Two years ago, our local news station came out to my house to interview me for a story on rented car seats. Why? Thinking ourselves clever, we had arranged to rent car seats with our rental car rather than lugging them through the airport.

Instead we found ourselves stranded at the rental agency sorting through a scrapheap of aged, damaged and dirty car seats to find two that could be used to transport our tired kids to our hotel.

Thanksgiving is approaching fast. ‘Tis the start of the season for travel nightmares with bad weather and crowds. I recently wrote an article for Peter Greenberg on holiday travel tips and deals. The key to stress reduction is meticulous planning at every point in the process.

Here’s a quick summary of the travel tips discussed in the article. I know it is impossible to follow all of the flight tips—what is best of the schedule, is often not best of the wallet.

It doesn’t matter where you go. The United States, Europe, Asia; there’s never enough time to do everything. Kids and guidebooks often don’t understand each other’s idea of a perfect day. With my girls, ages 8 and 11, the philosophy has always been use the first trip to help plan the second.

That doesn’t mean you have limit yourself to all too often lackluster bus tours, just because you’re traveling with kids. It just means getting creative.

The thought of being trapped with a screaming child on an airplane is enough to keep even the most avid travelers on the ground. For others, it drives them to play Polly Pocket or to speak in an unnaturally high and sweet voice for hours on end. To spare you from this, we’ve come up with ideas that will help keep everyone sane on the plane.

Just like kids, parents come in all types of personalities—the planner and the non-planner, laid-back and uptight, etc. We’ve met them and possibly been them all.

During a recent flight delay at San Francisco Airport we made good use of our extra time with a visit to the XpresSpa—part of a chain of international airport spas.

Whoever said the holidays are the “happiest time of the year” wasn’t loading up a crew of kids to head cross-country. Don’t get me wrong …