenty twenty five. We're going to be talking about things that are fun for the whole family. Maybe not many things are fun for the whole family, but perhaps some
things are fun for the whole family. So we decided we were going to give it a try. Sarah, when this airs, are you guys done with school yet? Are you into the summer?
We are, officially, as this comes out into the summer, into what I would call quintyle three. The kids got out of school about five days before this episode airs, and we've already had our yearly celebratory tradition, which is that they like to go to the melting pot at the every end of the school year. We've tried to get them to branch out, but no, this is like, no, they want cheese, cheese and chocolate.
Cheese and chocolate. Wow, I get it. Many people like cheese and chocolate.
And at this point it really does feel like a marker. So I guess that's what we do at the end of the school year.
What about you. Yeah, my kids actually go to the seventeenth the Tuesday. They have a half day on Tuesday the seventeenth, so that's and I know at least some of them still have events on the sixteenth, so he can't really bail out on that. That said, my senior Jasper has been done for weeks. They had their finals
the last week of April. Beginning of May. He's been doing his senior project, which will also be done by this point, but he's been working in a first grade class and it's been kind of fun to have him sort of manage that on his own, because he gets up and goes to work and comes home from it and the students call him mister Conway. So I love that. I love that. That's amazing.
I feel like that's a significant senior project, like he's really going on.
I think he could have done something a lot easier, but he's doing this, and I'm glad because it's good experience and working with a manager like the teacher is. You know, he has to be there at time she tells him and sort of they communicate back and forth on what he needs to do. And yeah, I've been glad to see it happen. We will have also just had two graduations on the same day. Jasper's high school graduation and Henry's preschool graduation are in fact on the
same day. Not at the same time, thankfully, but definitely on the same day. So that will be fun for feeling simultaneously old and young.
I wonder if you're gonna cry more at one or the other.
I oh, no, we'll see, We'll see, but I will report back. Wow. Yes.
Side note, This whole thing of seniors ending weeks before the end of the year was not a thing when I was a senior, and I really would have loved that, So props to both public and private schools. It seems like embracing this tradition of just letting them finish because they're mentally done anyway.
They're mentally done anyway for sure, and yeah, showing up would not really be all that fun at this point. But this episode so fun for the whole family. Was inspired by a listener who pointed out that this can obviously get challenging as there is a wider age spread of children, and we agree. We had some trouble making this list. We're like, ooh, fun episode, and then we're like, hm, we are always sensitive to what can be a full
episode and what will not have enough material. So maybe this one was right on the line, right Sarah.
Yes, but we're hoping, I mean, we're going to be real about this and actually acknowledge that this is really not easy. I think the thing that the wider the age spread, and probably the more kids and personalities you
have in the mix, the harder it is. If you have a set of twins, this is like you're like, I don't need this episode at all, And if you have like Laura's family, you're like, I actually have very few solutions, but we're going to give you the best that we can come up with, but also acknowledge some of the challenges to maybe make you feel better when you are not easily able to put together an entire weekend of family fund on the regular.
Yeah. So Sarah, your age spread right now?
Yes, so ours is seven to thirteen, about six years.
Yeah, and mine is eighteen to five, so a bit of a spread. I also don't deman and that the older kids usually do things. There are very few things that are required for the whole family. There are a few things, but not too many. But we'll start with the category of sort of lower key activities like TV and media. Sarah, are you guys well between seven and thirteen, it feels like you should be able to come up with a few things. Yes, and no.
You know, the things that interest the older kids are not always appropriate for Genevieve. Now, our family is pretty darn permissive about what we consider appropriate for anyone. I might get in trouble for this, but like, we watched Dirty Dancing the other day and it was awesome and everyone kind of liked it. We did fast forward certain parts,
but it was just like too awkward. I'm like, no, I cannot so, yeah, like you find these rare movies, but Cameron has his own he likes action, and Annabel is like completely turned off by anything in that realm, So it's actually fairly challenging, but we really work hard because it is fun when we can all sit there together and we will spend a solid fifteen twenty minutes trying to pick stuff out, watching previews in the hopes to get something to work, and usually we can find
something recent hits. In addition to Dirty Dancing, which may or may not be appropriate for.
