Posts

Over the last decade, our family has stayed at a wide variety of Disney resorts and local hotels during our visits to Walt Disney World. For our most recent trip, we chose Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter for a number of reasons: The hotel choice ended up being absolutely perfect for our family of four with two teenage daughters. I would not hesitate to book a stay here again! Read on to see if this Disney resort is a good fit for you and your family....

For the 2 years we’ve lived in Charlotte we just haven’t gotten around to visiting Carowinds–a fantastic roller coaster amusement park right here in town. We’ve seen the coasters looming above the treetops every time we pick up friends and family from the airport, but I always assumed my girls were still too little for this particular destination. Last Saturday we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit Carowinds with my friends from our #BlogCharlotte group to check out The Great Pumpkin Fest they have during the fall for the little ones....

If you’re trying to organize all the details for your first Disney vacation and you’re a planner like me, you’re probably making the same mistakes I did when I planned our first Disney trip. I was so excited for our first Disney trip with the kids, I spent months prepping to make sure everything went just perfectly. But there’s a big difference between Disney planning and Disney on the ground in real life....

Thanks to a few disappointing day camp experiences over the past few years, I had given up on the idea of sending my girls to a summer camp for kids. I quit researching our options because everything I found in town was just simply too expensive for too little experience. I thought I could provide more summer fun with that budget just by doing our own thing. Then I got a phone call from my friend Michelle, the EXPERT kid activity organizer....

You really don’t need much when you get started homeschooling. The list of essentials is fairly short and basic. But, one of the greatest joys of homeschooling is making the time spent with your children feel extra-special. Most parents choose to homeschool so they can connect with their kids, not so they can just “get through” the days. Once your homeschool is up and running, you may be looking for a few extra special ideas to make your time together even more enriching....

When was the last time you went bowling? Funky retro shoes, glossy bowling balls, and illuminated pins on long wooden lanes. Few activities available for families today bring the same kind of nostalgia as a day at the bowling lanes. It is our family New Year’s Eve tradition to take the kids bowling at 10 Park Lanes near the Park Road Shopping Center. We started when the girls were little itty bitties and had so much fun we’ve gone back year after year....

As much as I love to travel with our family, we are not nomadic full-time exploring adventurers. When we aren’t planning for our next big trip, I still love to daydream about the places we’ll eventually see by reading with my kids. Though we love to pick up armfuls of books during our monthly trips to the library, I’ve spent years building up a wonderful home library, too. I love to be surrounded by beautiful books and have filled the shelves in our living room with titles that are worthy of keeping a permanent place of honor....

“Are We There Yet?!” It’s family road trip season! Are you taking the kids somewhere fun this summer? We just did a 9 hour drive to Disney and still have our annual 4 hour drive to the beach to schedule. Knowing how much time my kids would be in the car for these trips, I needed to up the ante with our entertainment options. When you’re driving so far and crossing state borders, one of my favorite ways to make the trip more fun is to use maps with the kids....

If you’re as sad as we are that Ariel’s Grotto has closed, you might be looking for an alternative princess breakfast at Disneyland to replace it. Check out the Princess Breakfast Adventures at the Napa Rose restaurant inside Disney’s Grand Californian Resort and Spa. Editor’s Note: We are so sad that Ariel’s Grotto has now been closed. This is our review of the character breakfast from our trip in 2014....

In order to save money on a family road trip, parents find themselves squeezing into tight quarters and sharing spaces with the whole family. Especially frugal families may find themselves in hotel rooms smaller than expected but that doesn’t need to ruin the vacation. Keeping everyone sane and happy in the unusually tight quarters of a single hotel room can feel daunting but with just a few handy hotel hacks, your entire family can happily share the hotel room and focus on the fun of the trip....

Opentable I booked several dining experiences for our London trip in advance and they all used the Opentable reservation platform. Practically every element of your trip can now be managed digitally. Whether you’re a frequent flier or you haven’t been on the road in a while, you’ll want to be sure these apps are set up and ready to go before your next trip. However, if you are headed to a large city like New York or London, you will most definitely want to be sure you have Apple Pay and/or Apple Wallet set up with your preferred payment method....

After over a decade of family beach trips, we’ve finally perfected the packing list for the essential items needed for a fun day at the beach together. The real trick is balancing having just enough to keep everyone comfortable and happy without overloading the car or having too many things to keep track of and carry out onto the sand. Every item on this list serves a purpose and will help ensure a fun beach day for your family....

Just because our family travel budget doesn’t cover four tickets to Paris right now, I still want to share my love of Europe with my kids. I believe the next best thing is to read books about Paris and France in general to inspire a sense of curiosity. If your homeschool is covering European history or geography this year, I pulled together a bunch of great titles that would be perfect to incorporate into your curriculum:...

Though the school year isn’t quite officially over just yet, I’m proud to admit I’ve been homeschooling Little Pea for almost an entire year. I don’t have a teaching degree. Homeschool was never part of my greater plan. It took facing some extreme challenges with the traditional schooling route before we were thrust unexpectedly into homeschooling last year. It ended up being one of the best things I have ever done in my life....

As you’re just getting settled into the Pigeon Forge area, possibly tired from the long road trip to get there in the first place, and just hungry for some great food and a little fun, The Island is a great place to kickstart your family vacation. The Island was just up the road from our hotel and as soon as we were checked into our hotel, we had a few hours to spend on our first night of the trip....

The time has finally come for my oldest daughter to be exploring her next options for after high school graduation. Entering her senior year, she’s preparing to apply to several colleges throughout the south east and we have scheduled weekly college tours all summer long. I wasn’t sure what to expect from our first visit to Virginia Tech but now that we have one college tour under our belt, I wanted to share some helpful tips with you so you can be better prepared than we were!...

Last summer, Handyman Tim took the Peanut out for her very first trip camping. Since Little Pea was only 4 at the time and he hadn’t been camping himself for a very long time, Tim wanted to ease into the experience with just one of the kids at a time. Worried this would cause some hurt feelings for the one left behind, I decided to make a Very Special Evening for just the two of us....

This summer my oldest daughter and I are hitting the road to visit college campuses throughout the south east. While we live in Charlotte, NC, we are considering schools both in and out of state. There were just a few schools we considered that were farther than a day trip from home, among them is Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. To make the most of the time we’d need to invest in a visit, I planned a multi-day road trip to hit Clemson University in South Carolina on our way down to visit Auburn with a pit stop in Atlanta to visit the Atalanta Botanic Gardens....

There’s a big difference between our current family vacations and the adult romantic getaways we used to take. One of them is definitely breakfast. Where my husband and I used to enjoy a leisurely hotel breakfast off the lobby to start our day or expensive room service if we were feeling lazy, once we had kids breakfast became a more practical concern for both our budget and the timing of our day....

When I launched this site, I was so excited to round up all the advice and tips & tricks I’ve learned from 8 years of traveling in the southern US with my family. In order to write the content, I’ve been digging up all our family vacation photos from 2012 onwards and organizing them into folders for me to use to illustrate the posts. Then came the moment to add a photo of myself to the Welcome page....