Oh what a beautiful morning…
Oh what a beautiful day.
I’ve got a wonderful feeeeeel-ing..
Everything’s going my way.
Good morning. It feels like a beautiful morning to me, and this song keeps popping into my head. The sun is shining, it’s a relatively warm 55 degrees (with a high of 75), and you know who is REALLY enjoying the morning??
The squirrels. I don’t know what is going on out there, exactly. It is like a squirrel revolution. I could hear them when I woke up scampering in my magnolia tree outside my window. Then pitter-pattering across the roof. When I got up, I decided to step outside to toss some chlorine in the hot tub- and oh my goodness. There were like TEN of them chasing each other around, squeaking at each other, jumping from branch to branch in this huge tree in my yard:
No joke, it looked like we had monkeys in our tree!! It was quite hilarious! No idea what caused all the ruckus and excitement in Squirrel-land at 6 am, but they were definitely up and at ’em.
I just sat out on the deck with my tea to update my journal page, and the birds were singing LOUDLY, 2 little bunnies were hopping across the yard and some ducks flew overhead. I felt like Snow White. Come to me, all my animal friends. 😂
Looking forward to today…
- lunch with Ethan before his vaccine appointment!
- Actually, that’s really about it. Hahaha. I don’t have a very exciting day coming up, otherwise. Just a meeting at 1:15. Work, maybe a workout (after work). Also, it’s not my turn to drive for swim practice, so that’s a perk. Should be a pretty free night on my end, though the kids are busy with soccer (E), piano and swim (A).
Grateful that…
I spent some time this weekend organizing some details for our Maine/Vermont/New Hampshire trip in August. This is going to be a unique trip for us in the regard that we will be staying at MANY different places. (We are used to road tripping, but usually we stay at one location for several nights each before moving on to a new place.)
This trip is longer than average, due to Maine being pretty far from WI! It’s a 2 week trip, and all in all we will be staying at nine different places (hotels and/or AirBnBs) over the course of the trip!! This isn’t exactly my “ideal” set up (overall, it’s probably nicer to be settled in for at least a few days somewhere), but it’s sort of just the nature of this trip.
It will be more of a meandering style vacation, weaving our way up through small towns in Vermont, then New Hampshire, then up the coast of Maine for a week before finally stopping for 5 nights in Bar Harbor, Maine (Acadia National Park). Anyway, I’m super excited about all of the places we will see- but it required many various lodging reservations (9!). We’ll have quite a few single night stays in various towns.
I finally sat down and double/ triple checked my dates (I was paranoid that I had accidentally double booked the wrong dates or something, with all the moving around…) and typed up a document with all of the details. Everything was correct- no mistakes. Phew. Feels good to have that organized and I’m EXCITED now!!!
Do you like road trips? Are you vacationing anywhere this summer?? Reading about other people’s travel is maybe one of my favorite things ever to do, so please share, if you are!!
Daily Gratitude:
See above. 🙂 But, to add a couple more from my journal…I’m grateful for nice weather right now, and for our lawn mower.
GRATEFUL KAE 
I’m excited to hear about this trip when you get back. The 5 nights in Bar Harbor will be amazing after hopping around so much. We are NOT road trippers. We both really do not like being in the car. So even though flying is a hassle, esp with young kids, we’d choose hopping in a plane over driving a long distance. Unless it doesn’t make sense to fly – like when we go to the Black Hills some day. Plus we prefer shorter 5-day type of trips so driving doesn’t usually make sense. No travel plans for us this year which is due to the baby, not anything with covid (similarly, we wouldn’t have traveled last year since I was pregnant and my pregnancies are really hard/not conducive to travel). But next Feb or Mar I am hoping we can go to Tucson, AZ to visit my sister and meet her daughter who will be one by then! So instead of big trips, we will go up to the lake about monthly this summer. Our next trip is in late June when we’ll go Thur-Sat. And then in July we’ll go for a Tues or Wed through Sat. But I love to live vicariously through other people’s travels and adventures! And I know we’ll get back to adventuring eventually, but it will be very different until we are out of the toddler years! I know some people don’t let young kids stop them from traveling but we are not those people. 🙂 Ha!