Your values, Wicked Stick It.
Which is like a gymnastics movie, so that kind of got all three kids because like the stunting kind of side of things, and then certain reality stuff with baking and cooking in particular, like Kids Baking Challenge or old episodes of Chopped Junior. I also feel like if a movie is somewhat new ish and they have like heard of it from the theaters somehow, it just has more appeel.
I mean that probably is where Wicked came from. But like also Disney movies, anything that was fairly recent rerun and then dumped onto Disney Plus or Netflix, they're like, ooh, exciting, and so we usually try to embrace those things.
Yeah, so movies are not fun for me if we're trying to find things that are fun for the whole family. I'm not really a movie person, but my husband takes them, and I will say that four out of five children went to the Minecraft movie with him, and the other one went with friends. So in theory that could have been fun for the whole spread of family members. I don't know. I guess if I had gone, I would have been like on my phone with headphones in the
back or something. I'm not really sure how that would have played out to fund for the whole family. Are adults included in that? Do your kids play video games together?
Well, not super often, but they know that's a loophole when like, we're almost always going to say yes to like video game time, so they're smart and if they're like oh, parents are clearly like over us being on our devices. Sometimes someone will pipe up and be like can we all play like Mario Kart together? And we're like sure, So I would say yeah sometimes, And I think it's lovely when they all do it together, especially if it's like the kind of multiplayer game where they
can all be fairly engaged. Obviously, Genevieve is not going to play at the same level as the two older kids, and honestly, Cameron probably can blow everyone else away with most games.
Just because he plays more video games.
But yeah, when they can do it, we embrace it, and we do look for opportunities to, like for a holiday gift, perhaps purchase a game that they might all enjoy doing.
Yeah, sometimes the kids have done Mario Kart together, are various Roadblocks games together, not frequently, some combination of them will sometimes play Fortnite together. But yeah, there's always the different levels of skill. So you know, maybe people closer in age could do that outdoor fun. How about outdoor fun, Sarah.
Yeah, I feel like the more open ended the better for multiple age groups. Like when they were younger, of course, going to the butterfly garden or something very specific worked really well, But now it's more about finding an open space where people can do their own thing a little bit more. The beach is kind of timeless. I mean, I enjoy the beach. I don't enjoy so in the ocean.
We all know that.
But I still enjoy going to the beach. And one thing that can really change the vibe and make things more enticing for older kids is the offer of bringing a friend.
So I think we're going to talk about that a little bit more later in the episode.
Okay, fine, well that's its own half. But I do feel like just like open ended places playgrounds less so, but like beach or just a big natural area where everyone can kind of do their own thing.
A hike if there's a lot of snacks at snacks, snacks are fun for the whole family. Family bike rides, I will throw it out there. I don't know, we may try doing this by the time this will have aired over one of the weekends before this. You know, especially if you have very young kids, they can go in a burly or the sort of five year old range can be in a tag along. It is kind of a pain to get organized in our family. It requires two cars. The bike rack like seven bikes. It's
really kind of a whole production. On the other hand, it is something that everyone that can. You can also do a more interesting hike. We found this one at Hawk Mountain, which is about an hour north of us. That is called the River of Rocks, and it just tons and tons of rocks that you can climb over. I feel like a hike needs to have some interesting component to keep the kids into it, and like teenagers might be into I don't know if you have to
like hold on to rails, crawling on a rock. But of course then if you have little kids, they probably have to be at a backpack for it. But it can work if there's something that keeps everyone engaged. And I would say say ice skating is again there's a stop on the youngest probably has to be about five for this to be doable, but a wide range of people can enjoy, say an outdoor ice skating rink in winter, so that's worth a shut. We're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with more
on fun for the whole family. Well, we are back talking fun for the whole family. Things that seem to make everyone at least mildly amused, if not having full on blissful fun. Sarah, what about food? Food categories that are fun for the whole family.
