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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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River Cruising: Bienvenue a Arles
No longer lost in my laundry room, hidden in laundry, I’m quite missing the River Royale and the first class service we received. I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and pick through the gazillions (that is a real number) of photos I took and have a little look back over the trip, as well as write a few notes – wishing, all the while, that I had journaled more while on board. I meant to (just like I meant to post every day) but while I normally would tuck Pea into bed next to me and start writing, over the week of the trip, I found myself crashing…
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Fill the The Blank Friday
I was shocked to discover that the week has come and gone. My mind has been a total blank and the week’s posts (and lack thereof) reflects this, so it is appropriate, in a way, that I fill in a blank. (It’s Lauren’s from The Little Things We Do, to be specific.) Today’s prompt is: “If I could get away for the day I would go ________” To the Beach. In the South of France, preferably. (Although anywhere dry and sunny will do.) Since I just heard on the radio that we in the UK will be getting a MONTH’s worth of rain in the next 24 hours, after what…
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Snakes and Ladders on the Go.
I am very possessive of my iPad. It’s mine, and I’ll be honest, I hate sharing it with my kids. Because of this, I am very selective of which apps I add for the kids (lest I spend all my time coming up with excuses as to why they cannot use Mummy’s iPad); in particular, I like apps that we can use together. One such app is iPieces Snakes and Ladders by Jumbo Games. The iPieces games cleverly combine the fun of old-fashioned board games with the technology of the iPad touch-screen. The Snakes and Ladder set comes with four pawns and two “ladders”, each covered on the bottom with…
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A Morning in Barcelona, or How I Nearly Missed The Big Picture
We started our day with a visit to what must be Barcelona’s most famous building, the Sagrada Familia. Work on this Roman Catholic church began in 1883 and is still ongoing – a point with which Boo was extraordinarily impressed (but any building surrounded by tower cranes is a sight to behold, at least in his eyes…) We all had audio guides, and the kidlings had a version just for them. Which sounds like a good idea… …until you are stopped 11 times with “Mommy, where is the ____?”. Which you cannot answer, as you have a completely different version and so the questions Pea was asking made no sense.…
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Wordless Wednesday – Tenerife
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The joy of living abroad
Walking through the marina in Swansea this weekend, the Hubs commented that on our next trip there, we’d need to get on the water – take one of the boat excursions offered in the area. Boo looked at him and said “MY first boat ride was in Paris”. Yeah. How cool is that?
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OBX 2010
In my post-college years, I went on cruises with my friends every year. I’ve been to some beautiful beaches and islands, but when push comes to shove, one of my favorite places in the world are the Outer Banks (OBX) of North Carolina. My husband took me there a few years before we got married; he grew up going there with his family every summer, and when I went with him the first time, his big brother had recently begun taking his own kids there – continuing a family tradition, if you will. This year marked our seventh year doing to the OBX as a family – Boo’s first visit…
