Here you’ll read about our road trips and travel as a family, our field trips and adventure days, and our tips to make family travel a fun, learning experience as well as a vacation!
Packing Light for Scotland in Spring…a Plus Size Capsule in a Carry On
We’ve been asked several times what we packed for Scotland and how wet we got–especially since we packed light and went carry-on only. Well, we didn’t get wet at all. {smile} They had an amazingly clear, dry, spring heat wave while we were there. We packed for chilly, soggy, weather and ended up needing more tee-shirts and zero rain coats! Packing light for Scotland in the spring can be extra daunting for plus size travelers. The unpredicable weather and bulkier clothes can seem impossible to fit in a backpack! But … Continue Reading…
Packing Light for Scotland in Spring…Lessons Learned for Carry-On Only Travel
We decided to travel carry-on only when we went to Scotland for a week last month. We ‘re used to traveling pretty light, sharing a bag, and we weren’t trying to go extreme minimalist. We just didn’t want to check any bags. I’ve had my luggage lost. Not fun. With carry-on only travel, they can’t lose your luggage. Also with the flight delay fiasco we faced trying to get to Scotland, not having to worry about any checked baggaging was a H-U-G-E relief! But there were some real challenges too. … Continue Reading…
Our Week of Scotland Adventures…Part 2: Stirling and Edinburgh
Did you read Part 1 of our Scotland Adventures? It recaps our first couple of travel days in the western Highlands, where everything was about the landscape and fresh air and sharing single-track roads with sheep. Our last few days we were moving back south-east toward Edinburgh, back into the more populated central areas of the country. We took the A82 back through Glen Coe (because I loved it so much the first time) then the A85 across toward Perth. We passed through the northern section of Loch Lomond and … Continue Reading…
One Week of Scotland Adventures…Part 1: The Highlands
If you follow us on social media (Facebook or Instagram), you might have already seen some of our semi-real-time posting about our recent trip to Scotland. But here’s a more organized recap, along with some of the impressions that are still soaking in from our travel adventures. But first and foremost, I would say that one week is NOT ENOUGH TIME. Especially when some of it is spent on travel time. We felt like we were just starting to understand the area (and the traffic circles!) and get in a … Continue Reading…
Family Vehicle First Aid Kit…with Printable Checklist
The first couple weeks of football practice, Speedracer got a nose bleed. He’s prone to them in hot weather. So the team opened up their brand new, 400+ piece, first-aid kit and got out…nothing. There were no tissues. No wet wipes without alcohol. No gauze pads, only a sterilized gauze roll (which they were about to open but I stopped them) and “non-stick wound pads.” Basically nothing we actually needed. So I got our family first aid kit out of our truck in the parking lot because I did have … Continue Reading…
How to Organize Family Electronics for Easier Travel
I was recently had to travel out-of-town for work. Our family’s preference for traveling light meant my ninja packing skills fit 3 days of business-casual clothing and traveling-office gadgets into a 40L travel backpack. Some of my colleagues were amazed–as they wheeled their full-sized suitcases down the hall. As a pick-up-truck family, packing light for travel has always been our thing. We just don’t have space for stuff. Our Spring Break Road Trip really had us paring down to the essentials to travel 5,000 miles with practically no storage space other … Continue Reading…
Visiting Fort Boonesborough State Park in Kentucky
About 2 weeks before leaving for our road trip, the boys and I watched the premiere of the new Men Who Built America–Frontiersmen series. Episode 1 was about Daniel Boone leading the first group of permanent settlers through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. The settlement was called Fort Boonesborough, and it played an interesting role in the Revolutionary War. Since we were getting ready to leave for our trip, and Kentucky was already on our route, we Googled “Fort Boonesborough.” Turns out there’s a state park (with camping!) at the … Continue Reading…
How to UnPlan Your Next Family Road Trip
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
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