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Oh, this trip sounds so fun! We have done similar only once and when we were child-free – we did a tour of the Deep South. When we flew over from England, we only had a hotel booked for the first night and it was a good job we had that as I don’t think security would have let us in otherwise!
We travelled around and did so many amazing things – we went to Graceland and Sun Studio and Mud Island and New Orleans and Tupelo and The Grand Ole Opry (which my hubby did book for the wrong night originally!). We stayed in a plantation home one night and I remember it as being such a musical trip – driving around listening to local radio every day. It was a blast!
I hope you have the best trip!
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That sounds awesome!! We just recently did Memphis and loved it. We haven’t done Nashville (not counting just one night stopping through once, but we didn’t really see it) so I’d like to go there eventually, too! I am always impressed by people who totally just wing it on trips…that sounds so awesome, yet the idea kind of makes me nervous!! haha!! I just feel better knowing I have a place to stay, I guess. But I can totally see the attraction to just kind of go where the wind blows you. 🙂
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I would definitely not be as brave now, travelling with a child! LOL
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Just a couple of camping trips this summer, since we are saving for our 8th grader to go to DC next fall with the school. I went in 9th grade with my class in the 90s and I’m excited for her to go! I’d love to head up to Door County, maybe I can take off a few days and make this happen.
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YES the DC trip will be amazing!! We went there too with my high school orchestra- I think I was in 11th grade maybe? It was super fun. That was my only time ever visiting DC and I’d like to go back. I hope it works out for our boys to go with school, too. Door County sounds so fun. We have never been there as a family. It’s one of those places I feel like everyone from around here goes and knows all about cool things to see and do….but I don’t know the first thing about it! I know I was there as a kid, but I don’t really remember it. Ivan has never been there, either. If you go, fill me in on some tips, since that is definitely on my list to go sometime down the road.
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We did a trip driving up Rt 1 when our kids were 6 and 9. A different hotel every night for 10 days stressed me out when planning. Best thing I did was packed several large ziplocks with just swim trunks, PJs, and one set of day clothes in each. We kept out large suitcases in the car and each evening just put one baggie with needed clothes in backpacks along with toiletries and car stuff. Then we only had to lug the backpacks and a dirty clothes bag into the hotel each night, rather than suitcases packed for the whole trip. Worked like a charm!
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Ok, that’s genius!!! Thank you for sharing that tip. You are totally right- dragging suitcases and stuff in and out of the car is a total pain. Will be doing this, especially for the boys who don’t need much anyway besides shorts, t-shirt, etc.
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your road trip sounds a lot of fun! we originally wanted to do road trip during our current trip to the US but we don’t have driver licenses so we are staying in DC the whole two months. Next time we come, girls would be a bit older, that would be perfect for a roadtrip.
I am looking forward to follow yours though. 9 places in two weeks? that sounds hectic but I think that’s part of the experience of roadtrip. so enjoy!
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It will be a little more hectic in some ways than other trips we have done, for sure! But, the good thing is that most places we will be stopping are not that far apart. So it’s not like we have to drive all day, every day. It just sort of worked out though that we need to sleep in different places in order to ultimately keep moving in the right direction without backtracking! We will only need to drive 1-2 hours max between most places we want to see, once we get out to Vermont. Will be long drives on the first couple days to get out east, but then the pace should slow down significantly! 🙂 There are tons of great road trips to be done in the US- I’m sure you’ll get a chance to do some fun ones with your girls, too!
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Oh, road trips. How I love them. I wish I could do the one you are doing! I might have to pick your brain re: route, etc. 🙂 You will LOVE Bar Harbor, and northern New England in summer is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. If I didn’t live in the Midwest… I have to say New England would be high on the list! I think you are seafood people, so tell your boys they can match my nephew and attempt to try every lobster roll in BH during your stay. 15 year old boys eat a lot! It was an impressive feat. I have a road trip coming up but just for a few days, to see my family. I am still looking forward to the time on the road, even though it will be mostly (well, really, all) highway driving. I’ll have to see if I can get a break from that along the way…
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