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Together with Snappy, the Snapfish site mascot, Snapfish is offering fantastic deals and will host member’s selected favorite road trip stories and photos from around the country so other members can discover the best destinations across the land of the free.

To kick off the journey, members can enjoy 20% off digital photo frames using the code ROADTRIP712 by July 18. (Ordering a digital photo frame from Snapfish is a great gift idea because you can have it “pre-loaded” with pictures you upload to Snapfish).

Additionally, throughout the month, members can access exclusive deals on a variety of Snapfish best selling photo gifts from posters to jewelry and photo books at http://summer.snapfish.com/.

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To qualify for the chance to win, contestants need to tell Funjet Vacations who their favorite Disney character is and why at www.Funjet.com. Two grand prize winners will be randomly selected from the eligible entries.

Each grand prize winner will receive roundtrip airfare for four to Orlando and a 5-night Magic Your Way® Package Plus Dining with accommodations at a Walt Disney World® Resort Deluxe Hotel and a 5-day Magic Your Way® Ticket with Park Hopper® and Water Park Fun & More Option.

In addition to the grand prizes, Funjet Vacations will be randomly selecting daily winners from eligible entries to receive fun Disney merchandise.

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Summer vacation is a great time to send your little ones on a flight to visit grandparents or other relatives this summer.  But, there are so many questions parents have when it comes to sending their kids solo on a flight.

Interestingly, there are no set Department of Transportation regulations concerning travel by these “unaccompanied minors,” but the airlines have specific procedures to protect the well-being of youngsters flying by themselves.

These policies may differ, however, so you should check with the carrier that you plan to use for a description of its rules and services and any additional charges that may apply.

Before you go, check out some FAQs and answers from the U.S. Department of Transportation Aviation Consumer Protection Division pamphlet titled “When Kids Fly Alone”.  This tip-guide is the most comprehensive I have found and answers the following questions:

• Who can fly alone?
• What are the fees?
• What kind of flight do I need to book for my child?
• How do I prepare my child for the flight?
• What do I do at the airport?
• What should I send with my child (i.e. proof of age, etc.)
• What should my child know to expect?

All of these questions are important to ask.  Being informed – and making sure that your children are at ease and know the guidelines – will help with your peace of mind and help your child on the flight.  Independence is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children.

Going away to summer camp or to visit loved ones can be a stressful time for families.  Teaching your children to expect the unexpected is a great life lesson.  Being prepared and organized with toys, books and games to keep them busy is a good start.

The pamphlet not only tips for what to pack, but outlines detailed safety procedures as well.  For example, always point out places for your child to go for assistance.  Teaching your kids not to be afraid to ask for help is a valuable lesson for traveling alone.

There is also a checklist for the person picking up your child at the destination – another very important guide. With the right research and information, your child’s solo flight can go off without a hitch.  And, then, mom and dad can have a little summer vacation of their own!

If you do plan to go on vacation with the little ones this summer, then be sure to check out the family travel deals available right now on CheapOair!

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I was sent the CARES child airplane seat belt  to review and let me tell you what a life saver it is!  First of I mean that literally, your kids are much safer with this seat belt than just a lap belt alone.  But secondly carrying this belt verses a large car seat is so much more convenient.  We traveled with bug last thanksgiving and I wish I would have had this then.  But since I didn’t, I learned how hard it can be to keep a toddler in their seat using just a lap belt.  It was a struggle the whole entire flight.  And we were both exhausted by the end of it.  Well then I received the CARES seat belt and couldn’t wait to try it out on our next flight.  The second time using CARES was a completely different experience.  Once I put it on bug he knew he wasn’t going to be getting up.  Just like in the car, he was stuck.  I was so happy to have some peace on the flight, and it wasn’t just because of the quiet.  I also had peace of mind knowing bug was much safer wearing this CARES harness seat belt.  And it is really easy to use it.  It just slides down around the seat, you tighten it and then the lap belt loops through the bottom.  It is also easy to adjust to fit your child just right.  It only takes one minute!   I completely recommend this to anyone who is flying with toddlers.  It is a must have! Here is all the technical info about CARES from their website .  I decided to just let them explain it to you since they know what they are talking about

CARES (Child Aviation Restraint System)

“CARES Child Aviation Restraint System is designed specifically for aviation use for children age 1 and older who weigh between 22 and 44 pounds. These youngsters are old enough to be in their own seats, but are too small for the seat belt alone to protect them and provide the safety they require during airplane travel. Their bodies cannot withstand the jolts that are common in routine air travel, much less emergency situations, and they flail forward or slide beneath the seat belt if they are not held securely in place.

