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surprise & delight: Okee Dokee Brothers
Last Friday I surprised the kids with an adventure. (surprise & delight, it’s so much fun.) I am sure I have mentioned one of our favorite bands – The Okee Dokee Brothers – before. They aren’t really brothers. They are really a fantastic duo from Minnesota who write and perform clever music with a target audience of kids but with witty lyrics and catchy tunes and a folksy bluegrass feel that I actually WANT to listen to on repeat car trip after car trip. (Look up these songs first – “The Good Old Times”, “Hard Road To Travel”, “Out of Tune” and “Thousand Star Hotel” for starters.) I told…
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Win TWO TICKETS to Asheville’s Tree Tops Adventure Park
If you could see me right now you would see me rubbing my hands back and forth together with glee and acting a little giddy. During this past year the blog has turned into both a therapy session and a review cool products landing spot. Those opposites have helped clear my brain and feed my heart and provide my family with neat opportunities and supplement my income. But today I am thrilled and excited because I get to talk about a fun place but YOU get to win tickets to go there! Last summer the kids and I trekked across our little mountain and spent a day doing super cool…
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Making Our Trail: KOA Lookout Mountain/Chattanooga West
Our last night at a KOA was relatively close to home. (Compared to Colorado, of course.) We wrapped up our KOA lodging experience near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Or Georgia. The road to reach the KOA went back and forth between the states. A wooded campground, this felt a lot like campsites we have visited over the years of our family camping campaign. Our lodging here was a cabin – but one without a bathroom. (I’m telling you, deluxe cabins with a bathroom are my favorite, if you can afford that option.) This cabin was cute though and I loved that it faced the woods. Your front porch and porch swing…
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The Revel Ride at Lost Valley: A Picture of My Own Story
One of the special rides offered to guests at Lost Valley Ranch this summer was entitled The Revel Ride. It was a new idea for Lost Valley and it was a ride offered to women one morning while the kids were all enjoying their camp rides. Of course I said yes and I happily met the other ladies and the wranglers at the corral to head out. (There was so much good stuff all hidden around the corners on this ride, but I kind of don’t want to share it all because – like a great novel with fantastic plot twists – I don’t want to ruin the experience…
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Making Our Trail: KOA Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas
Our car load of passengers can spot a yellow KOA sign from miles away now. Driving back home from an adventure is always less exciting than heading out to an adventure. But if the KOA sign represented travel and distance and excitement on the way OUT to Colorado, then the KOA sign represented stability and comfort on the way home. (It’s probably why people love to stop at Cracker Barrel on a road trip. You have options for meal choices, but you know what to expect.) Our family has come to know KOA as a safe landing spot. We know there will be a comfortable bed. We know we…
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Making Our Trail: Pueblo South/Colorado City KOA Review
I felt a little sorry for whatever accommodations would follow our last night at Lost Valley Ranch. I mean, how can anything compete with turn down service and leather furniture and two bathrooms? I at least had the common sense not to schedule a tent night for our first KOA on the drive east. We still wanted to explore a tiny bit of Colorado and the Royal Gorge area before we trekked it back all those miles to our house so we chose to stay just a few hours away from the dude ranch in Pueblo, Colorado. That familiar yellow sign pointed us onward like a beacon. (Actually, I…
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Making Our Trail: Cripple Creek KOA Review
One of the really fantastic ways that God used to make this trip a reality for our family was through this KOA opportunity. The plan is as straight forward as it comes. In exchange for our lodgings, I would write reviews of each location. So I just write what I really think – the good or the bad – and you guys get to see what a few of the KOAs across the United States are like for a family like ours. After we survived Kansas, we pulled right into the square state of Colorado. In Kansas we left behind temperatures in the mid-70’s and in Colorado we pulled into…
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I didn’t miss the internet and I was glad to put my phone away.
One of my favorite parts of being at Lost Valley Ranch was the disconnectedness to regular life. And the lack of cell service. (That and my bed being made every day by someone besides myself.) For that one week I couldn’t see the growing number of e-mails I was missing. My phone was set on permanent airplane mode. Do they make a setting like that for all of my life? It was a sort of freedom, for sure. An intoxicating kind of freedom. Freedom from not only routine responsibility but from being inundated with the continual hard of the world in which we live. I didn’t watch any news or…
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the weekend ramble (it’s back)
one of those . . . weeks
Lake Jocassee with the Boys
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Ranch Thoughts
I peer down from my cabin porch and I see two matching cowboy hat heads. And. Oh my goodness. They are whittling. I know this experience is a genuine gift to our entire family, but it seems like it’s something a little extra to my sons. A wildness. A freedom. A bit of rowdy goodness. Otto looks even more miniature than normal atop a giant horse named Ace and the boy is all serious, a cowboy instantly. And it’s as if being indoors is his kryptonite and He Must Go Free. Piper Finn cannot stop talking. Physically she is finding it impossible to stop talking and I think she might…
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five finds friday: “as long as we’ve got each other”
parenting: the slipping away
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Lost Valley Ranch: At The Beginning
An Immediate Disclaimer: This isn’t going to be the “real” Lost Valley Ranch post. I mean, I probably cannot do this past week’s experience justice in one blog post anyway. (Also. My internet connection is rather shady so it can’t handle lots of photos and links tonight.) Also. Re-entering the world of Instagram and Facebook and even opening up my computer is all a little overwhelming tonight so I can’t get my act together right now. And – although I have missed all of you guys – I have not one bit missed social media as a whole nor have I missed screens in any shape or form.…
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Paris: Our Trip & Tips
five finds friday (bits & pieces)
an apology/not an apology
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Making Our Trail: At The Beginning
We are en route. On the road. In the car. (Well. Not currently. That would just be dangerous.) We’ve been in the car A LOT. And these blog posts will just be on and off and when I can find an internet connection and when I can have a millisecond to type. (Thanks so much for your patience.) So far we have driven very very far. And we still aren’t there. We saw an armadillo on the side of the road. Many red winged blackbirds. I won the alphabet game for maybe the first time in my life. We played twenty questions until I couldn’t stand the questions any longer.…
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South Carolina State Museum: Field Trip Review
Nearby South Carolina capital Columbia boasts several museums and family-friendly sites like the Riverbanks Zoo to draw the Greenville crowds south. The South Carolina State Museum is situated right in Columbia and the trip from Greenville over to Columbia is easy to navigate and the museum is a breeze to locate. Our family recently made the drive, along with a handful of other Upstate families, to spend a day exploring the museum and its many exhibits. As a homeschooling family in the middle of a year long study of Roman history, our primary draw to the museum on this trip was their featured exhibit – Julius Caesar: Roman Military Might and Machines.…
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what lies ahead: adventure and the connection between the new ads and our family
Do you remember that time our family spent a year reading all of the Little House on the Prairie books? And how, at the end of that year, we loaded up the kids and drove north and then west and then some more west and then south and then east and made a big sloppy loop back to our home? It was a good good year loaded and piled with sweet and lasting memories and it’s lodged squarely and safely inside my heart. The next year we read through the Narnia series. (Which proved to be timely and profound and emotionally perfect for our hearts that year.) This year we…
