during our time in mesa, we were able to hit up two different national monuments, both about an hour or so away, and both dedicated to preserving the history of native people who inhabited the area long before we did. first up, casa grande. the big house. the kids insisted on doing as much of […]
unschool
desert botanical garden.(spoiler: it’s mostly cactuses).
for our first grand adventure in the state of arizona, we chose the desert botanical garden in phoenix. the lidkids actually voted for it, out of all the options presented to them. we definitely like cactuses in this family. on the stroll in, i took this shot, to showcase our first usage of the trio […]
grandlidbom san diego christmas. last day.
for the last (full) day of the grandlidbom san diego christmas extravaganza, the world famous san diego zoo was on tap. before we even entered the gates, we happened upon our first “animal”… there were hundreds of bees buzzing around a (rather peculiar) plant. i don’t know if this pic is from my phone or […]
grandlidbom san diego christmas, days 2 & 3.
after our action packed first day with the grandlidboms, the lidkids spent the night with them, and since we didn’t have anything planned until lunchtime on day two, our morning at the camper was lazy and glorious. i savored a delicious cup of coffee outside by the lake, with no bickering, whining or cartoon sounds […]
grandlidbom san diego christmas, day 1.
finally. the day was here. the grandlidboms arrived in san diego. we woke up, ate a quick breakfast, and then headed out the door to meet them at the birch aquarium. we had our happy greetings and then started exploring… while the whole place was pretty educational, the first bit that we walked around in […]
the hoover dam
for our final field trip with my parents, we went to the hoover dam. we had learned a bit about it at the springs preserve, but we were excited to check the place out up close and in person. firstly, there were WAAAAAAY more people there than i ever would have imagined. we tried to […]
las vegas springs preserve
our second major field trip while new gramma and grampa terry were in town was the las vegas springs preserve. i didn’t know stuff like this existed in las vegas, but i guess there’s probably families who live here who need places to go that aren’t casinos. we learned a lot about the history of […]
glacier national park. week 1.friend hikes and the best junior ranger program ever.
after our weekend of exploring glacier by car and boat, i was very excited to do some hiking. but, a lot of the hikes were too long to do with the kids. and the ones that weren’t, we wanted to save for the weekend to do with derek. also, we had moved the camper 4 […]
grand tetons.mormon row, death canyon, string lake 2.0
welcome to part two of my grand teton adventures blog. i’m going to cram in a lot, so get ready. without further ado… we kicked off our tuesday (at 1:30pm) with a trip to mormon row. it’s a little abandoned settlement that sits on the national park property and has some old barns that make […]
yellowstone.canyons and the rest.
let’s see. when i left off, we were still at yellowstone, having completed an epic day at grand prismatic and old faithful. the rest of our time there was a little more laid back and/or disappointing, so i’m cramming it all into this post. (and as for the long blog break, we were without good […]