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
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…
DIY Personalized Travel Sticker for Family Road Trips
Have you seen those cute, vintage luggage and travel stickers? I don’t mean luggage tags (we have those already!) I mean the tourist-y collectible stickers with bright images and place names on them. You slap them on your suitcase, or your laptop or notebook, and share your adventures with the world! They’re also a great little souvenir or memento from your travels. It seemed like a fun idea to add to our spring break family road trip plan. I like the way it takes the idea of a “family vacation” to a … Continue Reading…
Family Road Trip Travel Activity Cases for Kids
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…
Road Trips to Nowhere Just for Family Fun
So, in just a week or two we’re loading the crew up in the truck and heading out on a 3,000-mile journey to nowhere. Sound crazy? Which part? The 3 kids in a truck for 3,000 miles in 8 days, or the journey to nowhere? {smile} We’re excited. It’s been a long time since we took a family vacation. Ok, we pretty much never have. We travel to visit family and call it a vacation. We go to parties, family reunions, the beach, all that family stuff–which we totally love, … Continue Reading…
Easy DIY Luggage Tags
As I wrote last week with our Summer Camp Packing lists (did you download your FREE copy?) our kiddos have been adventuring away from home a lot this summer. They visited my sister, my mother-in-law, and now church camp. This is Speedracer’s first year at church camp and we’ve developed several little rites of passage for the first year. One is that they get their first toiletry bag (or shaving kit bag for the boys) and one is that they get their personalized luggage tags. This is an easy and … Continue Reading…
How to Pack for Overnight Summer Camp (with FREE Checklists!)
Well, it’s summer camp time again! The time when I buy new socks and boxes of Ziploc bags and start the sorting and organizing for the kiddos to head out to church camp for a week. Do your munchkins go to overnight camp? Our kiddos head off for a week each summer with their church group. Sometimes the different age groups go at different times, but this year all 3 of our farm kids are heading off together–that’s a new stage for us! {smile} Our first year I did a … Continue Reading…
How to Plan a Family Unit Study for Fun Summer Learning
A book, a movie, and a field trip about the same topic equal an easy summer family unit study! Summer brain drain–ugh! For 3 months the kids run around from camp to craft to sleepover wanting fun and games and play time all day, every day because SCHOOL’S OUT so we don’t have to do any more of “that learning stuff.” Um…not around here! So what’s a busy, working mom to do besides frantically shuffle the kids from one STEM camp to another and continue to spend her nights tracking … Continue Reading…
Visiting the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia
Most of our Christmas/New Year’s holiday this year was kinda drizzly and mucky, so Mr. Fix-It and I decided to take the crew to the Mariners’ Museum one of those last dreary, stir-crazy days. It’s a museum and park with trails and outdoor displays as well, but we stayed inside. The first thing I’ll say (since the majority of my readers are frugally-minded) is that I thought it was a little pricey, and I really think the 3D movie tickets should have been included, or at least discounted with the … Continue Reading…
A Day Together on the Eastern Shore
Our family and home life has been pretty stressful lately. Just a lot of responsibilities…and a lot of duct tape and wire nuts. Turns out when you buy a brand new house–with all brand new appliances–eventually they’re all not brand new anymore. It also turns out that the lifespan of most major appliances is about the same. Which means all our brand new appliances from when we moved in are now all on their last leg. All. Of. Them. Bless his heart, poor Mr. Fix-It is resuscitating our HVAC on a … Continue Reading…
Have Dog, Will Travel…Gear for the Dog Adventurer
When I was in college, my Kenzie-dog traveled everywhere with me. Everywhere. And if you’ve read here very long, you know that we take Penny with us when we go hiking and camping. Then there’s Coal, who’s already covered a lot of miles since completing his puppy shots, (please be careful where you take your pup before his/her shots are up-to-date!) with many more to go! If you’re one of our regular readers, you also know that (except for books!) we tend to pare it down to the essentials when it comes to … Continue Reading…
