Somewhere between the rental car and the waterfall, one of your family members is going to meet a staircase they can’t climb. Maybe it’s your mother, who swore her knee was fine. Maybe it’s the stroller holding your sleeping two-year-old. The waterfalls on the Big Island of Hawaii are worth every mile of the drive, […]

The water rises, the music swells, and for the first time all week, nobody in your family is looking at a phone. Your father has one hand resting on his grandson’s shoulder. Your fifteen-year-old has forgotten to be embarrassed by any of you. And you, the one who planned every carpool, every recital, and every […]

Your daughter will hold out her palm on the lanai tonight, and it will glitter. Those tiny grains of black glass were once molten rock. They are the magic of the colored sand beaches Hawaii keeps along its shores. They are also the reason one photo on her tablet can turn into the stop she […]

Somewhere around the fourteenth browser tab, most mothers planning a Galapagos trip hit the same wall. There are thirteen major islands, six smaller ones, and more than a hundred islets. Not one guide will tell her which island her kids should wake up on. Here is the honest answer. The best Galapagos island for families […]

Here is what no one tells you before you book: Most families finish the Christmas market on their Christmas market cruise before lunch. The kids are sticky with gingerbread. Your mother has claimed a bench beside the cathedral with a warm mug cradled in both hands. Your teenager is eyeing a row of carved nutcrackers […]

Your child will study one of the most impressive glaciers in North America for about four minutes before asking what’s for lunch. I learned this while standing in front of Mendenhall Glacier, watching a child take in a wall of blue ice with roughly the same enthusiasm he usually reserves for a rest stop. And […]

Somewhere between a six year old asking how much farther and a grandmother quietly wondering if her knees will hold up, most families give up on ever standing in front of a real Hawaiian waterfall together. That gap, between the photo you saved on your phone and the walk it actually takes to get there, […]

“Can my three-year-old and my mother-in-law truly enjoy the same island at the same time?” That was the question a client asked me last spring, after spending weeks having no idea how to make the days work for everyone. It is the question at the heart of nearly every family vacation in Maui itinerary I […]

Your child goes quiet mid-sentence, stopped cold by nothing more than steam curling straight out of a crack in the earth. In that instant, you understand exactly what people mean when they say this place does something to kids. That is the real story of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park with kids. The part no packing […]

Somewhere between the fortieth open browser tab and the group text where nobody can agree on a single island, most family trip planning quietly falls apart. You are trying to make everyone happy: The toddler who needs a nap by two o’clock. The teenager who will only put her phone down for something with a […]