Author: Jess

How to Prepare For a Traveling Curren Visit

Post author By Jess
Post date October 28, 2014
4 Comments on How to Prepare For a Traveling Curren Visit

How to Prepare for a Traveling Curren Visit

One of the things we love about traveling is spending time with friends & family we wouldn’t otherwise see. Whether we are traveling through their town, or make a specific detour, these visits are fun and exciting for all of us. We’ve stayed with or nearby our friends the Graces twice now. Once for Thanksgiving 2013 in Tampa, FL and then they moved to Puyallup, WA where we recently got to see them again in September 2014!

Being experts on having the Curren family as temporary neighbors, they volunteered to write an article for our blog on How to Prepare for a Traveling Curren Visit.

Enjoy!

How to Prepare for a Traveling Curren Visit

by Cassie Grace

First off, Breathe. This isn’t your normal visit. No one one will be stealing your hot water in the morning. You don’t need to pull out the hide-a-bed or musty bedcovers. The beauty of a Curren visit is that they bring their house with them. It turns out, they are more like a temporary neighbor than a house guest.

1. Remember this is normal life for them, but its still a special treat for you.

I am really not fit for human beings until about 1pm after my jog(plod), shower and lunch. Perfect. That meant the Curren kids could do school and Sam could get his work hours in without worrying about offending us. Then we could have fun in the afternoon and evening. Which leads me to….

2. Have books at the ready.

I love this about Rachel, Andrew and Cara. They love books. They devoured several books from my personal library in just a few days. This comes in handy when you want to chat with Jess without much noise.

3. Projects and adventures are great fun, but not every second.

Don’t get me wrong, The Curren clan loves a good museum, park or trail. Do that stuff, but let them rest and relax and enjoy your company too. Can you imagine going full steam like that for months at a time? Phew. Makes me tired just thinking about it!

4. Soak it up.

Poor Sam. I think I may have squeezed his brain dry on a project of mine. I think we ended up talking for 2 1/2 hours on my fledgling business, well into his bedtime. You know Sam. He has so many good ideas, I even took notes. And Jess, I yakked Jess’s ear off about food and cooking. Luckily, they are super cool and hung out with us as much as we all could stand for our short three days.

5. Reflect

The Currens caused Mike and me to reflect and reconsider. A lot. I mean, how outside the box do you want to get? They went from typical suburban family to full-time-homeschooling-adventuring-travelers! They make me want to reach a little further to try somethings a little differently. To get rid of some of my junk. Seriously. If Jess can live in 188 sq feet with less stuff, then I can definitely unload some crap. And go hiking. There is so much to explore in my own city, its time to get out of the house. While I’m not ready or very willing to do the same thing they are, the Currens remind me to change.

So there you have it. Our five top ways to be ready for a Curren visit!

Video WanderLog

Hiking the Astoria Column & Nehalem Bay

Post author By Jess
Post date October 25, 2014
1 Comment on Hiking the Astoria Column & Nehalem Bay

TWOI Oct 18-24 2014

Travel Dates: October 18 – 24, 2014

We had some really awesome, beautiful days this last week, as well as some so rainy we couldn’t get out. I’m learning that is what life is like in the Pacific Northwest. Still trying to roll with it, but not being too successful.

We spent the weekend at Fort Stevens State Park, exploring both Ft. Clatsop and Astoria on Saturday afternoon. Our favorite serendipitous moment was meeting another full time family at the Astoria Column. With #swissarmy trucks we kind of stand out in a crowd. Chatting in the rain led to 2 hours hanging out at a local pizza parlor and we can’t wait to meet up with them this winter down south!

On our third attempt to see the shipwreck of the Peter Irendale, we finally had decent enough weather to brave the beach without getting blown over. While smaller than we expected, the shipwreck back lighted by the sunset was quite a sight!

Further down the coast, we spent a few nights at Nehalem Bay State Park, enjoyed exploring the dunes, watching the sunset over the water, and we went CRABBING! Definitely a highlight of our travels so far. We made a Wandering Update video we’ll share in the near future, but for now just imagine the girls screaming at the top of their lungs as we pulled the first pot full of wriggling, squiggling crabs up over the side and into the boat. It was epic.

