for our final full day in charleston, we headed to james island, where we took a tour of the mcleod plantation. derek had done a lot of research, and of the remaining plantations in charleston, mcleod is the only one that really focuses on the lives of the slaves and their descendants during their time […]
hazel
charleston. day two.wildlife-less kayak trip.

our second day in charleston was sunny and pretty, so we decided to escape the actual city, and head out to the wilderness for a bit. on our way, we stopped in at bitty and beau’s again. not only was a cute little shop, with good coffee, but the entire reason it exists is to […]
charleston. day one.aquarium, rainbow row, city market.

derek’s parents have like eight billion timeshare points or credits or whatever however it works. and often they get free random extra stuff in the offseason. basically, they can’t possibly use up all the time each year, so they often gift us vacations. such was the case a few weeks ago, when they gave us […]
GSO science center with BFF.

hazel has been requesting a playdate with her best pal from co-op (lochlyn) for forever. the plague of winter break prevented her mom and i from pulling it together, but finally we were able to squeeze in a day at the greensboro science center together. the skies looked ominous, so we opted to do as […]
grandlidbom 50th!and related craziness.

as soon as christmas was in our rearview mirror, and we had recovered mostly from various illnesses, we began planning to host derek’s parents fiftieth wedding anniversary party at our house. i acquired generous amounts of sprinkles and golden decor at post christmas clearance sales. and everything was set. and then mayhem struck. the night […]
december 2019 miscellany.

firstly. let me go ahead and throw this out there. this post is disorganized and all over the place. i did my best to group like activities and such. but mostly, it’s just 100% random. but that’s sort of how our december was, i suppose. our first order of business in december was procuring a […]
all the christmasses, 2019.

in all the years that we have been local, we celebrate christmas early, with derek’s parents and his sister’s family, with a semi-swedish themed meal and gift exchange, at his parents house. i suppose they have celebrated it without us in the years that we weren’t local, but i guess i’ll allow it. anyhoooo. here’s […]
new house baking extravaganza.

not only we were able to assemble full size gingerbread houses and bake and decorate actual sugar cookies in our stupid new giant house. the girls and i also had a full fledged cookie baking campaign that spanned days, maybe weeks. we searched for various delicious recipes to try, assembled the ingredients, put on our […]
annual sugary christmas themed endeavors.

it’s no secret that i would sell it all and hit the road again if i could, but christmastime in the stupid new house does have certain advantages. every year in the rv, the kids have been forced to make tiny gingerbread houses. (2018, 2017, 2016), so they were pretty stoked to have full sized […]
polar express(great smoky mountain railroad).

we love watching and reading the polar express every year at christmas, and always say that someday we should ride the one of the many polar express themed train rides offered in our neck of the woods. well, our “maybe someday” turned into this year, when our family gift from the grandlidboms was a polar […]