Tween Vacations. Trips for kids Ages 10-17.

Tweens. FLY SOLO WITH KIDS offers great destinations for Single Parents with Kids who find it hard to keep the interest of kids that want more out of a vacation then just bonding.

Make it fun for them and they will want to keep traveling with you.

Our ski trips began because I was talking to a man who told me he had trouble with his teenage son. He was hanging with a rough group of boys, never wanted to be home, and basically unconnected.

Instead of fighting the eventual hormones and friends at home, this gentlemen decided to take the power back. He rented a ski house and every weekend, traveled up to the mountains. The house was basic - one out-dated television, a wood-burning fireplace and lots of room for cousins. On a ski lift, kids are forced to have a conversation. Skiing down a mountain alongside your children is an amazing connection.

Set some rules for your trip.

Suggetions include:

* No texting, phones etc. THIS INCLUDES PARENTS.

*Board Games.

*Family Style Dinners.

*Bond Fires, Wood Burning Fireplaces, roasting marshmallows.

Offer activities that kids will enjoy, but parents find fun too.

This summer, our trips that tweens will love include:

Maine Windjammer (Navigating by stars, Lobster Beach Parties, Sailing, Nature)

Montana Dude Ranch (Horses, rodeos, camping, white water rafting, water skiing)

African Safari (Project Share - volunteering- cultural knowledge, animal interactions, too many to list)

Hawaii-San Francisco Trip - Alcatraz tour by night, Chocolate Factory tour, Surfing, Lodge and Horses - all in one trip. This is top-notch luxury presented at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco and Four Seasons private island adventure Hawaii.

Grand Canyon (Jeep excursions, Wild West Shows, Train Excursions)

FLY SOLO WITH KIDS specializes in offering agendas that keep kids and parents busy from the beginning of the trip until the end. Parents don't have to work. All the details are done. We take the work out of traveling with kids alone. Tweens offer special challenges. Often boredom overtakes a kid from 10-17. You have to offer trips activities that tweens will embrace.

Travel is a great way to reconnect, while offering Tweens experiences that they will remember forever. Don't waste your valuable time and money on Vacations where kids are sitting at a pool with nothing to do.

Our small private groups, offer other kids, in the same age range, for kids to meet. Often kids who meet on our trips, find friendships. Parents find friendships with other parents who are traveling solo and have a genuine interest in family and travel. It is a win-win situation for everyone.

TRIP OF THE MONTH: This summer, we welcome you to try our Windjammer Vacation. We offer this private excursion for parents to enjoy with kids. A unique, cost efficient vacation that tweens will remember for a lifetime.

Making it fun for tweens, is not hard. You just have to go back in time and try to remember what made travel fun for you. Your kids will ask to spend lots more time together during the summers.

FLY SOLO WITH KIDS. Single Parents With Kids. Travel. Connect. Empower.

To receive information on any of our trips we ask that you contact us.

               

                           FLY SOLO WITH KIDS

WE TAKE THE WORK OUT OF TRAVELING ALONE WITH KIDS

DUDE RANCHES

WASHINGTON DC

VIRGINIA, WILLIAMSBURG AND BUSCH GARDENS AMUSEMENT PARK COMBINATION

MAINE WINDJAMMER

SOLITUDE

GREAT TRIPS WITH GREAT PEOPLE.  FOR INFORMATION ON OUR GREAT AMERICAN DESTINATION PACKAGES

CONTACT US AT baeszler@optonline.net

FLY SOLO WITH KIDS.  WE TAKE THE WORK OUT OF TRAVELING ALONE WITH KIDS.

Making Memories -Building Family Strength For Single Parents.

The other day my daughter was playing basketball. I looked through the lense and began to study her face. I noticed how her smirk reminded me of her Dad, and how her eyes are mine. I noticed how she concentrated when she was about to throw the ball. I got close with my telephoto lense. She rarely lets me in that close, so this is a special occassion. I snap away. I get about forty pictures, out of that maybe two work. But they do work. It is part of the thread that weaves the story, that creates the history, that makes our lives. Our story. It is special. I want to hand our story down to both my daughter and son.

I was looking at my childhood photo album. In my photo album, most are pictures centered around my Grandmother's house. It was a giant house, set close to the beach. It had a big table that fits around 30 family members and it was always filled. Cousins, Uncles, Nieces and Nephews. Grandparents and Great Grandparents. Greek food, laughter and lots of family. That's where I come from. That is my story, the legacy that my parents gave me. The legacy that my Grandparents gave me. Family is my link to this world. It is a foundation that was built with hard work by my parents and family is part of my whole.

Maybe we don't have a traditional family anymore, Mom, Dad, Brother and Sister. But we do have wonderful Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and Grandparents. We do have a dining table and we have a camera. I can work on what made my childhood happy. I can work hard to give my kids sit down dinners and cousins and family. Maybe I need to take a few cooking lessons. I can do that. And maybe some photograhy lessons. That could be fun. Maybe meet some people. Maybe network.


If looking back is the only way we acknowledge who we are today, then giving children the gift of a photo gives them foundations of who they are. It's more than a photo, it's a document of a certain event that created a bit of childhood. It's about moments of fleeting fears, wonderful happiness, the best times of our lives. Put those memories in an scrapbook and create some of the strongest family foundations you'll be able to build.

Photos are documents of the time we spend here on earth. Photos are documents of a childhood short and precious. They are memories we choose to keep. So take a camera, spend time with your family and watch the memories unfold. Building strong foundations with a camera. A tool for family unity.

I just discovered Picasa from Google. It is a software program that is free and it organizes all of your photos that are stored in your computer in one central area. Picasa is invaluable for getting your family photos organized and ready to put in albums or for sharing.

