My friend Sara’s 12-year-old son has type 1 diabetes. It’s been amazing to watch how the diagnosis has changed their lives—and how it hasn’t. Sara is one of the most organized and on-top-of-it moms I know, and I am constantly awed by how she and her husband handle the challenges of managing their son’s condition. Last summer, their family took a four-week trip to Europe and completed the journey with no major bumps. I'm sure there are other parents out there who can benefit from Sara’s experience planning, researching and managing a major family vacation in a foreign country with a child with type 1 diabetes.

Here’s Sara’s story:

The Waldorf Astoria Boca Raton Resort & Club is the most luxurious U.S. vacation destination my family and I have ever visited. The sprawling property feels more like a Caribbean resort than the other beachfront hotels you find in Florida. With a surfing school, a kids’ camp, water sports, the new FlowRider wave simulator, fantastic restaurants, plus a world-class spa, tennis program and golf course, the Waldorf Astoria Boca Raton lets everyone in your family feel entertained, pampered and restored by the time you go home.

The resort is not all-inclusive, and what you save on airfare you’ll easily spend on meals and activities. But the Waldorf Astoria Boca Raton offers an incredibly luxurious and family-friendly Caribbean-style vacation located just an hour's drive from the Fort Lauderdale airport, so no need for passports.

This year almost 200,000 kids in New York State chose to opt out of the standardized state tests for grades 3 through 8. That’s a whopping 15% and almost four times the number that opted out last year. The growing dissent over the Common Core and high-stakes testing has been visible in article after article citing despicable practices, product placement and age-inappropriate questions. While I think most parents are in favor of high standards for kids, there’s obviously a lot of frustration with how the Common Core is being implemented, and it raises the question of what our standards really are.

Of all the articles bouncing around the Internet these days about the Common Core and standardized testing, two particularly caught my attention. One describes the standard expectations for a first grader in 1979; the second shares math problems from a first grade Common Core curriculum today. The difference is striking and astonishing, and will really make you rethink the educational road we've gone down since we were little.