travel
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Enjoy the little things!
We may not be able to fly anywhere right now nor plan any vacations but we can savor the little things. This is the first of 3 posts sharing some of the beauty in nature that my kids and I have encountered on our walks and adventures. One of the things that I have really enjoyed these past couple of weeks is nature and how beautiful the area I live in is. Wildflowers, grass, trees, blue skies: they make my heart sing. I am so grateful right now for the beauty in God’s creation. So today I am sharing some pictures my son and I took last week on our…
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Cloudland Canyon, North GA
On our way back from our mini vacation to Chattanooga, TN, we took some back roads home so we could hike down Cloudland Canyon. I had seen several pictures from friends who had been and despite the wet day, we decided to take the chance and take the trail down hoping it wouldn’t pour on us. Thankfully, it only drizzled a little and didn’t start really raining till we were almost at the car. The view from the top gives a little idea of the depth of the canyon. The trail was well marked and there were steps down to the gorge and waterfalls. Since my youngest had been cranky…
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1 year blogversary, part 2
One of my favorite part of blogging is sharing our trips and some of the tips that help make traveling with children easier. Some of our trips have been abroad but I also enjoy sharing our roadtrips and small vacations nearby. Of course, my top traveling post is one from our trip last summer to Spain and France. I had a hard time traveling which was my favorite as this was a really fun trip with many opportunities for beautiful pictures. Saving for traveling is one of my big priorities and while plane tickets were not affordable this year, I am not too disappointed since we had traveled abroad 3…
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Tennessee Aquarium
The main activity on our Chattanooga trip was visiting the Tennessee aquarium. We had not been in at least 10 years but my oldest had been on a field trip in 5th grade and all of the boys have been asking to go for the past year. The year membership for a family is $175 and we went ahead and purchased it since it was only $26 than the cost of admission for our family, I wore a comfortable outfit since I knew we would be on our feet all day. It was a beautiful day outdoors and I wish that I didn’t have to carry everyone’s layers once we…
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Budget recap: Chattanooga, TN mini vacay
I pride myself on usually being thrifty and staying on budget. Vacations are a little different as in I still have a budget but we do not get anxious about each dollar spent so I planned the budget for our 2 days in Chattanooga accordingly. My budget for this mini vacation was $600 which seems high for just 2 days but our family of 6 was going to eat out and visit the aquarium. Free fun and small savings Here are a few ways we saved money: we ate our free hotel breakfast which was pretty nice since it was a Hilton Garden Inn we got our parking for free…
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Westin Sundial Restaurant in Atlanta
On Monday, I shared a special date night outfit for a night out in Atlanta. Today I wanted to share a little about our experience at the Westin Sundial Restaurant. Because we live a little north of Atlanta, anything downtown takes us between 45 minutes to an hour depending on traffic. The restaurant is on the 73rd floor of the hotel and has beautiful views of the city. We were to meet my husband’s uncle and his girlfriend and knowing that they were not far away, we asked to be seated. The young hostesses refused to seat us even though we had reservations because our full party was not there.…
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Budgeting for a small trip or weekend
I do not know about you but when I am not planning to go on a full blown vacation (aka a trip abroad or a full week at the beach for example), I am a lot more careful about the amount of money we are going to spend. Case in point, the 2-3 days vacation we are going to Chattanooga, TN next week. We have been to Chattanooga before since it has some fun family activities and is less than 2 hours from Atlanta. Since it is not an exotic location and the purpose of our vacation is just to get out of the house and do something fun as…
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Favorite traveling outfit
A couple weeks ago, I shared some of my favorite vacation outfits. Today, I wanted to share a few of my traveling outfits which are outfits that I wear either traveling by car or plane. I wore this outfit a couple years ago for our long plane journey to Tbilisi (Rebublic of Georgia) and have worn several variations of it using these Zella joggers on roadtrips. That trip usually takes us a little over 24 hours so comfortable shoes are essential and these joggers (which have been sold out for a while) dry easily if wet. They have an elastic band and I definitely got my cost per wear out…
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Teaching children to behave in restaurants
While we typically don’t eat at restaurants with the children when we are home, we do eat out often when we are on vacation. We usually get compliments on our children’s behavior even though we sometimes wince if we think they get too loud. They do usually behave fairly well and do not disturb others much. I travel often times alone with them in the summer and take them all out to eat on our roadtrips and usually do not have to deal with meltdowns. Today I decided to share some tips on how to teach children to behave in an appropriate manner at restaurants. Practice: even if it is…
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Favorite Vacation Outfits
I thought it would be interesting to look at the outfits I wore on vacation last year and pick out my favorites. I usually am a minimalist packer especially on trips abroad so as to have space for gifts and souvenirs. On trips to the beach, I usually overpack and come home with clothes I didn’t wear and on other trips I am usually right on point. Trip to Europe (France and Spain) I am choosing two outfits for this trip since in the second one I am wearing a shirt I bought in France and did not pack. My jeans were my most worn bottoms on this trip as…