Each year more and more young children fly. But until CARES came along, what was missing was a convenient, hassle-free way to keep young flyers safe. Here’s what makes CARES such an invaluable travel solution:

• CARES is the first and only harness type Aviation Child Safety Device to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as an alternative to a car seat.
• CARES is an elegantly designed belt-and-buckle device that works in conjunction with the regular airplane seat belt and provides young travelers the same level of safety as a car seat.
• CARES weighs just one pound and fits into a 6" stuff sack! It is easily portable, simple to install, adjustable to every size airplane seat, and usable on any seat in the airplane, except in the emergency exit rows.
• Need your car seat on the other end of the trip? Just check it through as luggage – and carry CARES on board in your pocket!

CARES is manufactured exclusively by AmSafe Aviation, the foremost manufacturer of aviation seatbelts and pilot restraints in the world. (Turn over your airplane seat belt buckle. Chances are it says AmSafe.) CARES is made of the same industrial-strength webbing as your own seat belt and is engineered to the highest aviation-safety standards.”

Things that are Brag Worthy:

• A Safer way for your kids to fly. 
• Portable and lightweight.
• Easy to put onto an airplane seat, and easy to strap your child in.
• Much more convenient than caring a large car seat onto the plane.
• Made for children between 22-44 lbs. (typically 1 to 5 years).
• No more struggling with a toddler who won’t stay in the lap belt.
• Made by AmSafe Aviation (they know what they are doing since they make airplane seat belts).
• Gives you peace of mind.
• Comes with a bag to carry it in, and the bag fits easily in our diaper bag.

Check out where to buy and read more about CARES at www.kidsflysafe.com.

CARES gets Bragging Rights!

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Well guess what? You can get this kind of treatment, service and amenities at the Springhill Suites Oklahoma City Airport by Marriott. With rates around $129/night during the week and between $99 and $119 on the weekend, this hotel is a five-star STEAL!

I recently stayed at this hotel for the second time and my second stay was as fabulous as my first. There isn’t a concierge, but there are several front-desk employees who know EVERYTHING! Got a question: they’ve got an answer. If they don’t, they find it and deliver the information to your room. Need help with your laptop? Ryan (or one of the other staff members) gets you connected. Want advice on where to go jogging nearby? You get directions and advice on traffic patterns that might affect your run. You ask for it, they do their best to deliver it.

On top of the amazing service, which is a big differentiator in my opinion, this hotel offers:

• Spacious rooms with enough living area to keep a family of five from stepping on each other constantly.
• A huge, free breakfast that includes much more than eggs, bacon and cold cereal and is kept stocked throughout the entire breakfast hours.
• A comfortable lobby area with a couple of televisions
• Two computers in the lobby with large monitors and a printer
• Free wireless Internet access
• On-demand movies in your room
• A small “convenience store” in the lobby
• Washers and dryers

 I would suggest this hotel for anyone traveling to Oklahoma City to visit the memorial (see my review of that amazing destination here), or for a sporting event. In fact, I’m anxious to try other Springhill Suites locations in my future travels.

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I listened, and silently prayed, and then began to cry, as my husband — a television news reporter — received instructions from his news director for getting to the airport so that he could be on the ground in Oklahoma City and reporting live for his station, hopefully by noon.

I was postpartum and experiencing moods swings and weepiness. I was also recovering from a difficult birth that had resulted in several complications for me physically, and I was a brand new Mom who was absolutely terrified.

The remainder of the that day played out in slow motion for me, as I watched the news and cried upon seeing the grieving parents who had dropped their children off at that daycare just moments before the blast. The news kept showing images of the area where the daycare had once been, and it was NO MORE. And I waited for the phone to ring so my husband could tell me he was there safe and sound. And that there was no danger of additional attacks. And that he would be home soon. I held my baby girl really tight.

In contrast, the day moved at lightening speed for my husband. He boarded a plane in St. Louis and was the first member of the St. Louis media on the ground in Oklahoma City. He was filing live reports within a few hours of the blast. He was nominated for an Emmy for his work there that week.

So, while my family thankfully did not know anyone who was injured or killed in the blast, we experienced the event on a personal level. And that is why we felt so honored to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum this month.

We briefly visited the outside of the Memorial last year, and were amazed at its beauty and the sense of peace and tranquility that is conferred by the design, landscaping and architecture. But we didn’t have time to explore the museum on that trip. We had no idea what we were missing, which is why I want to try to put to words how impactful that experience really is. It is a MUST SEE and worth a trip to Oklahoma City just to visit this museum.

When you enter the memorial you can read information via wall displays on the background on terrorism, then some history of the area around the Murrah Building. As you move through the first area, you are hearing normal police, fire and ambulance radio traffic. At some point, the normal radio traffic changes and emergency responders are instructed to switch to a different channel — the sounds will make the hair on your neck stand up.