We are now settled into Lincoln City for the next week to finish preparing for, and to celebrate Halloween with some friends. We are super excited!

For now here’s our Wandering Update from the Astoria Column. Enjoy!

Tags This Week on Instagram

California Featured Destination

Beyond Sea World: 13 Other Things to do in San Diego

Post author By Jess
Post date October 24, 2014
6 Comments on Beyond Sea World: 13 Other Things to do in San Diego

Last February we spent two weeks exploring San Diego. Having just come from Disneyland, we knew we didn’t want to visit Sea World or Lego Land so we came up with alternate ways to spend our time. It turned out to be quite fun! We also enjoyed just hanging out in the same space and getting things done! For those that are interested in visiting San Diego (because who wouldn’t be? The place is awesome!) here’s the list of things we did:

1. Mormon Battalion Museum and walking around old Town

We wrote an entire blog post about how awesome this was. Not just for Mormons either, there’s a lot of history about the settlement of the area.

2. Balboa Park

This park is beautiful and there are vendors and such on the weekends including an organ recital on Sundays @2pm (check the schedule before you go). We listened to the recital and then explored the park a bit, even enjoying a show by a magician!

3. Downtown Central Library

This library has amazing architecture with a fun kid’s section. We loved the room on the 5th floor with all the windows and a view of the city. Would be great for a rainy, reading day if you needed to spend some time indoors.

4. Cabrillo National Monument

This monument is located out on Point Loma. I wouldn’t have known this was even in the area if it weren’t for the National Parks Passport app on my phone. We met up with some Airstream friends for an afternoon and had a great time. Full blog post here.

5. Go to the Beach

This is kind of a “duh”. You ‘re in San Diego. We enjoyed Mission Beach, as it was only 15 minutes from where we were staying, had lovely sand, and there was even a boardwalk with a roller coaster that looked pretty awesome.

6. Bike ride around Mission Bay Park.

There’s a lovely bike path that winds through trees with great views of the water, and at least 3 or 4 small parks for the kids to play on. If you are feeling ambitious you can even do a lap or two around Fiesta Island.

7. South Bay Drive in Theater.

This was a fun night out with friends. We went and saw the Lego Movie on a weeknight. Very few people, prices were decent, and we brought lots of treats!

8. Walk Around the San Diego Temple.

The building is iconic and beautiful. Even if you are members and don’t have time to go in (the atrium up on the top floors is beautiful!) the grounds are well kept and pretty. It’d be a great Sunday afternoon activity!

11. Ice Cream at Costco

Surprisingly, the Costco on Morena Blvd that has the biggest, yummiest ice cream cones for $1.50 that we’ve never seen anywhere else. Ridiculously huge. Just throwing that one out there.

10. Ballet at North Park Theater

This was definitely a seasonal thing. We got lucky and happened to find out the BYU Ballet was having a Fairy Tales Dance Performance. Rachel and I went on a date with my friend and her daughter. I’m not sure what other events they hold there, but maybe check the schedule and add a little culture to your visit!

11. Tour the USS Midway

One of our highlights and deserves a blog post all on its own (maybe we’ll get caught up eventually?). We loved the audio wands and did the family tour that was a shortened version for smaller kids. Our kids also earned their pilot wings and were pretty excited about it! They don’t allow you to take in food, but you can leave and return, so we had a picnic in the parking lot.

12. San Diego Zoo & Safari Park

We did both parks on different days. It was a lot of zoo, but we enjoyed them both. I loved the variety of exotic, less common animals a the Zoo. We definitely saw animals we’d never seen before, although our favorite was was the Koala Bears. They are just too darn cute! The Safari Park was…. okay. I didn’t feel like it lived up to the hype, and as its 45 minutes out of the city skip this one if you are running short on time.

