Do you ever wonder if stress affects you more than the average person? Are you easily annoyed or frustrated by minor inconveniences?

When I was growing up my parents constantly stressed the importance of going to college. That idea was pretty much drilled into my head from the day I started kindergarten. "You're not going to get into a good college with grades like that, Jimmy!" My mother would always say, even on some of my earliest report cards. So you can imagine the stress I put them under when, approximately eleven years later, it looked like I wasn't even going to graduate from high school.

Traveling with teenagers across Europe can be stressful, but it can be rewarding too. My niece got married last summer in England and I decided to turn her invitation into a 17-day epic European vacation for the whole family. I have two daughters, 14 and 17 who traveled with us the whole time and a 21 year old son, who joined us in London and traveled with us for the last week. Our European vacation included stops in Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris and London. We had an incredible time but there were plenty of challenges too.

I'm learning a lot about stress management by watching my cat. Whenever he sees me he stretches out in the most luxurious way and purrs appreciatively when I bend down to pet him. He NEVER eats when he's not hungry and he ALWAYS sleeps whenever he's the least bit tired.

Last summer, my niece invited us to her wedding in the tiny town of Bradninch, England which is about three hours south of London in the county of Devon. I decided to turn this wedding invitation into an epic 17-day family vacation with stops in Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris, London and of course, Bradninch. It was an amazing vacation, but a real logistical challenge which included one 12-hour period where we woke up in a Paris hotel, took a high-speed train that morning from Paris to London, met up with my 21 year old son in downtown London, rented a car an hour later and drove out to Bradninch (on the left hand side of the road) in Friday rush hour traffic!