CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS!
Amanda Edgar – Comment #1 wins the book, Empowering Youth: How to Encourage Young Leaders to Do Great Things

Please send me your addresses and I will ship your prizes. Thank you to all who participated!

It’s giveaway carnival time again! This time, I’m giving away TWO Empowering Youth books or games. Please read the entry instructions at the end of the post. Following are the items up for grabs.

My new book, Empowering Youth: How to Encourage Young Leaders to Do Great Things, published by Search Institute Press. Read examples of young leaders from throughout the world, as well as stories from the adults who have empowered them.

This book is a great resource for parents, educators and others who work with middle school and high-school-aged youth.

The Hidden Treasure of Assets Boardgame. This conversation-starting board game will get your kids or students discussing the characteristics that help young people to grow up healthy, caring and resilient.

Game cards for grades 3-6 and 7-12.

Career Expedition Boardgame. Are you hoping to help your teenagers or students prepare for a career? This interactive game will help young people discover their own aptitudes, strengths and interests so they can begin the career exploration process. Best for grades 6-12.

SPARK Peer Tutoring Handbook and Training Manual. This is the perfect curriculum kit for educators and after-school youth workers to advise and organize a research-based peer tutoring program.

To be considered for the contest, please explain which Empowering Youth product you would like and why. You can participate even if you don’t have a blog. Just make sure you leave a working email when you leave your comment. US addresses only, please. I’ll choose the winners after 5 p.m. CST on Friday, January 30.

I host regular giveaways for parents and educators. Please consider signing up for updates by email or feed. I will never spam you or give out your address.

More giveaways at the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival!

After our visit to Disney at Thanksgiving, we spent a couple days in Cocoa Beach and went to the Kennedy Space Center. Buses shuttle visitors between the various stopping points throughout the 6,000-acres used for space shuttle operations. It was a brisk December day, so the 50-degree temperatures made for a cold, though sunny, viewing of the launch sites.

In the main visitor’s complex, the kids pushed this huge ball in a fountain – the pressure from the water coming up from the bottom makes it able to spin. We also watched several well-done Omni shows, and we rode the Shuttle Launch Experience, which was similar to the Mission: Space ride at Epcot.

And at one of the tour stops, we looked at actual shuttle parts and memorabilia from space.

Here the kids are touching a real moon rock.

Probably our favorite stop, though was the Astronaut’s Hall of Fame. It’s a few miles outside of the space center, but we could use the same ticket for admission. Although we were disappointed that several of the hands-on exhibits were out of order, there was still a lot to do.

We rode in a Mars Rover simulation and the kids played with this shuttle landing simulator.

And we waited in line to ride in the G-Force trainer. It spins really fast — then tilts — simulating the feeling you’d get when reaching G Force speeds. Dizzying!

We toured the facilities for a single day, and couldn’t do everything within the open hours of the center. The Astronaut’s Hall of Fame got busy when we were there in the afternoon — we could have completed the exhibits in far less time had we not been in line for the G Force Trainer, behind a school group. We could have returned a second day on the single ticket (you’re allowed two days to visit the complex,) but we had to catch a plane, so we just fit in as much as we could in one day.

TIPS:
*Pack a lunch and keep it in your car. You can leave the complex to enjoy lunch, and return on the same ticket.

*Take note of the omni show times right away, so you can work your tour around them.

*Do the Shuttle Launch Experience as soon as the center opens. There was no one in line at 9 AM, but the very meandering zig-zag ramp told me sometimes the line is long!

*Call ahead to the Astronaut’s Hall of Fame to find out which exhibits are out of order. Consider visiting there right away in the morning, if the popular exhibits are open.

*Take two shorter days to complete the tour. We were bushed by about 2 PM, so it would have been nice to come back the next day.

Florida Series:
Disney World
Sanibel Island
Fort Myers Beach

For more great tips, please visit Rocks in my Dryer.

***GUEST POST BY 10-YEAR-OLD CRAIG***

I never thought a trip to the Sear’s Tower would be so hard.

One day we went to the Sear’s Tower in Chicago. We could look out binoculars and Darla and I could not figure out who would go first and then we started to argue.

So Mom set us on a time out until we figured out who would go first and we figured out that whoever went first paid the person who went second a quarter. I went second, so I earned a quarter.

I never thought going to the top of the Sear’s Tower would be such a hassle, but it was fun too.

Mom’s note: Craig wrote this as an assignment in school. I remember this day vividly because I was mortified when my kids started arguing in such a public place. We travel a lot, and normally they’re very well-behaved. After I put them in a time-out, I walked away to look at the exhibit about the historic Chicago fire. I never knew how they worked it out, they just did. Two years later, I find out the whole story.

Our Chicago Series from 2007:
Museum of Science and Industry
Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament
Children’s Museum
Our fancy schmancy room from Hotwire
Millenium Park
Streets and buildings

You may have noticed, we travel quite a bit.

My mom encouraged this sense of adventure when I was a kid, and my husband put on his share of cross-country miles as well. And when we had kids of our own, we decided we didn’t want to travel away from them.

We always take them along.

But you may wonder how we’ve managed to afford this kind of travel. I recently went back to work half-time, but we were basically a single-income family during most of the trips.

For us, the key for many years has been flexibility and creativity. Without exaggerating, I can tell you that during the past seven years, we’ve traveled nine times without paying for flights. All it took was airline and credit card loyalty, Atlanta layovers, the willingness to camp out in the airport if given the opportunity, and a whole lotta luck.