I already mentioned snacks, but yeah, food's a big draw. I mean, we all enjoy food, and especially if it's
something like fun food. So if we want to really not have any complaints about doing something together, we will suggest let's all go to get ice cream together, and then all of a sudden everyone wants to join in the family fun Starbucks for us also works in that way, and my kids actually kind of enjoy like restaurant meals, some of them mostly because they're like I can get a lemonade, and then others because they're interested in more different cuisines and stuff. So people can enjoy that at
their own level. I will, of course note, if you're listening to this and you have like an eighteen month old and a three year old and to throw something at the audio device that you're listening to, I get it. There is definitely like a minimum age at which restaurant and eating based excursions. Although your toddlers can still enjoy ice cream, but that sit down restaurant experience is not fun until you reach some sort of minimum age. In my experience, that's around like five ish.
Yeah, And I will admit that we allow the younger kids to have devices for a restaurant meal because honestly, then it makes it more pleasant to linger over it for the others, and our older kids will talk with us. And so given that the younger two at home would have probably jumped up and gone somewhere else within a few minutes, that kind of recreates that option, making it more pleasant for a restaurant meal. So just throwing that
out there as an idea we don't. We tend not to go out as like a regular thing just because there are so many of us, but when we do it on vacation, that's actually one of the things people like the most. I will say that any sort of active food at home can be fun for the whole family, like fun do s'mores, make your own, pizza, make your own, I don't know, tacos, make your own? What do you do? Do you do anything else other than those? We haven't done a lot of make your own, but I see, yes,
that would be one. Yeah, oh yeah, sure, definitely in the community. Now, I will say that some institutions, even if you kind of think of them as being for younger kids, may in fact have elements that are fun
for older people too. Like a good science museum, so we have gone to whatever the flagship exhibit will be at, Like the Franklin Institute, they have rotated, like every four months or so, they bring in something new, and so we might go to that and then it's new, so we can go see it and then go wander around. And sometimes the older kids are fun to you know, look at something that they haven't seen before, or you know,
visit something that they have in the past. And of course little kids have lots of different entry points at things too. When we were on vacation two years ago and went to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, I know for sure that everyone had something they enjoyed there.
So you know, if you've got any resource like that a good aquarium, the little kids might enjoy seeing the fishies, but the big kids are kind of like ooh, sharks, you know, especially if it's the one where you can like walk over the shark tank or something that can be a bit more of a teen draw, especially if they get Starbucks afterwards, or even the zoo like longtime blog readers may recall that I was supposed to take my older two sons to Scotland over Labor Day weekend
last year, and thanks to some United awfulness at Newark, did not make it over to Europe. But when we were trying to figure out what else we were going to do with the weekend, we wound up at the Bronx Zoo, which they had wanted to go to, like that was something they both agreed on and they had a really good time, Like you know, we're like looking
at lions and giraffes and snakes whatever else. And I know for sure little kids would love a zoo, so if again, a very good zoo could also be fun, especially if you get them ice cream or.
And let's point out that's not even boring for adults, you know, like adults are having their own good time. They're outside in nice weather, maybe taking a walk, seeing cool animals. That truly can be fun at every level.
Yeah, some zoos even specifically have stuff that you know, like they might have a beer garden. You never know. I mean, there could be all sorts of things that are adult friendly at a zoo or an arcade. Maybe mom and dad don't love the idea of an arcade, although go karts can be kind of fun, but big kids can like stuff like that, and the little kids
might enjoy doing ski ball or something else. And I would say something like Dave and Busters, like if your kids are old enough that you can let them wander around, they do have bars, so you can sit there and have a beer with your partner while your children wander around playing video games, and that could be fun for the whole family as well.
