My husband and I both enjoy wine, and before the kids came along, we used to spend many a relaxing afternoon at wineries in the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains, picnicking and sipping classy California wines. Along came the kids, and somehow this did not seem practical anymore. We had new afternoon plans, which mostly involved naps, scheduled feedings and lots of play time. Wine tasting seemed like it had gone the way of our golf games….

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With three locations in Texas, Schlitterbahn is definitely a “must visit” for you and your family, you and your significant other, you and your friends, or even by yourself! Whatever your group consists of these water parks will prove a fun time for all. Locations include New Braunfels, Galveston, and South Padre Island. I’ve been to all three parks and had a wonderful time in each but my personal favorite is New Braunfels. The main reason for this is that Galveston and Padre are both beach/ocean locations and offer their own variety of water fun. Put that aside and the fact is that I have never had anything less than a blast in New Braunfels and three generations of my family agree wholeheartedly!

The New Braunfels location boasts a family-friendly park that offers free parking, tubes, lifejackets, and also allows you to bring your own picnic. In addition, Schlitterbahn Waterpark Resort in New Braunfels has over 3 miles of tubing adventures, 7 children’s water playgrounds, 17 water slides, the world’s first surfing machine, and 3 uphill water coasters spread over 65 acres of fun!

But that’s not all, for New Braunfels is an excellent vacation spot all on its own. There is easy access to both Austin and San Antonio for those of you more “city oriented” but I think you’ll find it hard to leave New Braunfels behind. In addition to Schlitterbahn you will find beautiful golf courses, easy access to the Natural Bridge Caverns and Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, horseback riding, amusement centers, vineyards, and so much more. The McKenna Children’s Museum is also a great place to see. But above all you should definitely consider doing some tubing down the Guadalupe River – you’ll be hooked!

I’ve been to New Braunfels with friends and in the past few years with family (toting a toddler) and we never grow tired of the place! If you have a favorite Schlitterbahn or New Braunfels story/place to share, please pass it along. I’ll be visiting there again early this summer!

Until next time . . .

Paige aka PJsTravelinTexas

Take off. Take a vacation. Take a break. Take flight. Get up and go.

These are a few well known phrases that we use in our daily lives when we talk about travel. We all want to “take” a break from the routine or simply get “up”, go and leave it all behind. To us, these two words–”up” and “take”–get across the idea of action, discovery and potential that comes along with planning travel.

We decided to change our name from Kango to UpTake.

We loved the name Kango for the positive energy it conveyed. However there were several other brands that had similar names Kaango Classifieds , Kangoo Shoes, Kangol Hats, Kango Wines, Kango Jack-Hammers and we felt this was just too confusing.

Also, we also wanted something that tied more directly to what we do. “Uptake,” as a common word, means quick understanding and comprehension; and gathering up of key facts. We want our new brand UpTake to convey our ability to gather, organize and deliver the web’s collective travel wisdom to help you make trip planning faster. That’s what resonated the most with private beta users, press and bloggers with the Kango.com private beta launch.

What’s going to happen to Kango.com?

Kango.com will still be available and identical to UpTake.com for some time. You may be redirected to one domain or the other during our transition period as we migrate content/databases etc. Don’t worry though, the site content will be the same, and your experience will be the same regardless of the domain name! (If you happen to be Googlebot or the Yahoo! Slurp crawler, our robots.txt on each site will aim to ensure that you don’t run into duplicate content.)

There is an explosion of user generated travel content on the Web, which is screaming out to be gathered up, organized, and made searchable so people can use it to plan better trips. I’m excited about the new name because this is exactly what UpTake is all about! Come visit us at http://www.uptake.com. Please start coming to UpTake and tell us what you think about our new brand! Our hope for you: that you get a great take on your next trip with UpTake.

From guest blogger Marsha Takeda-Morrison of Sweatpantsmom

I’m familiar with the reactions: the sad eyes, the whining, the frantic efforts to hide in the laundry room. No, I’m not talking about your cat when faced with a vet visit, but your children when you mention that you’ll be taking them to ‘somewhere educational.’

Sure, you’ll get more cheers for Chuck E. Cheese’s, but sometimes it’s nice to take the kids somewhere that teaches them more than how quickly a roll of quarters can disappear when you’re mesmerized by a large waltzing mouse. Here are some of my favorite ‘smart’ destinations in Los Angeles. I’ll bet they’ll forget all about that dancing rodent.

We just went to the newly revamped Griffith Observatory and can’t wait to go back. It had been closed for almost five years for renovations, and was well worth the wait. The new Planetarium Show is amazing and had our kids captivated – you would have thought it was a SpongeBob marathon. The displays are beautiful – a large room with huge planet models overhead and a screen showing a live feed from the space station was my favorite. I have to mention their amazing Café at the End of the Universe – my husband pointed out that I saved my most enthusiastic response for the snack-break portion of our visit. But the Peets coffee, croissants and a killer view made me as happy as seeing a ten-foot glowing model of Mars.

One of my favorite locations is also one of the oldest: The Museum of Natural History in Exposition Park that opened its doors in 1913. I’ve been going there since I was a child, and have been taking my kids there since they were toddlers. Sometimes we take a break from wandering around the animal dioramas, grab a snack and wander the famous Rose Garden for awhile. Next door is the amazing California Science Center, which has free admission and is home to the popular BodyWorks exhibit centered around Tess, a fifty-foot body simulator. Oh, and there’s a McDonalds downstairs, in case the whining starts up and needs to be quieted by a bag of french fries.

Then there’s the KidSpace Museum in Pasadena, which is popular with younger children. I took my 9 and 11-year-olds there recently and found that they had outgrown most of it, although they did still enjoy the regularly scheduled nature shows and hiking around the outdoor gardens. The little ones will love the whimsical hands-on exhibits.

Last but not least I have to mention the beach. Because there’s not one single location in the city that I feel has taught my kids as much. They’ve learned about marine life, birds and the properties of water. It’s led to discussions about homelessness and compassion when we’ve given money to a man asking for help, and the meaning of war when we came upon a memorial to fallen soldiers erected in the sand in Santa Monica. With nothing to distract us we’ve sat on our towels and talked about everything from school bullies to Michelangelo to why we love Jack Black. And the best part? The kids had no idea they’d been ‘learning’ all day long.

What are your favorite ‘smart’ destinations in your city?

[photo: GriffithObservatory.org]