Table for One Please.

Planning out summer vacations can get a bit tricky in our household. We had to juggle work schedules, the kids camp sessions, and back to school dates. But as we did that, one thing became realistically clear. I would have to be spending a good portion of our family vacation by myself! Without the family. A solo vacation. Let that just sink in for just a bit.

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Family Summer Vacations with Tweens: The Reality

Can we please start our summer holidays?

We are finally in the last week of school. Having been through rigorous exams, science projects, and copious amounts of homework, I can’t tell you how ready we are for the summer holidays to roll around. No alarms, no pick ups or drop offs and no after school activities – there are just no words to describe the joy and elation that transcends us.

When my kids were toddlers, we did quite a bit of traveling with them. We were brave. It took quite a bit of planning, and had it’s moments of stressful diaper changes in public restrooms and tantrums mid flight. My kids are now pre-teens, but summer travel has presented itself with a different set of challenges. So to those of you who think, it gets easier, once the kids are older – let me shatter that for you!

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Ramblings inside the mind of an Expat mom or wait should I say ‘mum’?

Keeping dentist appointments, signing permission slips, remembering ‘Viking’ dress up day (why do they have Viking day anyway?), ensuring homework is completed and managing the daunting after school club schedule – are just a few ‘anxiety prone’ tasks, us moms need to plan out in our heads before going to bed on a weeknight.

For expat moms (or mums for my British readers), it is somewhat trickier. They have the usual plethora of tasks to think about, and then there are ‘things’ that pop up in your head because you have chosen the so-called ‘glorious expat adventure’. As an expat parent, these are the thoughts that I contemplate while laying in bed, miserably trying to fall asleep.  Continue reading

Nervous flyer? Just a tad.

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Sitting for 8 hours in a confined metal tube, at an altitude of 40,000 feet, hurtling through the air at 550/mph, aboard a long haul flight for me equates to agony, anguish and self-inflicted anxiety!

I have been travelling since I was probably a month old. Most of them long haul flights. But for the last several years, the thought of getting on a plane is beyond unnerving.

My mind is in overdrive thinking of all possible scenarios that could go wrong. Internal dialogues leave me exhausted. Manifesting the worst. Statistics don’t mean squat! Safest mode of travel? I don’t know about that.

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