Family Vacations

Trish Derwart doesn't take anything for granted.Not a year, not a month, not a day, not an hour, not a second."At the end of the day I don't want to have any what ifs," said Derwart, a senior Mount Hebron lacrosse player. "What if I could have done this better. What if i could have played harder. What if I had said this or said that. I want to do everything to my fullest and have no regrets. I do that with my sports, I do that with my life."Most 17-year-olds don't think this way. Then again, most teen-agers haven't seen first-hand how life can be so unfair.

IN THE DAYS before a vacation, I usually get the jitters. This year I went all the way and broke out in hives. I'm told this could be caused by some fruit I ate, but I think it was nerves. Had I packed enough washcloths?The June vacation is the really big one, the one with the baggage that isn't all beach chairs and towels. This installment is number 46 -- the 46th time my father has taken a house and had his children and grandchildren leave Baltimore for a summertime stay on the Delaware shore.

The temperature was well into the 90s, but instead of swimming or sitting under a tree with a cool drink on the last day of vacation, Sara McDougall had been up since 6 a.m. in the house they'd rented, vacuuming, cleaning out the refrigerator and scrubbing bathrooms.She had only her 6-year-old daughter to help. Her husband and son had left the California Gold Country earlier, to make it back in time for a soccer game. Standing in that overheated bathroom, sponge in hand, McDougall had an epiphany that changed her life (on vacation, anyway)

Go to the travel section of the nearest bookstore and see if you can find the family travel books. I can't -- not even the ones I've written.That's not to say the stores don't carry my books and plenty of others for parents and grandparents taking the kids on vacation. They do, and there are more titles out there than ever before. But good luck finding them. Bookstores don't typically feature sections for family travel.You might want to try another route. California-based Carousel Press has just published a new catalog of more than 100 family travel books.

Forget the California beach house or the winter ski lodge in Colorado. Mom, dad and the kids are embracing a more adventurous recess at sea these days.Whether they sail the Chesapeake Bay for a week or spend rTC months in the Florida Keys or the Caribbean, more people are choosing coastal cruises with their families rather than languishing in long lines at Walt Disney World.Their motto: The family that sails together stays together."It's truly a test of how strong a family bond is, because everyone has to pitch in to make it work," said Ralph J. Naranjo, a technical editor of Cruising World magazine, whose family has sailed on a 41-foot sloop for 20 years.

Some Harford County parents think a proposed five-day limit on excused absences for family vacations, which has been proposed by a county school committee, is too strict.Patricia Jones plans to take her children, two first-graders, a fifth-grader and an eighth-grader, out of school for six days in November so that the family can accompany her husband, an insurance broker, on a business trip to Europe.Under the proposed five-day limit, her children's sixth day out of school would not be excused.

The luxe Caribbean resort couldn't be more suited to vacationing couples, from the spectacular multicourse dinners to the seamless service from wake-up till evening turndown. All these amenities, of course, are wasted on children.Yet Curtain Bluff, on the island of Antigua, is -- like most other Caribbean resorts these days -- catering to more children than ever. The same is true in Mexico, Hawaii and Florida, hoteliers there report -- and this whether they like it or not, and despite their hefty tariffs.

Anne Jacobson didn't know whether to be more frantic or furious.Her 13-year-old son and his two friends arrived on time at the spot where he and his younger sister were supposed to meet their parents. But his 9-year-old sister wasn't with him. He had no idea where she was."They'd gotten tired of waiting for her, so they'd gone on ahead," explains Ms. Jacobson. "They couldn't understand why I was so upset." Emma arrived a few minutes later, to her parents' enormous relief. Annoyed at being left behind by the boys, she was none the worse for the experience.

It's enough to make parents want to drop the kids at the next gas station and not look back.The back-seat bickering isn't what's setting the front seaters on edge. Nor is it the whining about the lack of palatable snacks (read chips, soda and candy) or pool time. It's even worse: The kids are bored.Loudly, annoyingly and frustratingly bored. And they want to make sure you're miserable, too. No matter what activities are planned for the day, they're not interested. They certainly don't care about the splendid scenery.

Talk to kids about family vacations and one thing is clear: They don't see the experience from the same perspective as a parent does.Museums that might broaden their horizons are dismissed as boring. Visits to relatives are excursions to be missed. Heart-stopping scenery rates barely a glance. Whatever the budget, it's not enough for the souvenirs they want. Hikes are invariably too long, while pool time is too short. Restaurants never have exactly what they're in the mood to eat. Neither do moms who have packed a picnic.

