2020 Family Vacation

At the end of July we were able to take our long awaited family vacation! I've been mentally planning this trip for a couple of years, and we finally booked it at the beginning of this year for May. Well, of course Covid happened and we decided at that time it was best to push it back, because so many things were still closed and the trip would have changed so much. We were supposed to start in North Carolina, spend a day in Huntsville, Alabama at the space & rocket center, head down to Gulfport, Mississippi, spend a couple days in Louisiana, and then a day in Memphis on the way home. We had to scrap some of those plans and shorten the trip by a few days to make it all work with Covid restrictions, but it still ended up being an awesome trip! 
We left on a Friday around lunchtime and drove for about 8 hours. I can't even remember what state we stopped for the night in....I think it was Kentucky. We pretty much just slept there, ate breakfast and were back on the road for about 4-5 more hours Saturday. We arrived in the mountain town of Murphy, NC late afternoon, grabbed our grocery order and headed to our cabin to explore. Everything was so beautiful! Murphy ended up being a lot different than we expected/planned for based on internet searches, which was disappointing, but we made the best of it! The highlights were hiking in the mountains, playing pool at the cabin, exploring all different kinds of nature, and visiting Fields of the Wood. I'll let the pictures do the talking! 

We stayed in Murphy for 3 nights, and then had a day of driving to get down to Gulfport, MS. We skipped over Alabama this time, since the museum had so many restrictions in place. When we got to Gulfport it was raining, so we pretty much just got our groceries, went out to dinner and got settled into our condo the first evening. It was forecast to rain the whole time we were there, but we had an open window the next morning, so we got down to the beach early. Turned out it never really rained again, which was great! It turns out that the beach in Gulfport doesn't have waves, which I had never heard. I've been to beaches all over the country & in Mexico and have never been to one without waves. It would've been great a few years ago when our kids were little, but we wanted waves! The kids had boogie boards and were ready for some fun! So we only ended up going to the beach in Gulfport (which was walking distance from our condo) once. The highlight of MS was taking a ferry out to Ship Island. It was about an hour ferry ride each way that goes out to a secluded island where there ARE waves and clear water! We spent an entire day there and did not regret it! So much fun. Other highlights from MS were tons of good seafood, the pool at the condo and the children's museum. 

After 4 nights in Gulfport we were off to a daytrip in New Orleans. We added this back in on the day we left our house. We were only an hour and a half away from NO and felt like we just had to go. At least for a few hours! I'm glad we did. We did a kid friendly tour of the French Quarter, had lunch and beignets and were on our way! 

We drove to Memphis that night, and were planning on getting breakfast at one of their really cool old breakfast places, but last minute decided that we don't live all that far from Memphis, so we'll just go back another time when we can actually enjoy it. We were ready to get home! On our night in Memphis, my little guy yanked his first tooth out! We had just gone to bed in the hotel room when he whispered for his dad to come over, and said "I pulled my tooth out." He was so nonchalant about it, and the tooth was definitely loose but really not ready to come out, so I think he had to have pulled it pretty hard! Not sure what made him decide that was the right time, but it was a big celebration.

 Another day of driving and we were home and recovering! It was a great trip and we got to mark 4 more states off our list! 

First Family Camping Trip

At the end of May, we decided to take the kids camping! The girls have gone once before, about 5 years ago, and the boys have never been. So this was really the first time we've all gone together and the first very memorable trip for both girls. We have a large 10 person tent, that ends up not feeling very large when you add an air mattress and 4 sleeping bags! So we were "roughing" it (although I don't consider it that rough when there's an air mattress involved.) We thought we had an outlet in the back of our van, so we brought an extension cord to plug into and inflate the air mattress (which has the built in blower thing). It turns out it was our old van that had the outlet so I had a moment of panic thinking about sleeping just on the ground, but my husband carried the mattress over to a site that had electric and asked if he could blow it up, then carried it back over his head once it was inflated...my hero. The campground we stayed at was about an hour from our house and is a Jellystone camp, which are all franchises so all a little different, but family friendly. There is a lake for fishing, swimming, boating and has this very cool inflatable jumping/obstacle course thing, a river and you can go tubing, a beach that our campsite was right next to, pool, and playgrounds. There are activities a few times a day, movie night Friday nights, hay ride Saturday nights, etc. Well I had called the week before to ask if things were all open back up post isolation and the lady on the phone told me yes. Turns out, nothing really was. So we couldn't do the lake, pool or obstacle course, playgrounds were roped off, and most of the activities weren't actually happening. It ended up being fine because it was not really water weather (high was around 70) and the kids had enough fun just exploring and playing on the sand at the "beach" (which had a large drop off right into a river, so we couldn't really wade out into the water or anything). We got there Friday late afternoon and set up our campsite while the kids played on the beach. I tried to do a lot of food prep ahead of time, and be strategic about what we brought to eat. After we got the camp set up, we made walking tacos on my husband's griddle over the fire. The kids played a ton around the campsite and beach that evening. We brought walkie talkies so our older kids could explore a little on their own if they wanted to, so my oldest took those and wandered a bit, and we generally just relaxed the evening away. 

We got in our tent around 9:30 once it was fully dark, but it was probably 11 before everyone around us got quite and we could all get to sleep. The kids did so great! I was worried about how they would sleep on the ground, when they would wake up with the sun coming in, etc. The lows got down into the 40s, so even though we brought warm pajamas, sleeping bags and extra blankets, I still wasn't sure if they'd all wake up freezing, but they did well! Everyone stayed pretty bundled up and I think I'd rather be cold then hot and sticky at night (due to the midwest humidity). Saturday the kids actually slept in later than I expected! I cracked all the eggs at home and diced up some veggies, so that was an easy breakfast we just had to cook up. We also surprised the kids with hammocks, so those went up first thing in the morning again (we had hung them later in the evening Friday) and were a huge hit! 