Then you enter a room that is designed after a room where an Oklahoma Water Resources Board meeting was taking place, starting a 9 a.m. the day of the blast. The meeting is significant because it was happening right across the street from the Murrah Building, and it was recorded. Just two minutes into the meeting, you hear the blast.

You leave that room to what are some of the most powerful parts of the memorial — you see helicopter news footage of the ravaged building taken less than 10 minutes after the bomb exploded, and you see emotional, heart-wrenching videos on large screens where survivors tell their own personal stories.

I watched a parent describe his experience of desperately trying to find his child amonga  group of kids gathered outside, only to discover that those kids were from the YMCA daycare across the street. One of the guides inside the memorial reminded me that 19 of the 23 children at the Murrah Building daycare died in the blast, and several children at the nearby YMCA childcare were injured.

I watched a paramedic describe her experience of standing by while a physician began the process of amputating a survivor’s leg who was pinned, only to be called away because of another bomb scare, and then return to complete the job (which had to be done with his pocket knife because his surgical instrument broke). In this area, interactive touch screens allow you to experience the event on a more personal level, and the photos, video and sound make the experience that much more real.

My emotions overcame me as I walked through the Funerals and and Mourning part of the memorial — particularly the gallery of honor. It is moving to walk through that gallery and see the photographs of those who died, especially the children. Each picture is accompanied by a personal affect of that person, and looking at a baby’s smiling face with her binky in a case in front of her photo is heart-wrenching. But it is truly a beautiful tribute to the victims.

From there, you experience the impact of the bombing on family members, survivors and rescue workers in the year following the bombing, and then you walk through an area that makes a CSI episode seem very boring compared to the amazing investigation that lead to the arrests and subsequent convictions of Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh.  You get to see the evidence used to piece together the case against the conspirators, see the parts of the rental truck used in th bomb and read the evidentiary boards from the trial.

Just beyond the investigation, you see a preserved area of the Journal Record Building which sustained enormous damage in the blast. This picture shows a bathroom that was adjacent to the office of one of the Record’s employees.

The final parts of the memorial are meant to inspire hope, and I think they do exactly that. You read about the various symbols of hope that arose from the event and you experience the rebuilding of the community through various milestones and anniversary events such as the Oklahoma City Marathon.

We left the memorial hugging our kids a little tighter and embracing life a little more exuberantly. We were in Oklahoma City for the purpose of me doing a travel review (read here about a great hotel) and for a swim meet for my teenage daughter. The previous night and that morning, her swims in the meet had not gone well at all. She was a little upset, and we were sad for her, considering the enormous number of hours she spends in the pool training. But when we returned to our hotel (Springhill Suites at Oklahoma City Airport) that night, we had a new perspective. Someone asked us how we were holding up since our daughter was having a bad meet, and my response?:

“She’s standing next me, all 5′7″ of her, strong and healthy. Bad swim? Whatever! She could place last in every meet from now until the end of her swimming career, and we’ll still feel very, very blessed, indeed.”

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As I was driving today, it occurred to me that it might be time to share my tips and tricks for inexpensive family travel as part of the new Frugal Living focus on Lipstick to Crayons.

Keeping Kids Entertained

Planning goes a long way toward keeping kids happy in the car. It helps to have movies and video games, but it helps even more to have movies they’ve never seen or games they don’t own.  Still,  it can get expensive to rent a bunch of movies and games — especially if your trip is long enough that you might incur a late fee. So we like to do a swap with friends and neighbors before taking a road trip. Both families in the swap get to enjoy some “new” movies and games, and no one has to spend any money. We also sometimes rent a few items from the local library — you can find a lot of good movies there that you may have missed at the theater, and you can almost always get your hands on a few classics that your kids may not have seen.

Speaking of the library: many of them have established a vast collection of online books that you can download directly to your home computer and transfer to your iPod or MP3 player.  As a distance runner, I LOVE this feature because I enjoy listening to books while I do my long training runs. But it can also be a way to help pass the time while driving across long stretches of barren highway, and sometimes older kids likes listening to books on the electronic devices, as well. Since downloadable books and books on CD can get very expensive, this is a huge cost savings.

And of course, the library certainly offers tons of books and magazines for those delightful children who are happy to sit quietly and read in the car. I only got one of those out three, so if you have a carload of them, count your blessings!

