babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
Ahhh kids, so handy. There they are: plowing the fields, working seven paper routes to pay for your new HD TV and always at the ready to take a face full of pepper spray for dear old dad.
Eight-year-old Meagan Bilodeau was out on a cruise ship in the middle of the sea when her dad talked her into writing a personal message, sticking it into a water bottle, and tossing it into the ocean. “I always wished someone would find my bottle if I sent one. If found, would you kindly write back to me? Please? Please? Please?” she’d written.
She imagined it finding its way to far off places — CNN reports the most likely destination was the U.K. — but something happened to throw that bottle off course and it nearly followed Meagan all the way back home. Teddy Herrick, 11, found it while boating with her own family, just fifteen miles from Meagan’s home in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Teddy lives in Colorado and the girls plan to be penpals.
A British theme park convinced that too many parents are acting like fuddy duddies and spoiling the fun for their thrill-hungry kids has come up with a solution: a free session with a hypnotherapist. Continue reading »
Best Western wants to help your family summer at one of their many locations around the world. So they’re giving the winner of our August Photo Contest: Water Babies a $500 travel card! How do you enter this fabulous contest? Continue reading »
Some would call life with three kids a bit of a zoo. For the Taviano family, it really is.
Fifty-two zoos, to be exact, visited over a stretch of fifty-two weeks by the Ohio family of five. They started last August in Louisville and wrapped up their “Zoo Year” this week in Columbus, Ohio. Continue reading »
If you thought all those status reports with the final score of the game you TiVo’d was bad, just wait. A kid who went to Europe on vacation logged onto Facebook to touch base . . . only to find out her entire family had been murdered.
Police now say the trip may have saved her life. Continue reading »
Kim Brooks 
recently wrote an essay — published right here on Babble.com — arguing that Europeans know how to take family vacations, while Americans still don’t have a clue. Her piece focused on the fact that in most European countries, employers automatically give their employees four — sometimes as much as five — weeks of vacation, which explains why so many people in the U.K., France, Hungary and other non-U.S. countries take off the entire month of August to revel in the pleasures of ambling summer days spent with family.
I think Kim is absolutely right. The fact that many companies here in the U.S. view vacation time as a luxury — often parceling out a mere week’s worth of days off until an employee has years of seniority under his or her belt — is wrong. But I think that’s only one part of what makes it so hard for many people in this country to enjoy family vacation time. It’s not just that we don’t get the time. It’s that we don’t know how to spend it.
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
The Walt Disney Company supports Babble as a platform dedicated to honest, engaged, informed, intelligent and open conversation about parenting. However, the opinions expressed on this site are those of individual parents/writers and do not reflect the views of Disney. In addition, content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or safety advice.
0