We are as. This is airing in New Hampshire and one of the top destinations for every member of the family except maybe me, is this giant place that has all video games from like different eras. I can't tell you how excited my husband is to play the video games. So once again, this will be the whole family. And I might just bring a book because that will be really fun for me to kick back and relax while everybody else is so occupied with their video games.
Yeah, you could do that. On the Jersey Shore in Asbury Park, there's a place called the silver Ball Museum, which is a basically a giant arcade of pinball machines, and that is another big hit for almost everyone. They have stools so little people can also play the pinball machines and you just pay a certain amount and they go there for two hours. And yeah, that is something that can be fun for the whole family as well. Shopping, Sarah, that's something your family enjoys.
Shopping has been a fallback on those weekends where you really just don't have much and maybe like the weather's not that good, and then some kid will pipe up and be like, can we go to Target and I'll be like, you know, that doesn't sound too bad, and then we can all go to Target and a little kid could pick out a little toy. I can see what planners are on display, and like just browse the housewares and see if there's anything cool, and everyone's happy.
My kids can like spend their allowance, and you know, I could see this working up to the eighteen age group and down to like a three year old who would just have fun picking out a lego set. Now, obviously retail therapy is not everybody's favorite, but I think you sparingly this can be a really nice way to get everyone in the family to go on an outing together.
Well. And you can also look at sort of more interesting retail opportunities, like a farmer's market or something. Right like, there's often alongside the egg plant and corn or whatever else they're selling, there's going to be selling like brownies, and somebody else is going to be selling some weird jam that some kid's going to get into, or homemade root beer or whatever. So you know, if you just give people ten bucks and say go to town, they'd probably
enjoy that. Or some sort of apple fest strawberry fest agrarian type place with live music and activities like so a teenager might be willing to listen to a reasonable band that is there, especially again if there's you know, ice cream, sodas whatever on offer, and then little kids can go play on the hay bails and live experiences in general. I would say a year and a half ago I did manage to get all of the kids to go to Disney on ice it. The tricks are cool.
For the older kids, I don't know that they want to do it again and again. We've taken them to the Rockets as well. They've enjoyed that. Or you could like a g rated musical. I mean maybe Sarah doesn't need the g rated for rated musical, biji rated a musical something you know, like a Disney show on Broadway. If there's a touring a Latin or Lion King or Wicket or whatever that's come to your community, you could probably take a wide range of young people to that.
A teenager would enjoy just the spectacle of it and the music, and a little kid is like it's the Lion King and.
A sports game too. Speaking of live events, we were just talking about trying to get into Miami tickets, and I think, oh, yeah, everyone wants to go for their own reasons, but it'll be fun.
Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit the additional tips that now I want Sarah to talk about the bring a friend part.
Bring a friend is we really didn't employ that when the kids were little, but currently, let's just say sometimes we have one holdover, and that holdover can be very much more agreeable if there is somebody their own age on set outing like all of a sudden, it's like, oh, oh, okay, well now that thing sounds fun because my friend has buy in, and now it's cool kind of a thing. So yeah, I think that can be a great trip, especially if you have a car big enough to tote,
you know, multiple things. And the beauty of that is that as you cultivate those relationships, if your kids stay friends, then now if you actually need somewhere to let's say the other kids want to do something and the kid really doesn't want that, then maybe that kid can hang out with her friends family for a day so I
can kind of pay dividends. We have definitely kind of organically grown that kind of relationship with our neighbors, which is the best because it's logistics free to organize an impromptu sleepover or play date.
Yeah. Yeah, that's always wonderful when that works out. Trying to get them to come up with ideas, now, this is hard because especially young kids, they don't like google stuff, and children may not have the sense of what is around. But if you can have them at least help you. Try to create a local list, right, so things that are within about ninety minutes two hours of your house, so you could reasonably do them on a weekend. My guess is that no matter where you are, there is
something within two hours of you. It would be you'd have to be pretty rustic for that not to be the case. Then maybe you have beautiful things like nature that are within two hours of you. So sit down and make a list, because then that makes it a little easier as you are planning your weekends or you know what, we've got a staycation or something to say like, okay, we should choose from that instead of you know, what do you want to do? I don't want to do anything.
