Meghan Rose
A mom of twins, Meghan and her family live in Los Angeles and love to explore the city, as well as the world at large together. As national editor, please send her ALL your correction requests and pitches on national parenting subjects and travel at meghan@mommypoppins.com.
Latest posts by Meghan
The best babymoon destinations vary depending on who you are and what you’ll miss most when your Friday night consists of falling asleep on the couch at 8:30pm. If you’ll be sorry you’re not catching the latest show, your perfect babymoon destination might be a trip to a bustling city. If you’re missing those extra hours of shut-eye because you got up at 1am (and 3am and 5am), the best babymoon idea for you is a spa. Here we’ve picked the top 10 spots for a babymoon, from a glamorous trip to London to a favorite tropical beach destination.
Now pack your bags and get a little fun in before your all-consuming (but very happy-making) bundle of joy arrives. Because the next trip you plan will be as a family, and you’ll be using our Guide to Family Travel to find an all-inclusive water park resort or pick the best hotel for families near Disneyland!
It’s that time of the year again: “best of” season! Well, we’re not immune here at Mommy Poppins, and it’s such a delight to highlight fun things to do with kids in Los Angeles that are brand new and you might not have experienced yet. We searched our archives, our memories, your Facebook recommendations, and more to compile this list of the best kid-friendly openings in Los Angeles in 2022. With a new entertainment center (with duckpin bowling, for my fellow former east coasters!), new playspaces, and maybe the best pizza in town (are we fighting?), Los Angeles has more fun things to do with kids than ever before.
Without further ado, here is our list of the best kid-friendly destinations that opened in 2022 in Los Angeles. I wonder what 2023 will bring… For a peek at events already on our January radar, check out our January Calendar of Events in Los Angeles!
Classes for babies (and toddlers) can solve one of the biggest parenting hurdles: getting out of the house! Especially in the early years, a Parent and Baby class might be the only outing you manage all day—even all week. From classes for babies who can barely lift their heads to classes for toddlers who are tottering around, these Mommy & Me classes (and Daddy & Me classes, too!) focus on activities that babies and parents can do together, from swimming to sign language and yoga to folk music. Find your tribe, bond with your babe, and get out of the house to reclaim a little sanity with these amazing baby classes and toddler classes in San Francisco.
Check out our other lists of awesome classes for kids in San Francisco Bay Area, including Cooking Classes for Kids and Swimming Lessons for Babies and Toddlers. And did you know you can now book classes and more activities directly from the Mommy Poppins calendar? Find events with the "book it" button or filter for classes for simple registration in just a few clicks!
Honestly, the kids just started school, and I haven't made our plans yet (note to self: do that today) for a quick getaway or day trip for Labor Day weekend. I am not ready for Halloween! But, with pumpkin spice lattes at coffee shops, Pumpkin Spice Oreos in the stores, and my kids already planning Halloween costumes, I think it's time to start planning. Especially since Disneyland has already announced that Oogie Boogie is fully sold out for 2022... So, I took a look at which beloved Los Angeles Halloween events and attractions are already on sale—almost all of them—so we can all snag some tickets before everything sells out.
From fun for the whole family at Haunt O' Ween to the big kid scares at Haunted Hayride, here are the best Halloween events you just might want to get tickets for today. Keep tabs on all the Halloween fun as it is announced in our Los Angeles Halloween Fun and Activities Guide.
Swimply and Resort Pass solve the problem for those of us who dream of having a private backyard pool or membership to a swanky private pool but don’t have unlimited funds with resort passes and daily pool rentals.
Pools by the hour? Yes, please. This summer has been blisteringly, blazingly hot. It’s also been a year when many public pools have been shut down due to a lack of lifeguards or filled to capacity early in the day. Private swim club memberships either cost big bucks or sold out of memberships well before summer started. That’s where Swimply and Resort Pass come in. Swimply is a new(ish) app that allows anyone to rent out private pools by the hour. It’s basically the Airbnb of private pools. And Resort Pass is a program that allows you to purchase day passes to private hotel pools, without having to rent a room.
Genius. Read on for how to book your own pool day online, in an instant. If you're looking for a bigger getaway, like at one of the best family resorts with water parks check out our Guide to Family-Friendly Resorts and Hotels.
Quick: It’s time to shoehorn all these last favorite things to do in Los Angeles before school starts up!
Is it me, or did this summer go by extra fast? I feel like we didn’t get to do half of our usual summer traditions, and now school is about to start. Hopefully, you at least got in a few day trips, visited a few beach towns, and got to go swimming in a lake or two. But perhaps you haven’t made it on as many outings this summer? There are some really cool museum exhibits (like Emotions at Play with Pixar’s Inside Out at the Discovery Cube) and shows for kids (The Actor’s Gang Shakespeare in the park is back in Culver City!) that truly should not be missed—and they won’t be here when the next school vacation rolls around. And they’re easy to squeeze in between your Target run for notebooks, last-minute doctor’s appointments, and one more run for ice cream…
Check out more end-of-summer fun in our Summer Activities Guide for Los Angeles Kids. And if school is starting soon for your family, our Back-to-School Guide has pretty much everything you need.
Road trips are seared into American culture as a family rite of passage, but planning and taking road trips has sure changed since I was a kid. I remember sticking my head out the hand-crank window to keep cool—no AC in our car!, playing road trip games like counting license plates, eating road trip snacks like granola bars, and pulling over so my parents could plot routes on their folding maps. Now family road trips means multiple devices for in-car entertainment, snackle boxes, and tricked-out Airbnbs.
From fun road trip games to tasty road trip snacks to podcasts the whole family will love, we’ve got everything you need to plan the perfect family road trip right here. And if you don’t know where to go, that’s not a problem! Wherever your starting point, we’ve got some fabulous ideas, complete with exactly where to stop and what to see along the way.
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