We spent most of the day Saturday at the beach and exploring the grounds. They set up laser tag at one point and tons of kids came from down where the RVs are for that. My oldest had fun doing that. We also attempted fishing, but had no luck. My middle daughter and youngest son spent just about the entire weekend at the beach....I felt like we would go hours without seeing them because they were just over there digging and burying and playing (we could see them from our campsite). Saturday lunch we made grilled cheese and dinner we let the kids roast hot dogs and brats over the fire. 

Even though we had planned on it being a lot more activities, it ended up being a really nice and relaxing weekend away. The kids did so well sleeping in the tent. I don't know that I would want to go for much longer than 2 days just because of the logistics of packing things for a family our size, but I think 2-3 nights is totally doable for us and everyone had a lot of fun! On Sunday, we were going to maybe try to do peddle boats, but we were all kind of ready to get going home by mid-morning. I had made muffins at home, so we had those for breakfast, and the kids were able to go to a craft time while my husband started breaking down the camp. Then, they played at the beach for awhile longer while we took down the tent and packed everything up.

 Camping is definitely a ton of work, but I think prepping so much in advance made it a lot easier for me to just unplug, relax and enjoy the weekend with my family! I'm hoping we can go again for one more weekend in the fall once it cools down a bit! 

Why We Value Travel

I've been planning some of our trips for this year, and it has had me thinking lately about how valuable travel is. Our family didn't always used to place as heavy an emphasis on travel as we do now, and I really like talking about traveling, so I thought this would be a good topic! I know a lot of people don't see travel as a very valuable thing-it can be expensive, takes time off work, hard to plan, etc. but here are some reasons we see it as one of the most valuable things we can do with our children. 

Time with our kids

Each week, between activities, school, work, house work, etc. we might spend only 4  hours with our kids (I generally spend a lot more because I'm home with them, but there are days my husband doesn't see the kids at all, or only for a couple hours), but on vacation we spend all waking hours together. And those are hours that aren't usually interrupted by cooking, cleaning, errands, and the like. Those are truly quality hours with them, building memories and having experiences together. A week of quality time bonds us so much and strengthens our relationships with each other. That time together is priceless to us. How much more we have to build into our kids during those weeks! 

Exposure to new/different things

Traveling allows us to give our kids exposure to things and people that they might not get to have in our little everyday life bubble in Midwest America. Sure, we try our best on a day to day basis, but there are some things you can't provide where you are. It's good for our kids to see other ways of life. There are tremendous differences culturally even from the midwest to the deep south, or from the west coast to the east. Those are good things for them to experience. It's good for them to see that our way of life isn't the "right" or only way. It's good for them to try new foods, hear different dialects and languages we may not hear regularly, and even see different routines and ways of living. I'm always fascinated by it and I hope they grow up to be as well. I hope it makes them more well rounded, empathetic, curious, loving people. 

New experiences

Traveling often gives us the opportunity to give our kids new experiences. There's only so much we can do at home. Again, we certainly try, but we just don't have some things! Travel is a great way to try new things. To see new regions. To have new experiences. My hope is that these experiences together will be some of their strongest and best memories. Our times trying new things, going to new places, and maybe even stepping out of our comfort zones to do something we've never done before, are certainly also going to provide bonding between the members of our family. I hope that as they grow they will value experiences over things and that they will see the value in spending that time and making those memories rather than a new toy or item they'll be sick of in a month. 

A well deserved break

This goes along with my first point a little bit, but I believe travel is a much needed and well deserved break for all of us! It's so good for kids to be kids. To leave behind the school work, the friend drama (my kids aren't there yet, but I know as they age this could come into play), and whatever other stressors they might be experiencing, and just be free to enjoy themselves. To relax, to recharge, and to just enjoy their time. As adults, I think most of us can agree that we need that from time to time. Why wouldn't kids need it as well? I love seeing my kids without a care in the world, running free on the beach, climbing trees, exploring at a museum, watching a performance. Seeing that joy on their faces is one of the best parts of travel for me. 

There are certainly other things we could spend the money on that we put into trips . There are certainly other ways we could spend my husbands vacation days. But I don't think we'll regret for a second spending our money and time this way. Building into our kids, our bonds, and creating memories together will be absolutely worth every penny and hour of PTO spent! After thinking through these reasons, and looking back at some old vacations for pictures, I am absolutely ready and excited for our next family trip! It's going to be a really good one, and we're all counting down the weeks!!! 

December 2019

December! And I'm actually writing it IN December!! 

The month started off with a little music program for the girls, that was really cute. It's so hard to get decent pictures at these things.

We were off to Houston shortly after that! I'll do a whole separate post for this, since I do like to document our trips. 

When we got back, we were fully immersed in the Christmas season! 

We did a Christmas lights night...

A girl's Christmas lunch & shopping...

And baked Christmas treats for the neighbors, which are all some of our favorite December traditions! 

My husband & I worked really hard on things in our master bedroom, and it's finally just about finished (2 years after we moved in), and I'm REALLY excited about that! 

The girls had a girl's overnight at their grandparents, and their annual fancy Christmas lunch with their great aunt & uncle, neither of which I have pictures of, unfortunately!

We celebrated our 11th anniversary!

We spent Christmas Eve with my in laws and extended family! 

Slept by the fire on Christmas Even night, per tradition.

And had a magical and cozy Christmas day at home! Temps were in the 50s, so we spent a ton of time outside, enjoying new gifts, playing games and eating good food together! 

We've spent the last week relaxing, playing with new toys and games, and getting our house back in order from the holidays. 

Happy New Year to you and yours! Here's to a great 2020!