on a beautiful, sunshiny, october day, we packed up the fam and headed down the road to blowing rock, to partake in a little colorful autumn leaf admiration. our first stop was an overlook on the blue ridge parkway, where we hopped out to take a few pics and check out the scenery. from there, […]
lid kid adventures
stone mountain, attempt three.

Thanks to my new status as unemployed, on the first beautiful day after I turned in my equipment, the Lidkids and I headed for the mountains. We opted for Stone Mountain, which we have done a few times before, and is about 4.5ish miles and 1000 feet of elevation gain. Hazel had never gone with […]
pilot mountain with new gramz.mental health day #3 (fail).

In late February, my mom came down to visit. It worked out nicely, because I had a faux-long weekend from teaching. For some reason, there were two “remote” days built into the calendar on Friday and Monday, which technically meant that the kids who were doing in-person school would be remote that day, but because […]
mental health hike #2, with ponies!

After another dismal week of virtual teaching, Anna and I set off for Grayson Highlands State Park in Virginia, for another mental health day of hiking. I’ve seen so many epic pictures of this park, which is famous for it’s roaming wild ponies, but never any in winter. We knew that there would be snow, […]
mental health hike #1.

In the first few weeks of my short-lived virtual teaching career, I was working both days of the weekends, just trying to keep afloat. That was obviously not a sustainable situation, so I began to carve out one entire day devoted to NOT anything to do with teaching whatsoever. And, if the weather was agreeable, […]
waterfalls with snp and max.

it’s been like 900° for the last few weeks, here in north carolina. so when i was making plans to hang with my high school bff sarah powers and her kiddo max, and the option to meet at the lower cascade falls at hanging rock came up, it was a no brainer. i mean, this […]
social distancing at stone mountain.

back back back, before we went on the road, when isaac was in school, and we found out he got into the HAG (nerd) program and would be changing schools, we became friends with another family who were in the same boat. j and isaac were in the same class that next year, and her […]
letchworth state park.

last week-ish, the kids and i loaded up and headed to western ny to visit fam and have a little change of scenery. my mom was able to take a few days off work, and on one particularly lovely day, we drove out to letchworth state park to “hike” and be in the sunshine and […]
escape to hanging rock.

our trip to pilot mountain was just the jumpstart we needed to start getting out and about and hiking a bit more. so, later in the week, we packed up again, and this time headed to hanging rock state park. (ruby barfed on the way up, if you were wondering). our plan was to hike […]
escape to pilot mountain.

early in may, north carolina began phase one of “reopening” and part of that was state parks opening in various capacities. since it happened on a friday evening, we had no plans to venture out on that weekend with the masses of crazy people who had been cooped up for so long. then, it started […]