Carhartt to the Rescue…Thanksgiving Travel Adventures
So, everyone knows our kiddos are the Carhartt Crew, right? The stuff keeps up with them when nothing else can! Our munchkins have been wearing and passing down brown, hooded Carhartt coats since the Ladybug was in a size 2T and we have enough $8 winter hats to outfit all farm visitors at chore time. {smile} Well, over the holiday weekend, we had yet another reason to sing their praises (if you’re squeamish, you might not want to read this)… Speedracer gets carsick. Like, wake up from a sound sleep … Continue Reading…
Spring at the Virginia Living Museum
Well, I had a bit of time with the kiddos while they were on spring break last week and we headed to the Virginia Living Museum–which we’ve been enjoying often since becoming members last summer! It was fun to see it in Spring, before everything blooms, but when everything is just coming awake.We’ve visiting in Summer, Fall (boy these pictures take me back a bit!), and Winter now and not only have we gotten to see different exhibits, we’ve gotten to see the animals and habitats change for the season. … Continue Reading…
Rainy Day Fun at the Virginia Living Museum {Family Connections Summer 2012}
Once again I’m joining Aurie, Lisa, Amy, and Connie to share ideas for fun, family activities for the summer. We hope you’ll stop by every Wednesday to share in our theme or link up your own posts about great summertime fun for the whole family! And wow, don’t I feel silly! Last week I posted about Nature Notebooks and summer learning fun, and then said that this week would be our series wrap up–but it’s not! This week we’ve got some great posts about rainy day fun ideas. (Next week … Continue Reading…
A New Discovery–The Virginia War Museum
Remember our summer learning plan? How I had penciled in several museum-type activities that I thought would be fun and educational, both? Well, we were off this past Saturday afternoon to have some fun family time and discovered a hidden treasure–while making a little lemonade from some summertime lemons. Can anyone explain to me why it is that things like museums, farm parks, and the like still open at 9am and close at 5 or 6 pm in the summer when it’s light out from 6 am-9 pm? I’m sorry, … Continue Reading…
Family Time at the Virginia Living Museum
Our holiday weekend included lots of family time. Mr. Fix-It was able to be home Thursday thru Saturday and most of Sunday too, even though he was on-call for work, and his sister came to visit for the weekend. So we took the crew to the Virgina Living Museum. This trip has been on my list for family time all summer. We weren’t disappointed. The whole place is just made for kids! The VLM is all about wildlife and ecosystems native to Virginia (obviously, right?) and has live exhibits as … Continue Reading…
The Boldness of Youth
We were at the beach for a couple days, so our first day out the kids were a little hesitant. The waves were pretty big and strong–especially for those of us under 3 feet tall! And they were new to this whole moving water thing. Swimming pools don’t chase you and knock you down and suck you back in, ya know. They played in the water (especially the Ladybug, who had better size on the boys) and mostly on the sand, running down to the edge to fill their buckets. … Continue Reading…
Facing Fears
We’re on vacation. Here… It’s lovely. It’s fairly peaceful. The kids are loving it. L-O-V-I-N-G it. I’m scared to death. The beach is just a steaming hot stretch of danger zone to my poor mother-heart. Drowning, sunburn, heat stroke, kidnapping, distracted drivers, stinging jelly fish…it’s something I’ve intentionally avoided for 6 years now. We live within minutes of the beach. Within a hour or two of several beaches. Great beaches. I’ve refused for years. It took Mr. Fix-It’s sister buying a beach house before they could brow-beat me into facing … Continue Reading…
Cowboy Days
That post title could mean so many things when living with this little guy… But this time it’s actually someone else’s title. This weekend we went to visit Mr. Fix-It’s mom and step-dad for Cowboy Days in their little town a few hours away. Mimi and Papa knew our kiddos would love it. We got to take our first train ride as a family. Actually, it was my first time on a train other than at the zoo. We had Aunts and Uncles and cousins along as well. The … Continue Reading…