How do people afford to go to Hawaii? Learn how to save money on a Hawaiian vacation with these easy tips! Our 2014 Christmas gift to the girls was a trip to Hawaii. Lately we have been trying to give experience gifts instead of stuff gifts, and so we didn’t give them very much else….
Our Epic Vacation: Day 13 Day 13 marks the halfway point, so don’t get too excited, because I’ll probably be blogging about this vacation for 100 more years. 2023 update: This was indeed the last post I ever made about the epic vacation. I am inspired to dig up all the rest of the photos…
In honor of the 13th anniversary of September 11, 2001, I thought I would share some of the photos I took when my husband and I visited the memorial in New York City. The museum didn’t open until the end of May, so we missed that, but the memorial itself was absolutely stunning. It had…
This summer, my husband and I will be celebrating not one, but THREE momentous occasions. In June, we will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. That’s the most important. But we both have summer birthdays, too, and this year we are both turning “The Big 4-0.” (I don’t really know what’s up with that, by the…
Our Epic Vacation: Day 12 We began our day bright and early by sailing into the Tracy Arm Fjord. The last time we took an Alaskan cruise, we did Glacier Bay instead, so I was happy to see something different. There aren’t as many glaciers at Tracy Arm, but what we did see was gorgeous!…
Our Epic Vacation: Day 11 Already Day 11. After our Sea Day the day before, we looked forward to our first port of call: Ketchikan, Alaska. Since we had all the kids with us this time, we chose not to do any excursions. The last time my husband and I were in Ketchikan with my…
Our Epic Vacation: Days 9 & 10 After spending the previous day in Seattle, the morning of Day 9 dawned bright and early, and we were all excited to get to the cruise terminal and board the ship! Hooray for cruises! With the help of my Dad, my brother, and both of my brother’s cars,…
Our Epic Vacation: Day 8 We awoke on Day 8 at Mimi and Papa’s house in Sandy, Utah. We did a final pack-up of everything we needed for the next leg of our epic vacation and stuffed the rest of it into their basement storage room. My father-in-law then drove us to the airport in our van…
Our Epic Vacation: Days 6 & 7 Look at me, knocking out two days in one post. But only because Day 6 was pretty mellow. I mean, we needed some rest after the previous five days, don’t you think? We spent a leisurely morning on Day 6 at my in-laws’ house. We worked on laundry while the…
Our Epic Vacation: Day 5 The end of Day 4 found us all a little bit (a lot) cranky, and crashing for the night in our tent at Yellowstone after going to bed without dinner. I thought I’d better take a picture of our palatial tent that was so good to us on this camping trip. It…
Our Epic Vacation: Day 4 The view from our cute little cabin At the close of Day 3, we found ourselves in a cute little cabin in Custer State Park, South Dakota. I certainly appreciated the sort-of mattress I got to sleep on. It was so much better than rocks and dirt, despite my air mattress. Plus, we…
Our Epic Vacation: Day 3 The end of Day 2 found us calmly setting up camp at Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The morning of Day 3 found us not wanting to get up quite as early as we needed to, but we couldn’t waste the day away on something so frivolous as sleep!…