While parents are busy discussing and stressing over how to best vacation with their toddlers and young children on travel forums, kids have it easy. They simply go along for the ride… Here is another edition of ‘Min’s top 5′, this time focusing on why KIDS love family travel.

#1. Kids are more entertained than usual: How many hours of tv/movies do you allow your toddler to watch in a typical week? What if he/she is partaking in a long car trip or trans-Atlantic flight? Do your sedentary entertainment quotas change? Parents love to rent DVDs for children to keep their children amused so that they may fully enjoy. I was a little jealous when I came across this super travel pack by Sealed With A Kiss (what a clever name), a Maryland-based company. It’s a grab bag full of fun with its own carry-on sack which costs about $45 with S/H.

#2. Kids can have more favorite snacks: As I remember, each packing list for young kids suggests some snacks to treat your kids on the road, on a flight, or even on the most romantic beach. Kids will eat what you put in front of them, so choose healthy snacks to build good dietary habbits.

#3. Kids can play games with parents all day long: If you are driving a long way to your vacation destination, travel experts and experienced parents would suggest you prepare some car games before leaving. Kids can only read car plates for so long . We have a post about car games for kids. Traveling with Kids has a nice games and toys list for babies and toddlers.

#4. Kids can play in pools or water parks, maybe everyday for a whole week. This is an adult’s (like me) dream life too.

#5. Most of all, kids can keep the routine at home as well. Super parents can keep kids happy all the time, but also keep some of comforting routines from home.

If I have a kid, I guess he/she will inform me of new reasons that he/she enjoys traveling with me. What have your kids told you about what they enjoy most? Please share with us….

Well I wasn’t expecting this. I did a little satirical piece about what its like to do web design in the Google Era:

And it got quite a response at places like Sphinn, Digg, Reddit, Slashdot and so on.

Like all new companies trying to attract consumers, the Kango team struggles with myriad challenges that at times seem a bit unrelated to our core mission of helping travelers take great vacations. Getting into the Google index and the indexes of Yahoo, Ask, MSN, etc is absolutely critical. It is how we will survive.

We know we will be offering great content to our users, which is the best long term strategy for success. But as a new site especially it’s hard to get the search engines to notice you quickly. So you have to do lots of things like asking all your friends to link to you and hiring SEO consultants to advise you. For every SEO consultant with advice there is another one with somewhat different advice around the corner. It’s amusing and can be frustrating trying to figure out what the magic formula is.

And it seems like much of the advice revolves on more links. Links, links links. You link to yourself so Google understands how you are structured and which pages you think are relevant and for what purpose. You need other people to link to you so Google thinks you’re important. You often have to link to other people in return. Once you get established and have a lot of people linking to you, it becomes easier because your links are worth more. Links, links, links – and not fancy Javascript links either.

The crazy thing is that it works. Google remains the place to be listed and the other search engines of course use the same model.

The challenging part for our rock-star design team is how to balance all the link requirements and still provide a great user experience. Sign up for our private beta program and we hope you’ll think we’ve only designed for a great user experience. Let us know.

- MeanGene

It is not as though I have any business travel coming up, but every once in a while I wonder what it would be like to take my kids with me when traveling for work. While I am sitting through business meetings and meeting with clients, what would they do? Well, Forbes.com has outlined some options, including the ever popular Camp Hyatt at Hyatt Hotels. I used to work with a woman who told me her Dad used to take one of his kids on every business trip he took, mostly in the U.S. I think it sounds like a nice way to spend some one-on-one time with my kids, before they reach the age of not wanting to be around mom!

Kori Rodley Irons offers some thoughts on this topic, and important advice on deciding whether or not to bring your kids in the first place. Scott Shoemaker at Dadgear writes about being away from his kids and offers some great ideas to stay connected, including bring along copies of their favorite books so you can read together over the phone. Of course, some places would be easier to travel with families than others, and next time I travel for business, I will consider taking my kids with me, especially if we can turn it into a family vacation. Could I *please* have my next business meeting in San Diego?!

True confession time – when my son was first born, I made several vows:

• I will not allow my kids to use pacifiers.
• I will not allow my kids to leave the house with runny noses.
• I will not pull my kids out of school to travel.

and on, and on. Well, as it turns out, my husband does not feel the same way, and slowly, I am beginning to see the benefits of missing school to travel with our family. The Wall Street Journal Online posted an interesting piece about pulling your kids out of school to travel. I was especially intrigued with the comments about additional work for the teachers and some state’s decisions to limit the amount of absences from school. And while I certainly would not advocate pulling them out all the time, I think we have done ok with our trips so far. Also, I think the decision is up to us, based on what we know about our children, how they are doing in school, and what the pros/cons will be for missing school.

For example, we decided to leave a day early for our winter holiday trip in December. My son pointed out that he missed an all important, in-class viewing of “Polar Express”. In January, we plan to pull both kids out of school for a trip to visit my great aunt, who will be turning 93. And in March, we will leave for spring break 2 days early, which will allow us to see the Louvre, the London Bridge and take the Eurostar through the Chunnel. So far, I am not worried about my kids in class educational experiences, as I think the experiences we will have together as a family, traveling to new places, will be education in itself.

What do you think? Would you take your kids out of school to travel? Why or why not?