Unforgettable Childhood

I made a list today of all of the amazing things I want to do with this blog.

I have good intentions, but moving and summer put together have put a hold on all of those good intentions.

As we get settled in, I hope to post on a regular schedule with all of the fun activities we have on our agenda. We are working on writing right now and this weekend we are off exploring. In the next couple of weeks we hope to visit DeSmet, South Dakota. One of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood homes.

But for now, I am joining in for New Friend Friday with a few pictures of our summer fun.

I hope to see you back here at Unforgettable Childhood. The purpose of this blog was to spend quality time with my girls, creating, exploring and learning.

With the busyness of our culture today we have to be intentional with our kids. We have to take back our family time from society. We have to teach them to use their imaginations. We have to be purposeful in limiting technology time and encourage active, outdoor time.

I can’t wait to share my ideas with you in the next few weeks, but right now the sun is shining in South Dakota and we are off to play.

I just checked out a cool new promotional site for Rayovac. They are hosting a summer promotion to win cool prizes every day. All you have to do is go here and answer their questions of the day for a chance to win.

Today’s question is all about your camping style. You know. . . we don’t exactly rough it with our camper, but we love to get outside and really enjoy the outdoors. We just love to have a place to go when a storm hits

I am excited to be a part of this promotion, who doesn’t love cool prizes. Make sure you visit their site every day for a chance to win.

Also on Wednesday, June 30th Janice and Susan from 5 Minutes for Mom will be hosting a Rayovac Twitter Party!

Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Time: 7:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. CST
Location: #rayovac
Follow: @Rayovac_Battery, @5minutesformom, @CirclePRMary

You can also “Like” Rayovac on Facebook to learn more details.

I hope to tweet with you on Wednesday, June 30th.

I hope I win some of the cool prizes, how about you?

The first 99 bloggers to promote the Rayovac Powers Your Summer Twitter Event won a prize package from Rayovac

I couldn’t start the summer posts without a few from our trip. It was an amazing time for our family. We shared lots of laughs and a few tears. We learned quickly that meltdown was going to happen at about 3pm each day. We worked through it, took a break and kept going to we all dropped.

Disney World truly is a place that every family needs to experience at least once.

We started our second day bright and early at Sea World. We all loved it!

Next stop, Animal Kingdom. I think we voted this as one of our favorite parks of the trip.

Magic Kingdom with three girls under 10, truly a magical place!

We were glad we decided to go to Disney Hollywood Studios. Playhouse Disney was a hit for Nadia and the Rockin’ Roller Coaster was the older girls favorite ride.

Our last Disney day would not have been complete without a visit with Daisy Duck. The girls were on the lookout for her all week. Thankfully she was right past the gate when we arrived so the girls got her signature and they felt their autograph books were complete.

We also enjoyed a little time at the beach. After two days of sun, we spent the third day near the pool and a few beach umbrellas.

Now we are at Grandma and Grandpa’s and summer is in full swing with reading, gymnastics and softball. I am wishing that I had rainy day kits ready to go because the days have been filled with a lot of rain!

We have spent a lot of time inside reading. My girls love to read. I can’t wait to share more about their favorite finds so far this summer.

We are going on our second week at Grandma and Grandpa’s House. We are here until we can get settled into a house after the move. The days have been interesting. . .

Nadia takes after her Grandpa. They are both very strong-willed so we have our moments. Things have been so crazy we have not had a lot of time for planned activities and structure. I am working hard on trying to get our summer a little more scheduled before we are all crazy.

Here are a few pictures of the fun we have been having so far.

We all love fun at Aunt Sara and Uncle Brad’s Farm.

Nothing says summer like a good old fashioned water balloon fight.

Rainy Days = Dress-up with Grandpa’s Boots

Our first camping trip of the year.

What is on your family agenda for Summer Fun?

Summer officially began for our household on May 21st when we left for vacation, but tomorrow we are back to reality and our summer vacation at home begins.

The summer will be filled with crafting, gardening, exploring and camping. We have a lot of fun plans to discover new things and revisit places we love.

Beginning June 3rd we will spend the summer at Unforgettable Childhood sharing great ways for your family to celebrate summer together. Join the fun!

I invited my friend Chele from The Bona Fide to guest post today. She lives in a beautiful place in North Carolina that I would love to visit someday. I asked her to share a travel article from her area. Make sure you stop by her blog and say hello!

First I want to say with 4 children ages 4, 7, 12 and 14, it is very hard to have the patience to go places like this with them. My fear of things going wrong when we visit places like this usually keeps us from not trying it. We don’t do it often enough. However it is so costly for a family of six to do things like this but this past trip was a huge success and we will be making more time to do these kinds of things with our children!

We live on the coast of Southeastern North Carolina. There are many things to do around here. However we did take a 2 hour and 15 minute trip with some folks from church to New Bern, North Carolina. We went to see the historical place called   Tryon Palace. In colonial times it was the capital of North Carolina for awhile. I’m not going to go into all of the history here but it was a beautiful town with lots of history!

On the ride up our 4 year old did take a nap which I think really helped us!! He was shockingly good all day long!

We took a look through the Palace itself… that actually took all morning. All 4 of my children were into it! All of the cool things they had back then! It sure was a history lesson for all of us! We were able to walk through the original horse stables and we got to see the separate kitchen building and how they made wool spools! It was pretty neat! My seven year old daughter said this was her favorite place because it made her feel like a princess! Ha-Ha!

Next, we went to the park by the water to eat our picnic. We brought sandwiches, chips, drinks and some cookies. They enjoyed that because this weekend actually was during a car show! So we watched the cool cars as we ate!

