a long long time ago, derek booked us a long weekend at a campground in the smokies. during prime autumn leaf color season. it was to be our very first family tent camping trip since selling the rv. but then. isaac wanted to go to a homecoming football game. and anna had some sort of […]
tales of vacations and travels
august in western new york.
usually, we head up to western new york for our annual summer pilgrimage in june or maybe early july. but this year, my baby brother’s wedding was set to take place in august, so we planned our excursion around the wedding date. we arrived the weekend before the wedding, so we could get in some […]
atlantic beach week. minigolf day.
i’m not much of a minigolf person, but without much else to do with kids at the beach, and super fancy minigolf courses densely scattered all about area, one gets the urge to spend a million dollars to be really bad at hitting a ball with a stick into a tiny hole. so. that’s just […]
atlantic beach week. the aquarium.
our first non-beach excursion during our week at atlantic beach was a visit to the pine knoll shores aquarium. it’s the perfect size for a quick morning visit, leaving enough time for an afternoon in the sand. obviously, we took all the pictures in the photobooth type places… the ultraviolet room with all the jellyfish […]
atlantic beach week. the beachy times.
now that we no longer have an rv, we are forced to vacation like regular people again, staying in hotels and resorts and the like. for christmas last year, the grandlidboms gifted us with a week’s stay at own of their timeshare properties, so for our first such regular people vacation, we headed out to […]
giving thanks in batavia.not so much in buffalo.
when we put the older two kids in school, we knew it would mean that we would have to give up our vacation scheduling freedom, and that we would have to work around the school schedule. fortunately, for some reason, they had off the entire week of thanksgiving, so we didn’t have to cram in […]
quarantine in batavia.(quarantine with holden)
after my time in covid jail, we had the girls tested twice, four days apart. and even though both times were negative and we hadn’t had anyone show covid symptoms, anna was still required by her school to quarantine for another full week. we decided the best course of action was to take a spontaneous […]
batavia, during quarantine.
as previously mentioned, in my letchworth post, a couple of weeks ago, the lidkids and i loaded up to head to batavia, to visit my mom, and break up the monotony of the quarantine. the drive was remarkably uneventful. we stopped twice. both time with little fanfare. and there was no traffic and smooth sailing. […]
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 […]
charleston. last moments.
after three days (one, two, three) of pretty great adventures and excursions, our charleston trip was winding down. on our last evening, we partook in some local flavors. obviously i had to have a praline. (the kids went with fudge) and derek cooked up some local caught fish. i also strolled over to harris teeter […]