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Visiting San Antonio: The Alamo and More!
We spent our Spring Break exploring San Antonio. In my last post, I talked about the many attractions in the area around the Alamo. Our second day in San Antonio was all about the Alamo and other historical sites! My kids are really interested in history and I think presenting it interactively is always more fun than just reading it in a book (and I am a bookworm, so that is saying a lot!) One of the fourth grade teachers at the kidlings’ elementary school recommended that we watch the IMAX film “Alamo – The Price of Freedom” before we walked the actual site, particularly since the city now surrounds what…
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Visiting San Antonio: The Rainy Day Tourist Edition
When we woke up on our first morning of our spring break visit to San Antonio, it was to a steady rain – not the best for sightseeing, to be honest. Looking over the checklist of things everyone wanted to see and do, we quickly decided that it would be a good day for silliness and exploration, indoors. After a workout in the hotel gym by the menfolk, and a lazy breakfast we headed out to the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum and the Texas Ranger museum. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, and if you told me “tons of taxidermy” I might have rolled my eyes, but it turned out to…
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Planning our Next Vacation Adventure
Happy snow day to all my Dallas* friends and sending warm wishes to the rest of the country as this cold blast heads east! (*Now that’s something I never thought I’df say, but I think our reputation from bringing awful weather everywhere persists.) My “What I’m Reading Wednesday” post did NOT make it up yesterday, mostly because I was too busy alternately trip planning and compulsively checking social media/the news/my weather app to determine if the kids would have school today. (They didn’t. Brrr.) However, the day wasn’t completely lost (as ill organized as it was). I did discover some great websites for vacation planning! I’m headed to San Antonio,…
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A Sneak Peek at “Frozen Fever”
Disney junkies that we are here in Momma’s house, you better believe that my daughter and I are anxiously awaiting the upcoming release of Disney’s new live-action Cinderella movie! While the guys hole up with their soccer matches on the TV, we’ll be heading to the cinema the week of March 13 to check it out as a special mommy/Maddie date, just in time for her birthday Which is perfect timing, as an added treat for us both will be the animated short “Frozen Fever” that will be screened with the Cinderella. A happy two-for-one birthday treat! And I have a sneak preview of it for you. Right. Here. Yup. In…
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What I’m Reading Wednesday: The Nightstand Edition
It’s been cold, and I’ve just wanted to curl up with a book and a cup of tea. Because of this, and some overenthusiastic trips to both the library and the bookstore, I now have a stack of books on my nightstand (and on my coffee table, and on my end table). We won’t talk about what I’ve downloaded to my Kindle recently, or the NetGalley advanced reader copies I have waiting to be read… The weather has been miserable, which makes me race through my to-do list so that I can curl up with a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive biscuit for an hour or so in…
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Thai Pork with Peanut Sauce
I’m lucky. My kidlings are tweens/teens now and are completely capable of entertaining themselves, so a snow day (or two) doesn’t seem to be the challenge that it once was when they were younger. We hang out in our PJs, they make their own snacks, and it’s all quite low-key if I can keep the squabbling to a minimum. Then and now, when we have a snow day, I tend to reach for comfort foods and well-loved slow cooker recipes, the kind that you put together in the morning with little fuss and with ingredients that I generally have in my pantry. This, my friends, is one of them, and…
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Teaching Compassion in Sports
The longer my son plays soccer, the more one thing becomes clear: we, parents as a whole, have a lot to learn (and teach) in terms of compassion and team sports. At one recent tournament, over even the voices of the parents on our sidelines came the voice of a father on an adjacent field, constantly berating his teen daughter. The constant negative commentary was grating, and one couldn’t help but pity the man’s daughter. This may be an extreme example, but it’s not uncommon. My son’s former coach, at our first parent meeting, offered a story of a former player who asked to only play on one side of…
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That Time I Didn’t Climb the Statue of Liberty
When I was younger, my family – my parents, younger sister and brother and I – road tripped to New York on vacation. While some points are blurry (making me wonder if I really need to stress out so much about planning memorable trips when I can only remember the weird/scary/highlights myself), two things stand out: stopping to ask a Jersey cop how we could get to the hotel my mother booked in East Orange, New Jersey (answer: “just keep driving, you really don’t want to go there”) and (nearly) climbing the Statue of Liberty. Let me explain. I may be a bit claustrophobic and I’m not a fan of stairs. Oh, the…
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Put on Your Big Kid Pants
When I was about ten years old, I participated in a music competition. Wait, let me back this up a bit. My parents left one night to buy a piano; I was overjoyed. They returned with an electric organ. I was mortified. Still, my sister and I obediently took lessons. I practiced daily, because I was the first-born rule follower. My sister, disliking it as much as I did but not needing to do the die-hard rule following thing because she had ME, instead put on her headphones, kicked up the rhythms and pounded away at the keys for her practice time, until the day music teacher gently suggested to my…
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The Bachelor, the Black Widow, and More Drama.
Are you watching “The Bachelor”? Reality TV isn’t generally my thing because I don’t need anybody else’s drama in my life, but I do watch “The Bachelor”. Maybe it’s just to remind myself how awful dating was, or to remember to be grateful when I’m cleaning my husband’s chest hair from the shower drain. However, this season of “The Bachelor” has sucked me in. I’ll be straight-up honest with you: Kelsey drives me crazy. She comes off as manipulative and disingenuous, and oh, heck, I’ll go there – she gives off a definite wacko vibe, in a “I’m gonna double-check my doors and set the house alarm because I’m blogging about her and we live…
