As a refresher, my family – parents, brothers, sister-in-law, nephew and nieces take a family trip every year rather than giving each other gifts. 2016 was our twelfth trip. As I mentioned earlier, we stayed in a “resort neighborhood” in the mountains for this year’s family vacation. It was in the mountains in North Georgia, […]
Three Ingredients For Adventure: Ford, Hilton, and Twitter.
We left a night early for our annual family vacation so as to detour for an Alabama History field trip on the way. We planned to stay near the field trip destination, a couple hours north of Birmingham. Except that, 45 minutes out of town, my car beeped, presented a message telling us we needed […]
The Varying Degrees of Tubing.
For family vacation this year, we went to a mountain “resort neighborhood” that might have been the most confusing place we’ve ever visited. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about yet. While we there, my mom, Ali, and I decided to take a tubing trip down the river that ran through the resort. […]
The Highs and Lows of Camp.
In June, I planned my first ever Week Off Since Becoming a Mom. Or at least, five days straight of 9am-4pm Vacation. Noah is finally old enough to go to our church’s fantabulous multiple award-winning summer day camp (where every week has a different theme and it’s complete kid wonderland and I’m a little jealous […]
The Story of Hosting Woes: A Cautionary Tale.
So two weeks ago was…stressful. It wasn’t planned to be, insomuch as one ever plans a stressful week. It all started at the end of June, when my blog / Picture Birmingham’s hosting company, HostGator, billed me for my annual renewal. I’d managed to talk them down last year to 40% of the list price, […]
Short Stories From A Busy Week.
On Saturday, we went on the newish-annual Road Rally. This isn’t new for my family, as my Dad has driven in epic road rallies (like, China-to-Paris epic) and has created many slightly-less-epic road rallies for different groups pretty much our entire life. But last year was the first year he revived the practice to share […]
It’s Not Summer Until Somebody Cries at Swim Lessons.
I have a stubborn, finicky five-year-old. Who tries to convince me and everyone else otherwise with his charming blue eyes. No really. He’s stubborn and finicky. It is for this reason that, when he began swimming on his own two weeks before his first round of swimming lessons, I texted his father and said “Swim […]
Alabama, The Hunger Games Arena.
For the first time in my life, it has recently been pointed out to me that Alabama is an unsafe place to live. And also for the second time in my life, less than a month later. I really had no idea. I was in denial. It’s so beautiful…It has to be perfect! All places […]
The Lilies, the Snakes, and the Misplaced Boob.
It was time for a new adventure. And I wanted to see firsthand, for the first time in my life, The Cahaba Lily. It’s a famed flower in our area, being very rare, quite endangered, and living in sparse, hard-to-access clumps along the Cahaba River, which is a relatively tiny waterway that winds itself through […]
The Dangers of Avocado.
There are certain foods that God created for the purpose of letting us eat toppings. Because toppings are a life blessing. Potatoes, for instance. On their own, they’re not that exciting. But when you add butter and sour cream and cheese and bacon and maybe some bar-b-que while you’re at it, they’re the sparkling unicorn […]