It's not my fault. I know you've been hearing a lot of that lately. From the presidents of banks and the CEOs of investment houses, for starters. But when the financial cognoscenti aren't blaming them for this economic mess, they are blaming people like me, and I am starting to feel defensive. I don't begin to understand what has happened to capitalism, but it looks like it is pretty much finished as an economic model, and everybody says it is the fault of people like me. They say people like me have been bingeing on credit for years, and now everybody is paying the price for my greedy impatience to live the good life, even though I couldn't afford it. I don't feel like I am living the good life.

SUGAR LAND, Texas -- There's nothing about Republican Rep. Tom DeLay personally that math teacher Denice Shelburne doesn't like. The Texas lawmaker attends her church, where he mingles with the congregation as an amiable neighbor. His wife, Christine, is lovely, Shelburne said - and everywhere in DeLay's 22nd District is evidence of his good works. "I just think he's a wonderful person," she said. But as DeLay's legal problems have multiplied in recent months, even his supporters are having second thoughts about returning the 11-term congressman to office.

Even though baseball season is beyond its halfway mark, there's still plenty of time to plan game trips. And the "North American Baseball Travel Map" (White Star Press, $6) can help get you to the ballpark of your choice. The newly updated, pocket-size guide unfolds to show all the major- and minor-league stadiums in the United States and Mexico, along with contact information for all professional teams. If you'd rather have someone else do the legwork for you, here are some sports-travel companies that can make all the arrangements, whether you're into baseball, golf or cricket (all trips include game tickets, travel arrangements and accommodations)

RECENTLY MY family and I spent a week in the Berkshires in Massachusetts doing what so many families do now on summer vacation: biking, canoeing and fighting off West Nile virus. Oh, yes, they're pretty freaked out about killer mosquitoes up there. It seems that a few days before we arrived, a couple of dead crows were scraped off a road and found to be infected with the virus. From then on, the entire region was one step away from breaking out the bio-hazard suits. Look, if you woke up one morning and the streets were littered with dead crows, sure, I'd say we had a problem on our hands.

IN THE DAYS before a vacation, I usually get the jitters. This year I went all the way and broke out in hives. I'm told this could be caused by some fruit I ate, but I think it was nerves. Had I packed enough washcloths?The June vacation is the really big one, the one with the baggage that isn't all beach chairs and towels. This installment is number 46 -- the 46th time my father has taken a house and had his children and grandchildren leave Baltimore for a summertime stay on the Delaware shore.

Trish Derwart doesn't take anything for granted.Not a year, not a month, not a day, not an hour, not a second."At the end of the day I don't want to have any what ifs," said Derwart, a senior Mount Hebron lacrosse player. "What if I could have done this better. What if i could have played harder. What if I had said this or said that. I want to do everything to my fullest and have no regrets. I do that with my sports, I do that with my life."Most 17-year-olds don't think this way. Then again, most teen-agers haven't seen first-hand how life can be so unfair.

Go to the travel section of the nearest bookstore and see if you can find the family travel books. I can't -- not even the ones I've written.That's not to say the stores don't carry my books and plenty of others for parents and grandparents taking the kids on vacation. They do, and there are more titles out there than ever before. But good luck finding them. Bookstores don't typically feature sections for family travel.You might want to try another route. California-based Carousel Press has just published a new catalog of more than 100 family travel books.

The temperature was well into the 90s, but instead of swimming or sitting under a tree with a cool drink on the last day of vacation, Sara McDougall had been up since 6 a.m. in the house they'd rented, vacuuming, cleaning out the refrigerator and scrubbing bathrooms.She had only her 6-year-old daughter to help. Her husband and son had left the California Gold Country earlier, to make it back in time for a soccer game. Standing in that overheated bathroom, sponge in hand, McDougall had an epiphany that changed her life (on vacation, anyway)

Forget the California beach house or the winter ski lodge in Colorado. Mom, dad and the kids are embracing a more adventurous recess at sea these days.Whether they sail the Chesapeake Bay for a week or spend rTC months in the Florida Keys or the Caribbean, more people are choosing coastal cruises with their families rather than languishing in long lines at Walt Disney World.Their motto: The family that sails together stays together."It's truly a test of how strong a family bond is, because everyone has to pitch in to make it work," said Ralph J. Naranjo, a technical editor of Cruising World magazine, whose family has sailed on a 41-foot sloop for 20 years.

The luxe Caribbean resort couldn't be more suited to vacationing couples, from the spectacular multicourse dinners to the seamless service from wake-up till evening turndown. All these amenities, of course, are wasted on children.Yet Curtain Bluff, on the island of Antigua, is -- like most other Caribbean resorts these days -- catering to more children than ever. The same is true in Mexico, Hawaii and Florida, hoteliers there report -- and this whether they like it or not, and despite their hefty tariffs.