I'm just sit here on my iPad And that's fine for a while, but eventually you want to get people out the door. One more quick thing before we take another ad break, Sarah, what about teaming up? What is this technique?
Yeah, so that strategy is that sometimes everyone may not want to do something like I don't know. One strategy is like to have people pair up. For example, a board game might be a little bit harder for the youngest kid to do, but if everybody does pairs, then that kid will feel included and will feel like they can be on a team. Like That's kind of how
we've gotten certain games to work for our family. Chameleon is one that's actually really fun for both kids and adults, but Genevieve is like not totally able to like manage it herself, so it works really really well if we
divide into teams. And another thing we've done in teams actually more like with my in laws, is like if we are doing some kind of make your own food or that kind of prep project, like Okay, Genevieve, you're helping me make this, Cameron, you're helping Dad make that, and like, you know, everyone's kind of got their own team. You're still doing something all together, but it's divided so it's more manageable.
All right, we'll take one more quick ad break and then we'll talk about trips that are fun for the whole family. Well, we are back talking things that are fun for the whole family. First, we've been talking more about local activities, home based activities. Now, obviously you've probably in many cases all going to go on vacation together. So Sarah, what's been fun for you guys?
So people probably know we're going to say skiing. That's been the kind of easiest crowd pleaser, and it can even work when kids are too young to ski because many ski resorts have nurseries. You just have to do your homework and choose one that has the amenities that you need. Is not the most budget friendly vacation, but man, it is the one that has kind of like it's been the most family fun enriched one that we've taken, and so we've done it a few times now and
plan to continue. I also feel like a cruise can be really great in terms of just having something for many different age groups. We've done two Disney cruises, and the first one we did when Genevieve was only like a year and a half and the kids were like, yeah, one and a half, five and seven, and it worked great. And then we've also gone with the kids a little bit older, so I can see how that spans lots
of age range. And the beauty of that is like you can do things apart and then come together, and then be apart and come together, et cetera. So yeah, we've really enjoyed cruises for that for that reason.
Yeah, I'll second the skiing, and I don't ski, just like I don't really watch movies. I guess I'm a ton of fun really, but I didn't have to. When all of us went in late March, we put Henry in ski school and so he was able to have instruction and he did really well with that. And then the older kids skied with my husband and I kind of hung out, went to the gym, took myself out for lunch, picked up Henry at three o'clock. You know, we went in the hot tub, we all went out
for dinner. It was just it's a good trip, right, It's a good trip for all ages. And with that, you know, I've only been on one cruise. I'm not a huge cruise person, but a resort is like a land based version of the cruise, so you don't have to be on a boat to get the concept, especially ones that have a really good kids club. So we recently went to Olani and Hawaii. They obviously have a kid's club since it's a Disney property, but many others do as well. We went to a place called Windjammer
in Saint Lucia, which I will throw out there. It turned out to have a really quite appealing kids club. At the time, Alex was four, so Jasper would have been twelve. I think sometimes Jasper stayed home by himself, but mostly the four of them would all go to
the kids' club. They all really enjoyed their offerings there, and they had kind of cool things like horseback riding or so it was a little bit more intense, like that was a real draw versus like, no, we're just sticking and you adhere in color for three hours while mom and dad go do something. So yeah, that's you know, and just a resort. The big kids can go swim or go to the beach or hang out in the
room and little kids do their things. Theme parks, again, the caveat the group doesn't have to stay together the whole time. But if you've got a big theme park
that has like kiddie ride sections. Maybe it's not gonna be a ton of fun for mom and dad, although mom and dad can switch off, like you go to the roller coaster while someone take the little kids on something and then switch off again, and the big kids can go wander around on their own and go to whatever ridiculous roller coaster that your teenagers want to wait in line for.
Yeah, we've had good luck at our last couple of theme park trips. But and when you have a big age spread, I think the splitting does make sense.