At this time, we saw this poor blue jay. It must have fallen from the tree it wasn’t even able to fly yet. My hubby put it in a safe place because pigeons were trying to peck at the poor thing. This was my 4 year old son’s highlight of the day. He is still talking about it days later and asking us if we think he is okay!

We went back to the palace area and went to a 30 minute show about John Lawson and his trunk of dead animal skins. I can’t say that was my highlight but my kids enjoyed being able to see a fox, skunk and so on up close!

Next, we went to the Hay house. This was the coolest thing! They were dressed in period clothes, the house was the original house from the 1800’s and we all sat in their living room just as we would today and chatted. The wife and daughter of this Hay house actually talked the way they talked back then! For example, my 4 year old son said to the lady of the house “I like dinosaurs!” And she looked at me and back at him and asked “dinosaurs?” Ha-ha! They even showed some kids games from back then and shared with my children how they were played! Everyone had a blast here!

We did much more but I could write a series. If you live in this area or ever visit, be sure to check out the Tryon Palace. Our whole family enjoyed this day trip together. We need to do things like this more often! We all should be doing this with our children, not only is it bonding time but it also is education for our children! They won’t ever forget this trip they took with their parents!

I am so excited to share this post with you today. Tracie from tsj Photography is one of my favorite bloggers. She is a seasoned traveler with kids and she is an amazing photographer. In fact, I would love to plan a big road trip with my family of five to Wisconsin just to have her take our pictures.

She is an amazing writer, too. After you check out some of her very useful travel tips and pictures, head over to her blog. She is also a mother of daughters. (She out does me with 4)

Stop by and say hello to Tracie, you will be so glad that you did.

I’m currently traveling with 3 of my 4 girls and thought it’d be the perfect time to write this guest post for Amy.

We’re in Chicago for the weekend, just an hour train ride from our home … so not a major trip, but if it involves children, packing and oodles of patience … pretty sure it means traveling with children.

I know some couples aren’t too hip on the idea of traveling with their children.  Or at the very least, think they should wait until the children are older before they begin traveling with them.

But we are definitely not one of those couples.  I think I’d be lost without our family travels and adventures!

Each of my girls have had passports from the time they were infants and the earliest flight I remember one of them taking was Wynter’s at 11 days old.

Traveling instills so many great qualities in children.  I think they learn adaptability, definitely learn other cultures, tolerance and even independence.

Because of our blended family and different opportunities that have come her way … Taylor, who’s 15, started traveling alone since she was 11.  She’s been on numerous flights herself and is no longer considered an unaccompanied minor, so no one on the airline helps her get to her gate or connections.  Not to say she doesn’t call or text me every time she lands to ask me where she should go next … yeah, cuz I’m telepathic like that!

In fact, she’s currently visiting friends in the Bahamas and the reason she’s not with us this weekend.

But I think because we’ve been traveling her whole life, she’s confident enough to make her way through an airport, plane, etc.

Anyway.  As I mentioned, we’ve been traveling with the girls since they were born and I thought I’d share a few trips we’ve taken and the age of the youngest at the time:

3 month old – Galapagos Islands
16 month old – outer region of Australia
3 month old – Spain, Venice & Denmark
4 month old – the Canary Islands
just to mention a few …

Alright … all that aside … I suppose I should get to the reason Amy invited me here!

I’d like to share a little bit of our traveling-with-kids secrets …

First, and most important: don’t make it a marathon.  I mean, I know traveling can cost a small fortune … but is it really worth it if everyone is miserable?

Here’s what I mean {and I’m not judging, if it works for you fine … but I’ve seen plenty of experiences where it clearly isn’t working, so I’m merely suggesting and alternative thought} … and not to suggest our kids don’t get cranky and irritable … oh my word, they sure can … but here’s what we do to keep it to a minimum.

Okay, like I said, don’t make it a marathon.  Figure out what your most important points of interest are, and make sure you keep those your priorities.  You really don’t have to see every single point of interest do you?  Depending on the ages of your children, they aren’t going to care … or remember.  And hey, even miss teenager was happy when we got back to the hotel at the end of the day!

I’d much prefer the kids remember a few points of interest and what a great time we had … then trudging them through the full city and arguing and being cranky.

I also think keeping time at restaurants to a minimum is key.  Bring along some cereal or breakfast bars so you’re not doing 3 meals a day in restaurants.  If your kids are anything like ours … that sort of puts them over the edge.

So what does our schedule typically look like?  We get up on our own schedules {which is relatively early, if you’re not a teenager that is} and head out around 9:00 in the morning. We spend a couple of hours sight-seeing, then have an early lunch.  We try to eat early to avoid crowds.

After lunch, we’ll spend another hour or so touring, then head back to the hotel for a couple of hours to relax or unwind.  If the hotel has a pool, we’ll go swimming … otherwise, we let the girls watch a movie, read or play games.

Again, to avoid crowds and waiting, we’ll usually head to an early dinner … depending on where we are, we might see another sight … and then head back to the hotel to get everyone rested for the next day.

I know I can be a major taskmaster … but even on vacation, I try not to stray from bedtime or our routines.  I think being lenient on bedtimes can set you up for failure … again, who wants unrested, cranky kids on vacation?

One last travel tip: I gotta tell you … we’ve got an iPod touch for each of the girls … they’re only used for travel, but they’ve saved us more times that I can count!  I realize it’s an investment, but it’s definitely paid off for us!  You can also bring a portable DVD player and I recommend a double headphone jack, so 2 kids can watch one show.

Amy, thank you for inviting me here today!  I’m hopeful my perspective was helpful as well as encouraging.