What follows is an outline of where we’ve traveled as a family in the past seven years, and how we’ve paid for the flights.

February 2002 — DisneyWorld (free flights)
We’d traveled once to St. Petersburg, FL, prior to this, but this was our first free flight. Earned by my long-time loyalty to a single credit card, we paid for all four flights with miles we’d saved since our wedding day.

December 2003 — Marco Island, Florida (paid for cheap AIRTRAN flights to Orlando and drove rental car to Marco)
This was a ridiculous drive, but staying on the beach in Marco was so worth it. The temperature continues to climb every mile you drive south in Florida, and we needed every degree of warmth in December!

Summer 2004 — Europe (paid for flights)
This splurge was a roundtrip flight to Paris (that’s where the deal was) and a cross-continent drive to our foreign exchange student’s home in Austria.

December 2004 — North Redington Beach, Florida (paid for flights — $89 RT with AIRTRAN to Atlanta and drove rental car to FL)
This was another ridiculously long drive, but the incredible deal on flight (and condo – only $450 for a week on the beach) made us pull the trigger on this last-minute travel plan.

June 2005 — Maryland (free AIRTRAN flights – from points)
Airtran points earned from previous paid flights, including some I’d earned on business trips. Only Darla and I traveled to Maryland, while the boys were fishing in Canada. But on our way home, we each got bumped twice, earning a total of four free flights for our family’s next vacation. (Airtran’s rules no longer allow you to designate a different passenger for the free flight when you get bumped.)

December 2005 — Fort Lauderdale/Caribbean Cruise (free AIRTRAN flights)
We’d booked flights and a condo on Marco Island, but a hurricane struck and we were able to switch our flights to Fort Lauderdale and book a last-minute cruise. We were bumped twice on the way home, and knew we’d have to use the free travel vouchers within a year. This meant two trips in the next 12 months…

April, 2006 — Tybee Island, Georgia (free AIRTRAN flights)
This fun little island just south of Hilton Head made for a great Easter vacation this year.

Summer, 2006 — Mackinac Island, Michigan (drove there from home in Northern Wisconsin)
Another mother/daughter trip. Beautiful! And very girly;) The fishermen were roughing in it Ontario instead.

January, 2007 — Fort Myers Beach, Florida (free AIRTRAN flights)
This was our homeschooling year, and we spent two glorious weeks learning on the beach. On the way home, flights were overbooked, so once again we earned free flights for the next Christmas…

May, 2007 — Chicago (drove from our home in Northern Wisconsin)
Awesome! And my son’s first big-city stay.

Summer, 2007 — Boston (free AIRTRAN flights)
My daughter and I visited Boston using two of the free flights we’d earned in January. The boys went to Canada again, fishing instead. We were bumped off a flight on the way home, so in December, we joined the boys again — each of us with our own free flights.

December, 2007– Sanibel Island, Florida (free AIRTRAN flights)
They messed up our reservations for our departure. Luckily I’d called the airlines when I wasn’t able to check in online, so we hadn’t left our house yet when we found out the bad news. We weren’t able to leave until a day and a half later. Airtran gave us each two free roundtrip flights for our inconvenience, which meant both trips in 2008 would be free too.

May, 2008 — Washington DC (free AIRTRAN flights)
Even my husband enjoyed this very busy, educational, car-less adventure.

November, 2008 — Orlando/Cocoa Beach (free AIRTRAN flights)

Although we’ve always been prepared to do so, we haven’t been bumped since January 2007, and when I look at the price of flights, I wonder how we’ll ever travel again! We may need to focus on driving vacations for a while, but I’ve been saving up my credit card miles for seven years.

So in 2010 we’ve set our sights on Alaska…

I know in this economy, a lot of travel systems may be changing, but a willingness to be flexible may work for you, like it did for us. What are your keys to affordable travel? For more great tips, please visit Rocks in my Dryer.

Stay tuned for part two of Affordable Family Travel.

***SIXTH-GRADE GUEST REVIEW BY DARLA***

This Place Has No Atmosphere
By Paula Danziger

The book “This Place Has No Atmosphere” is about a girl from the year 2057, where people live in malls and whose teachers are robots. But since her parents are amazing doctors and dentists, they got the opportunity of moving to the moon for five years to make it livable, and also get practice when they humanize Mars. Of course all of this is happening when Aurora starts high School, is in the most popular group, and is going out with the cutest boy in her grade. Right now she is in C.A.M.P., learning about the moon. Aurora doesn’t want to go, but her parents and younger sister, Starr, think that it’s a great opportunity.

I think this is a very interesting book, it is cool to imagine what it will be like in fifty years, and this is absolutely amazing. It is a little like when I moved from town to town, because I missed my friends a lot. I had gone to that school for four years, but eventually ZI got over it and made new friends. I think Aurora is a very interesting person, and her takes on things are different, since I guess it is future and she is older than me, but I still think she would be a cool person to know. Then her best friend, Juna, has half pink, half purple hair, with silver streaks and light bulbs that blink. Awesome!

I think once Aurora gets past the freeze dried hamburgers, she will start to enjoy living on the moon, I mean, what an experience! She will find a high-tech way to talk to her friends, and learn to love it, and then when five years is up, they will maybe agree to live there forever.

One question I have, is what do they drive? They said they got in the car, and I know it runs on little pellet thinks, but what does it look like? Second, Is there time travel? Just wondering, but with all that high-tech stuff, you’d think there would be, but they never mention it.