Yeah, and with that, our counterpoint on things being fun for the whole family is even with trips, sometimes you don't actually have to bring the whole family.
Yes, that's our punchline to this episode is like you can try, and there's lots of things you can do, and also sometimes you can just give up because it can also be fun to have fun with parts of the family.
Yeah. Well, in these days, I really rarely require my older children to do stuff. They can stay home by themselves, you know. Obviously, I and my oldest child as an adult,
I really can't make him do most of anything. I'm totally willing to try to bribe people to come along be like, oh, well, you know, we thought you might like this, or we'll make sure to stop him entice entice, But you know, so it may not be worth it for that, or if you do a big kid focused activity, might be worth getting child care for younger ones, because well, you will have to attend to the younger one for a lot of the time, and especially if they are
not happy, that's going to detract from the experience for everyone. So we have also traveled that way, so longtime listeners know that when when we went to Norway in the summer of twenty eight twenty three, we only took the four older children and we left Henry with people caring for him back in Pennsylvania, and he had a perfectly good time. I don't think he missed out on the experience of being on a plane for eight hours and being horribly jet lagged, and then the rest of us
could actually experience the fun of Europe without that. So throwing that out there as.
I do, I was thinking about the fact that, like, when your older kids are totally out of the house and you just have let's say Alex and Henry, they're probably going to get to take trips with just you guys. With you with a focus, And the truth is, it's like it's kind of fair that you provided that for the older kids too in a way, because again, if Henry had been there, it would not have been the
same because like you wouldn't have been very present. So it's kind of yeah, it's kind of like there is a little bit of a symmetry there to make sure that your older kids sometimes get experiences where they are the focus, which can't always be true if you're chasing around a taller Yeah.
I mean, I'm traveling with Jasper in some upcoming weeks on this and we're going to have a very different experience, I'm sure than if there were younger children. I'm planning a trip with Sam for next spring break, and again we can do totally different things than we would possibly do if there were a six year old with us.
So yeah, it's worth considering that as an option in it, you know, always our public service announcement with family trips, the goal is some enjoyable moments because bliss the whole time isn't possible, just as probably nothing is fun for the whole family for the entire time either.
I don't think bliss the whole time is possible for life, yeah, human nature given day.
Fallen nature of humanity. Yes, no it is not. But oh will that's a philosophical matter for a different time.
Yes, so I might even say that's a good thing. We will appreciate the bliss more if it's not constant, all.
Right, Q and A.
So this one is for Laura because I don't have that much to offer, but she does. I am traveling across time zones with kids for the first time.
What are your survival tips, Laura, Well, you've done three hour time difference. It's not that you've never taken your children out of your time zone. That's not like advanced though. That is all we've done.
We've done three hours, and we have made the three hours like more than three hours, because what invariably happens is we go west, but not only to we go west, but then we end up sleeping till ten am on the west, so coming back is like a six hour adjustment. Because we're idiots. Yeah, yeah, but that's all we've done. We've never done Europe, we've never done Hawaii. So for us,
it's not that hard. Honestly, when they're excited and they're like on vacation, they want to stay up anyway, so we naturally fall into that rhythm going west and then east you're forced.
Because you're back at school.
I think it would actually be harder if you didn't have like a routine to come back to pretty quickly, because then you might like drag out the kind of like adjustment phase. But then I guess you could naturally drag out the adjustment phase and it wouldn't matter. So I feel like we need more tips on like longer. And then also what happens when you go east, because that seems more troublesome.
