Always carry disinfectant hand wipes and wet wipes, as they come in handy when traveling with children and are great if they spill something at 35,000 feet!

Prepare your children in advance for the trip you will be taking. If you are traveling by car or plane, you can show them on a map the route you will be taking. Even young children enjoy following the route on a map. Show your children travel brochures on the places you will be visiting, and if you can check out some books from your local library about where you will be going, you can use them too.

If traveling by air, discuss the security clearance process with your children so they will not be frightened or surprised. Don't travel with toys that could be mistaken for weapons. If you have photo IDs for your children, bring them. Put all your IDs, credit cards and tickets in a secured area before leaving home for the airport.

Things go a lot smoother when you go on a trip with multiple children when you are organized. Pack the children's clothes in gallon-size plastic bags. In each bag is one day's worth of clothes. Each bag has the child's name on it. That way, they just reach in the suitcase and pull out a bag. This eliminates the digging and hunting and cries when they can't find everything.

For long road trips with children, take a little spiral notebook and ahead of the trip, write down names of all the cities you will be passing through. Then on the trip, as you get to each city point it out to them and they can check it off their list. They get sort of a visual idea of how much more of the trip they have left and it gives them something to do every so often. On the return trip, they start at the bottom of the list and work backward. This can keep the "are we there yet?" question at bay.