How to Survive a Rainy Day with Children: A Summer Guide

Two summers ago, my family went to Maine for a camping trip. Maine, however, was experiencing a deluge—record-breaking rainfall every day. After the first cold, drenched night in a tent, we moved to a motel...for 13 unforgettable one-room, four-people, dry-but-indoors days. Here's what I learned: Life on vacation is not always a beach, or even a stormy, gray, freezing beach. But you must forge on. You must make fun. Otherwise, your children will make the fun for you—in the form of eating Mommy's lipstick or cutting Daddy's hair while he sits stunned and overwhelmed in front of his sixth back-to-back episode of Ace of Cakes on cable TV. Luckily, we've come up with 13 ways to beat the trapped-inside blues this summer, should you need them on vacation or in the confines of your own home.