Welcome to Season 2 of the Helping of Happiness Podcast!! After taking the summer off to have more family time, the podcast is up and rolling once more! We are so excited to be airing episodes again.

Today’s episode Hillary Hess and Lindy Shock have a chat about the summer, including the lessons Hillary learned while traveling internationally with her husband and 6 children. You can get the summary of that as you scroll down in the show notes.

We also have the pleasure of hearing from Lindy. Lindy gives us a little devotional - a segment we call “Spoonful of Spirit”- about working hard and reaching our goals. You can see the links to the awesome packets she creates for families to supplement the Come Follow Me at home church curriculum.

Listen below or through your favorite podcast app!

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Show Notes:

International travel tips from Hillary

Get your passports as soon as you even begin dreaming about traveling internationally. Passports are very backed up because of the pandemic. Just getting an appointment to get your passport can take a month or two.
If you are having trouble with your passport, contact your congressman! We had a lot of trouble with one of ours. Because we had expedited our passports, our congressman was able to get our passport processed within a week.
Depending on where you are traveling, you may want to bring lots of cash for tips. We went to Mexico and were so happy we had gone with a stash of $1 bills to pay our tips.
Make sure your debit card (not just credit cards!!) is working before you go. We had a non-working debit card situation on our trip and had a very tricky time getting money.
If you need to send yourself money (at least in Mexico), you want to send it in small amounts. We tried sending ourselves $200-500 and none of the money transfer locations were willing to give up that much cash. If we had sent the money in $50 increments, it would have been no problem. Also, make sure your money pick up is in the exact same name as your passport. You may also need a copy of your passport and copy of hotel details to give to the money transfer location.
Have a family council before your trip! Our kids had never been to Mexico, so a few things we included in our family council were: only drink bottled water, always have a buddy, throw the TP in the trash can instead of down the toilet (except at the hotel), how to order non alcoholic drinks, and to be flexible when plans change or we end up delayed or in some kind of waiting place. This made our traveling go so much smoother when things did arise.
Remember that the every day drama of having kids is still going to happen when you are traveling. Kids still wet their pants, get sick and fight with their siblings. Taking a little bit of time to think through your family’s particular needs and expecting the hiccups ahead of time with make for less melt downs in the moment. For example, we brought a bottle of Woolite laundry detergent with us, and we were so glad we did when our 4 year old had some potty accidents. It was easy to wash his clothes in the hotel sink and not have to track down a laundry service.
Study the culture with your kids before you go. Introduce them to the music, some of the foods, conversational phrases in the language and even some of the traditions. It is so fun when they are more vested in the place you are going.