Another splendid trick I have used over the years is the “Present Bag.” Before going on a trip, I go to one of those dollar stores and buy a bunch of $1 items that are age-appropriate for my kids, along with a few fun snacks like candy necklaces, dot candy on paper and pixie sticks. Then I wrap each item individually in newspaper like a present. When the kids start to get restless in the car or I sense that they are about to begin bickering, I bride them with a gift from the Present Bag. (Make sure you mark the presents so you know what’s in each one — my son didn’t appreciate a book full of Strawberry Shortcake stickers one time).

Another great use for  Present Bag: eliminating the whine, beg and eventual cost of purchasing stuff at roadside convenience stores  and souvenir shops. Kids want and need to get out of the car and they love going into these stores, but if you can use the Present Bag to distract them from that overpriced toy that will be broken before the next exit.

Meals and Snacks

Of course, it’s cheaper to pack a cooler full of food and bring bags of snacks from home than it is to buy them on the road. (One convenience store owner told my husband his stuff costs 18 to 20 percent more than the grocery store). But again — kids want and need to get out of the car, and those exits tend to be at places selling food and snacks. I try this approach: I pack sandwiches, veggies and dip, trail mix and other snacks from home, and use the fast food restaurants and convenience stores to “compliment” what I bring. For example, I might tell the kids that we have drinks and sandwiches in the car, but they can each get an order of fries to go with their sandwich. Or, I tell them I have trail mix or popcorn in the car, but they can each have a pack of gum or mints.

Plus, eating from a cooler of food that you made yourself is tremendously more healthy than eating from the deep fryer at a fast food chain.  And during spring, summer and fall, a short picnic at a rest stop is more fun for the kids than having to sit still at a restaurant anyway.

Accommodations

There are all kinds of ways to get reduced rates on hotel rooms and lots of Web sites dedicated to doing that. I do think that showing up at the desk of a hotel and requesting a certain rate in person works best, but only when the hotel isn’t full. We save money by making one hotel room work for our family of five, and we choose hotels that offer free breakfast. That’s a decent savings, particularly if it means you can eat a later breakfast, skip lunch and do an early dinner. And if you have a room with a fridge and a microwave oven, make use of them by having at least one other meal each day in your hotel room.

How do you save money when you travel? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks.

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In 2008, nearly 12,000 people in the United States were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes. During the periods around Christmas and New Year’s, this number was particularly high, with 316 people killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes.  In 2007, 162,493 women were arrested for a DUI, an increase of almost 29% since 1998. (Can you say Bunco? Girls’ Night Out? Cookie Exchanges? Ornament Exchanges? It seems the opportunities to gather and celebrate and drink are endless these days).

Buzzed driving IS drunk driving.

You can’t help but wonder if lives could have been saved if people thought twice before getting behind the wheel. Sometimes, just TWO drinks is enough to be “buzzed” and (I’ll say it again): BUZZED DRIVING IS DRUNK DRIVING.

With the holidays approaching, it’s important that drivers be reminded about the dangers of buzzed driving.  Who knows…it could save a life.

Yesterday, I participated in a Twitter event for this campaign hosted by Resourceful Mommy and the Buzzed Driving/Ad Council, and learned some interesting things, such as:

• In 2008, 16 percent of child traffic fatalities occurred in alcohol impaired driving crashes (remember, most children DON’T HAVE THE OPTION TO OPT OUT OF RIDING WITH AN IMPAIRED DRIVER, SO BE RESPONSIBLE).
• 140-plus people died last year during the Christmas season from alcohol-impaired driving.
• 173 people died last year during the New Year’s holiday period due to alcohol-impaired driving.
• Drinking lots of water before drinking alcohol will NOT help you stay sober longer. (Neither will food or charcoal tablets). The best remedy is to NOT DRINK AND DRIVE.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) and the Ad Council are asking everyone to drive smart this holiday season and to pledge not to drive buzzed. I don’t drink, but I took the pledge anyway. You can take the pledge here, then tell your kids, friends and family that you did so and encourage them to do the same thing. It’s a great New Year’s Resolution that you can make early!

Other ways you can help spread the word and perhaps save a life this holiday season:

• Become a fan of the campaign on Facebook.
• Follow the campaign on Twitter.
• Visit the campaign Web site to watch Emily’s story and play an interactive game that demonstrates the difference between buzzed and drunk.
• If you have a blog, copy and paste this information into a post on your site!

While at holiday events, it’s easy to lose track of a drink here or there – but this can be fatal.  This holiday season, keep you and your family safe by spreading this message.

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Now is the time to utilize the Child Car Safety tools  provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation’’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Ad Council to learn more about proper car seat use and installation.  You will find informative resources that include instructional videos and have child passenger safety questions that you need answered before you travel over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house.  NHTSA is always available to answer your questions online through Facebook and Twitter.

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