Tag Archives: busy family time

Camping and Hiking at Tallulah Gorge State Park, Georgia

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Camping and hiking as a family is something we do a lot of–but not normally in a formal public campground. On our Spring Break Road Trip it was a brand new experience for our crew to “camp” with access to an electrical outlet and a hose! I don’t think we even used the electricity at any of our campsites. We didn’t even think about it being there. (What? Not even to charge your phones for all those great family pictures? Nope–invest in an external charger. You’ll never have to worry about … Continue Reading…

How to Redeem Family Time Gone Wrong

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Have you ever sat down and planned out a great family fun day, where to go, what to eat, activities to do or attractions to see–maybe even already bought the tickets!–And then it rains? Or someone gets hurt right before you leave? Or the car breaks down? Or the toddler has a meltdown? (Or in our case, the teenager…and how did we get here?!)  And suddenly your great family day is ruined, right?  Nope. It doesn’t have to be.  I can’t name the times we’ve had family plans and something … Continue Reading…

How to Make a Paper Mache Shark for Shark Week

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If you’ve been following us on Facebook, you’ve probably seen some of our Shark Week activities. We’re doing a summer unit study on Marine Biology (along with our unit on Archaeology) and Discovery Shark Week has been a great fit for some hands-on family fun learning! We’ve had some ocean-themed food, some shark games, and our big group project of building a paper mache shark! This is a very simple project with no special supplies needed. We had everything on hand already. I’ve shared it here in a lot of … Continue Reading…

How to UnPlan Your Next Family Road Trip

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Our recent spring break road trip adventure was 10 days and 4,000 miles together. We had a great time and are already plotting our next trip! I say “plotting” and not “planning” because this was a very (very, very!) loosely “planned” trip and I’m sure the next one will be too. Our family likes to call our NOT-AT-ALL-PLANNING style of planning “being flexible.” {smile} Everyone keeps asking me how in the world I planned our awesome trip…well, in my mind, I didn’t. We laid out a very basic route with a few … Continue Reading…

DIY 50 State Passports…with FREE Printable

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One of the special projects I did when planning our spring break trip was making fun 50 States passports for the kiddos to get “stamped” as we traveled. It wasn’t that hard, and I’ve got a free printable for you if you’d like to try it yourself. I found a lot of ideas and a few awesome templates on Pinterest, but I didn’t want to mimic a real international passport too much. The Ladybug just got back from a mission trip and we spent a lot of time emphasizing (and re-emphasizing!) … Continue Reading…

10 Road Trip Car Activities for the Whole Family

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At the beginning of our series of Road Trip posts, I mentioned that we are really looking forward to a fun, relaxed, vacation-feel to our travels. So most of our planning focused on two points… #1. Fun, simple activities while we’re IN the car! #2. Not being IN the car the whole time! I already shared about the individual road trip travel activity cases that we made each kiddo for some of our car time. But in our family, we have a couple of reluctant readers, who just also happen … Continue Reading…

Family Road Trip Journal Using Smashbooks…Free Printable Travel Journal Page

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Did you read that we’re going on a family road trip? Yep, and we’re excited about all kinds of great family moments. (And probably a few squabbles that we’ll live through just fine as well.) My normal operating mode would be to make each of the kiddos their own travel journal to fill out along the way and fact sheets and worksheets for them to do while we go along. There are tons of great free travel journal printable ones on Pinterest like this one, this one, and this one. And … Continue Reading…

Family Road Trip Travel Activity Cases for Kids

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So…we’ll be spending the week of Spring Break traveling in the truck…with the kiddos…for 3,000 miles…YEAH! We actually ARE really excited about our family road trip vacation–in case that first sentence came across sorta sarcastic. I wrote it like that on purpose, though, because a lot of folks really do react like that to the idea of 10 days of travel, in a car, with 3 kids, basically going nowhere. But we’ve put a lot of thought into making this a fun adventure since we came up with the idea … Continue Reading…

When You Force Your Kids to Smile…Christmas Eve Pictures

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I make my kiddos take a lot of pictures. {smile} Sometimes they like it, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they come out feeling a little forced… Sometimes I get the “eww…I’m not touching him!” Or I get fake smiles and James Bond {sigh}… And sometimes you just have to let them be who they are… And eventually you don’t get the “right” picture… But you get the best picture ever! Is that just kinda like life? Sometimes you just have to let it be what it is, and enjoy the … Continue Reading…