HEALING CHILDREN INSIDE - PICTURES TELL THE STORY

How do I go down deep inside my child and know all that weighs them down. All the pain and confusion and lost feelings inside? I don't know the answers. I claw and frantically try to dig the answers out, but only come up with air. Exposed, blank, cold air. It is my obsession to heal all the pain that my children have been exposed to. To protect and give our children their childhood. Like putting a dressing on an open wound. I can make that better. I can't seem to make this better.

But we can make it better. We only have to leave a part of yourself open for your children to visit whenever they need. I think we are like security blankets for our children when they are going through bad times. They look to us to see how we are handling things and they pattern their behavior to ours.

Art. It is a wonderful tool to healing children's wounds. Pictures tell the story.
I have discovered this wonderful thing called Sand Play. It is a type of therapy and it is a very moving, telling way for children to release what is hurting through play. They don't have to speak, because often they don't have the ability to fit the words to their feelings. But they do have the ability to put figures in the sand and tell stories. Sand Art allows them to explore very dark places without knowing they are there.


Basically, the therapist observes the children and guides them through their time when they put figures into a box. The figures- hundreds of figures that are sitting on shelves - are all types. They are soldiers, princesses, animals, ships, butterflies, fire, houses, etc. The children pick out maybe six or seven and then go to a small box with sand and create a theme in the box. It is amazing how this plays out. I was very unavailable to this at first. But then I saw - and I believe.

The children and I did a family box the other night. We each picked six figures and shared ideas about how we were going to build our box. My pieces were a ship, a butterly, a raccoon with her cub and a giant dog who sat observing. Interesting choices! I also picked the planet Earth. How this came out in the sand was my butterly sat on the ship. Planet Earth resided close by. This clearly meant that I wanted to take my family on a journey and free them. The raccoon and her cub sat next to my daughters wishing well. My daughter had this wild cheerleader waving her pom poms. Look at Me!!! See Me!! See Me!! My Son had two houses, each one facing each other. One had fire in front. The other had a fire truck inside. My ex husband is a volunteer firefighter. There was a road leading back and forth to each house. We live in two houses. One is happy, the other - not so great. We shared feelings in a very unconventional way. I think that my children saw that I was willing to get in their place and do this with them. It was a great step forward for us all.

Children don't talk about bad things happening to them. They just don't know who is safe and how to express themselves. We talk and have support. We cry and take prescriptions to deal with our pain. Can you imagine all that pain and nowhere to go. They become damaged if they don't heal the right way. Art and Sand Play and all the familiar things children know in their little world is a great way to reach their wounds, dress them, and heal them.

Sharing Children - the hardest part of divorce.

The comedy of children. It comes in vast waves, but you have to know how to find it.

Yesterday, as I was giving my little guy some milk - the milk that cost me $5.00 to buy because I was too lazy to run to the food shop after the deli- my son vomited right in my face. The milk I fed him was spoiled. It gets funnier because you have to know that when I went to the store to buy the milk, I ran out and locked the door. So now I get back to the house with 10 minutes to pick up - the door is locked shut. I go get a key - no easy task - get in the house, get the sippy cup and fill it with spoiled milk and just make the bell. So after the vomit, I think, "Oh well, never fear, I'll just run out in the morning and buy more milk after school drop off." Well, who would have thought - major snowstorm. My son is beyond bellowing by now - basically flat out on the floor in a hissy and we are not going anywhere for a very long time. My four year old has just informed me that I am fired.

I find this funny. I do. Because after I cursed at myself for locking the door, and after I washed my face off, I remembered thinking I was really happy. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and I felt happy. Happy? Yes - because my boy is with me today. Tomorrow, he'll be with his dad, but today, I get this moment. I'll remember this moment for a long time.

My little girl is the constant in our lives. She keeps us glued. She is very wise and she has less of these crazy moments. But I get a lot of holding from her, a lot of conversation, and a lot of stability.

Tomorrow, she'll be with her dad, but today I get to hold her hand. I now cherish the moments I have. I look at these moments in halves now. And I think I love my children with so much more definition, more intensity -just more - than I ever did.

Sharing my children was the hardest thing I had to face when this divorce began. I sobbed for some time and walked the house in my bathrobe. But then I realized something amazing. I don't have time to feel bad. Now, when I have my kids, they are golden days. I don't have those moments anymore when I need time away. Yes it is hard, but the pity part goes away because time is ticking.

The moments may be cut in half, but those halves are what makes my heart whole.

Keep the faith. If you think positive, you get positive.

FAMILY NUTRITION - You are what you eat

This starts out not sounding interesting but read past the first paragraph and you will be amazed!

You are what you eat, so eat well.

A stupendous insight of civilizations past has now been confirmed by today's investigative, nutritional sciences. They have shown that what was once called "The Doctrine of Signatures" was astoundingly correct. It now contends that every whole food has a pattern that resembles a body organ or physiological function and that this pattern acts as a signal or sign as to the benefit the food provides the eater.

Here is just a short list of examples of Whole Food Signatures.

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye...and science shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.


A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.


Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.


A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower c erebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.


Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.


Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.


Eggplant, Avocadoes and Pears target the health and f u nction of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? .... It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).


Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm as well to overcome male sterility.


Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.


Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.


Grapefruits, Oranges , and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.


Onions look like body cells. Today's research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.


"The news isn't that fruits and vegetables are good for you, it's that they are so good for you, they can save your life."

David Bjerklie, TIME


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Hummingbirds

Legends say that hummingbirds float free of time, carrying our hopes for love, joy and celebration. The hummingbird's delicate grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, all connections have meaning and that laughter is life's sweetest creation.