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Thursday Things
With spring break behind me, I’ve got a lot of things rattling in my head. Most of it isn’t enough for a full post, but are loosely related. Thursday Things is a bit of a brain dump – a bit of what I’m excited about, a bit of what has me frustrated, and it all took place during spring break. Oh, and there are affiliate links in this post. I talk about those, too. Kind of. Shh. • • • In Which I Get On My Soapbox and Rant About Coaches and Vacations Last week was spring break for our school district. We didn’t go anywhere because we are rule…
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Exploring the Newly Redesigned Being Human Hall at the Perot Museum
As I’ve made it known here, I am a HUGE fan of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, and my family has held a family membership since we’ve moved to the DFW area. One of our favorite areas is the Being Human Hall which explores us as humans – our origins, our DNA and how we work. While it never gets old, the Perot recently completed a redesign the Being Human Hall – the first since the museum’s opening in 2012. I was recently invited to explore the hall before it’s public opening, and the transformation it has undergone is amazing. The central theme that guides the hall is…
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Summer Fun at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science
If you are looking for something to do in the Dallas area this summer, look no further than one of my favorite local destinations: The Perot Museum of Nature and Science. There is so much to explore there this summer that I wanted to share all the goings on! I was recently invited to Family Media Day at the Perot Museum, where they kicked off the morning with a film in The Hoglund Foundation Theater with DREAM BIG 3D. Narrated by Jeff Bridges, the film is a celebration of human ingenuity behind engineering marvels big and small. I will warn you – I cried, several times. Yes, in a movie…
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Family Travels: The Hard Rock Hotel Cancun
We hit the Hard Rock Hotel in Cancun over spring break with our kids – and a whole bunch of college students. Confession: Cancun didn’t immediately come to mind as a family destination, and I don’t know why because it’s a fabulous spot. Spring break snuck up on us so I handed the planning reins over to my favorite travel agent with instructions to find me something warm, family friendly, and a short flight from Dallas. Cancun fit the bill, and of all the options, the Hard Rock Hotel topped the list. What I found is that it was a decent mix of family and partiers, and for the most…
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Port Stop: Maya Key, Roatan
I’m an avid watcher of HGTV, and two of my favorite shows are “House Hunters: International” and “Beachfront Bargain Hunt”, because I’m really meant to be living on the ocean but I likely won’t for a very long time so I must live vicariously through others. Roatan, Honduras has appeared frequently on HH:Intl and has been a bucket list destination from the first episode it was featured. Needless to say, finding Roatan on the Carnival Freedom itinerary was a key factor in booking that particular cruise. I don’t know much about the different beaches there (aside from what I’ve gleaned from House Hunters) so we did a little research on…
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Revisiting Carnival Cruises – 15 years later.
Oh, the stories I could tell about the cruises I took with friends throughout our twenties and early thirties! Starting around 1995 right up until 2001, I cruised on Carnival nearly every year with friends, and did we have a good time! (Such a good time, in fact, that when we showed up on a cruise one year, we found that much of the crew had moved there from the ship we sailed on the year before – including the piano bar musician and our favorite deck waiter – who remembered us from the year before. By name. Let’s just say we had a really great time on all those Carnival cruises. Perhaps because of…
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It’s NaBloPoMo and I’m Too Jetlagged to Po Anything
I must be a glutton for punishment because I signed up for NaBloPoMo knowing that the on the 1st of November I would be on an airplane until the 2nd of November – so failing pretty much right out of the gate. (NaBloPoMo stands for National Blog Posting Month, in which I should be attempting to write and actually post, each and every day.) I’m currently sitting in a hotel room in Seville, Spain while burrowed under all the covers and listening to the rain, trying to stay awake until #1 child arrives home from school so we can Skype quickly. I’m so jet lagged that I’m fuzzy headed and thick tongued and…
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Visiting the Outer Banks #OBX
If you were to look at the photographs from any given year of our vacations at the Outer Banks, you would find some version of this photo: Every year we rent chairs and umbrella from a local company. Every year, the chairs and umbrella look the same. I find comfort in this sameness, this constant in our trips. It is as dependable as the fact that, at some point in the trip, the skies will darken and the wind will churn up the surf, a signal of the rain to come, one child will get a sand rash from hurling their small bodies at the waves, the other will likely sunburn a body…
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Beach Rubbish Picker
We have many traditions when we come to the beach. My daughter is a keen collector of beach shells, and her idea of “beautiful” is a lot less selective than that of yours and mine. To her, EVERY shell is beautiful. This results in an extensive shell collection at the end of the week, making it very hard to select a tiny few to bring home. As we flew in this year versus making the trip by car, space is at a premium, so narrowing the collection is a necessity. Another tradition we have is our evening walk on the beach. It’s quiet, with a few families lingering, some older ones…
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8 Reasons Summers Were Better When I Was A Kid
We’re nearly at a third of the way through summer vacation, and after a day like today, I have to wonder…how did my mom manage to READ so often in the summer when I was a kid? Seriously, the first two memories that come to mind when I look back at my mom during our summer vacations (when we weren’t reading) were of her (a) curled up with a book on the TV room* sofa, telling me to “put down my book and get outside”, and (b) vacuuming**. (*Why we called it the “tv room” when the entire wall the tiny TV sat upon was actually a bookshelf, and nearly every…
