While I am by no means an expert at parenting, I do believe that I am quite skilled in the tricky art of entertaining my children in public. I’ve never been caught out at a restaurant without my little bag of tricks: games, toys, books and other activities to keep my little ones happy. Now that they’re older it’s the same story, although the books and games have gotten far more advanced and take up a lot less room. We started traveling with our girls when they were very young, both out of necessity – having moved here from the East Coast and desperately needing sun and a little family time – and out of pleasure. Drew and I love to travel and wanted to share that love with the girls.

I have figured out a perfect way to make our travels fun, keeping the children busy while creating a perfect souvenir. Before our trips, I assemble everything we need for vacation scrapbooks. My usual go-to items include a 6×6 scrapbook for each girl (Making Memories, SEI and American Crafts all sell great ones) and a pad of coordinating 6×6 papers. I bring stickers, markers and colored pencils, glue sticks and cute-patterned tapes. Head’s up: do not pack any scissors in your carry-on, even those cute little shaped ones, unless you want major drama and crying at airport security when they are confiscated. Along the way, we collect business cards, postcards, menus, brochures – anything we can find – and the girls go to work. They love putting everything in their books, and it definitely keeps them busy. Once we return, I print out photos we’ve taken, and we spend a few days adding them in. The results are incredible. Even scrapbooks from years ago are constantly revisited; we all love seeing the old pictures, drawings and scribble scrabble. And it’s so cute to see the memories the girls chose to include from a trip – moments I might not have even remembered. I know that we will always treasure these precious little books, reminders of the amazing times we spent lost in the world together.