Yeah, I mean, I wish there was a good answer to this, which is, I mean, you just need to be prepared for some rough nights and you're going to have to manage your energy with that in mind. As Sarah was saying, going west is easier because you just go to bed early and wake up early. And for the most part, that's not a problem in life, is
to go to bed early and wake up early. And especially when we went to Hawaii, I mean, the flight out there was long enough that you're just kind of tired, Like we had to wake up early in the morning to get to Newark. Airport, Like, Henry did nap on the plane, but that allowed him to then stay up through dinner on the first day there, and I kind of crashed before everyone so and then I woke up at four am. But again, you're up at four am. It's not the end of the world. Versus feeling like
you need to sleep till two pm. That's an entirely different level of problem. So going east, I will just report in case anyone is thinking of taking their small children to Hawaii, that our first night home back from Hawaii, Henry fell asleep at about five thirty pm in the afternoon. I didn't discover him for a while. I was like, well, maybe he'll just stay asleep. He did not stay asleep. He woke up at midnight. He was awake until five am.
And this was after I did not sleep at all on the plane on the way home, which was an overnight flight, because I was taking care of him. So in this case, we are thrilled that YouTube exists. We are thrilled that our child is old enough to watch YouTube without like trying to wander out of the house, which the alarm was on. So if he had, you know, I would have woken up and heard that, but I put him on the computer. I'm like, go to town, child, here is a yogurt. I am going up to sleep.
If you need me, you can know where I am. I woke up I think twice in that midnight to five window and went and checked on him. But for the most part I did sleep during that. And then the next day, of course, was challenging because he'd been up from midnight to five. We had him sleep from about five to nine and then got them up for the day. There was some crabbiness, but I don't think
there's a good way around this. There isn't Like the older children can take melotonin if they're having trouble falling asleep, and that's something I would recommend, Like if you are going east to Europe from the US, take melatonin with you. Take chewa bowles. If you have twelve year olds who aren't good at swallowing pills or something and they don't take much. I mean, maybe this is bad medical advice. I don't know. You can tell me, but the problem
is the first night you'll sleep because you're tired. The second night you will be up at two am. And it's very frustrating. To not be able to fall asleep till about five am or six am or something like that. So taking half a melatonin in the middle of the night and you get back to sleep and then you're better for that.
Yeah, melatonin, I mean it doesn't have big downsides. Some people find that it doesn't help them stay asleep and helps them fall asleep. Yeah, and then the other things. If you use it too much, there can be like a tachyphylaxis or resistance that developed.
But I think travel is a perfect yeah use case, yes, exactly, So I will throw that out there as an idea. But I think there's probably a lower limit on when you're supposed to give it to children. So I have not given it to like toddlers or anything like that. And so I don't know that there is a good answer re fault your physician. Consult your physician, exactly. So, yeah,
travel with kids. I think back to a very early guest of ours, Henley Vescez, who is a travel entrepreneur, and we had asked her for tips on traveling, you know, flying with small children to make it more pleasant. She's like, I wish there was a good answer to that. I was like, well, there you go, there isn't. But it's one of those things where you decide that it will be worth it for your remembering self. And I'm glad
that we took a family vacation to Hawaii. Yes, I was a little traumatized by the twenty four hours of coming home, but that's in the past now and I will probably never take a five year old to Hawaii again. So there you go. Now I have done it. Maybe you'll take your grandchild someday. I'll might take my grandchildren, but then there will be multiple adults, and you probably won't be my mean good point. One of my children will be in charge of that five year old.
All right, well, love of the.
Week, I'm going to say bike riding. They're probably solo. We will see. I may report back on the attempt to bring seven people bike riding in a later episode. But I love that I have an SUV and I just full down the back seats and if I want to go bike riding solo, I can just shove my bike in the back, take it wherever, unload it. Very
easy and nice quick workout. And that's something different to do during spring and summer and fall that I won't do in the winter and so it'll has a bit of a treat feel to it.
It does have a treat feel to it. I will embrace bike riding as well, just because Genevieve now can like ride very nicely and quick and it's actually like pleasant to just ride around the neighborhood with her, Like we did a fun ride to the pool the other day and it's like downright pleasant.
So yay bike riding.
Ya shout out to Guardian because her bike came from our wonderful previous sponsor and it's.
A great bike. Yeah, there we go. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about things that are fun for the whole family, or at least for most of the family most of the time. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you.
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.