13. Reuben H. Fleet Science Center

It was great for a rainy day (of which we actually had some) but not our favorite science center. Interesting exhibits, but I honestly think it would appeal more to the 10+ kids rather than my 4-8 range.

As you can see, San Diego has quite a bit to offer! We loved our stay there and definitely have plans to return at some point. Have you ever been? What was your favorite thing to do?

Other suggestions we didn’t get to:
Border Field State Park – go stare across the fence at Mexico!
San Diego Natural History Museum
The bridge out to Coronado is beautiful and Moo Time Creamery is rumored to be delicious.
I had a friend suggest Kono’s Cafe for breakfast, but we could never get out of bed early enough.
La Jolla – I’ve heard the beaches are great. Would have loved to go kayaking!

Tags Fun Things to do in San Diego with Kids, Things to do in San Diego besides Sea World

Homeschool Tips & Tricks

My Trick For Buying Audio Books When You Can’t Get Them Through the Library

Post author By Jess
Post date October 22, 2014
3 Comments on My Trick For Buying Audio Books When You Can’t Get Them Through the Library

We love listening to audio books as we drive. We’ve worked our way through the Percy Jackson Series, the Enchanted Forest Series, and now we are on book 4 of the Heroes of Olympus. Even though we don’t drive 10 hours days (ever) listening to a book is an easy way to keep kids entertained on a 30 minute or even 3 hour drive.

Many audio books are available through library overdrive systems. We’ve checked out the Enchated Forest series and downloaded to my phone through the Android app. The Percy Jackson books are harder to come by as they are pretty popular. Sometimes we’ve had to wait weeks for the next book and then everyone gets impatient and cranky.

Of course, the audio books are available on Audible.com as well, but I just can’t justify throwing $30 at an audio book. It is just too much for me. Even with a membership, we’d still be paying $14.95 per month for one audio book. Still can’t do it, even after that first free book.

My solution to this problem turned out to be pretty simple. One day while I was browsing Amazon, I noticed the “Whispersync for Voice” little box underneath the title and prices. It states that you can switch back and forth between the Kindle book and listening to the professional Audible narration. You can even add the narration for a REDUCED PRICE once you buy the kindle book.

Genius.

Kindle Book: $7.57
Add Audio: $12.99
Total: $20.56

Audible Book Alone: $35.93

I get the Kindle book AND the audio book for less than the audio costs on Audible. Sometimes it even takes us more than month to go through a book, so with a membership we’d have them stacked up for months. My kids love to go back and read the books after we’ve listened anyway (I swear Andrew has read Sea of Monsters at least four times) so its a win-win.

When you add the audio on Amazon, the books appear in the Audible app on my phone. It is super easy to see what we’ve purchased, download to my phone and then plug into to our car stereo and listen as we drive! Super easy. As you can see in my screenshot, it’s October and we’ve only bought 4 audio books this year total. Not 10 like we’d get with a membership. Maybe that number will change as we keep traveling, but for now this systems is working great!

Do you have favorite audio books for kids? Let me know what they are! We are always looking for recommendations!

Tags audible, audio books, buying audio books through amazon, overdrive

Holidays & Bdays Oregon Washington

Celebrating Rachel’s 9th Birthday – Portland, OR & Elbe, WA

Post author By Jess
Post date October 21, 2014

Dear Rachel,

You are turning in to quite the young lady! I’m so proud of you. As the oldest there’s kind of a lot of responsibility, but you shoulder it well. You are good to your brother and sister and are great at organizing play and having fun!

Like your brother, you also LOVE to read. I love this about you guys. You’ll wake up and read for an hour before even coming to find us. You love going to used bookstores with me and finding treasures. I can’t keep up with how many books you guys read. It’s fantastic!

You also love to cross stitch, make bracelets with your loom band (I swear you have over 30 by now!), play Barbies, Lego Friends, and help me cook in the kitchen. You are constantly asking if there’s anything you can do to help make dinner, and your favorite thing is to chop veggies using the chef’s knife. You’ve learned how to make tuna sandwiches for everyone and we’re working on mac and cheese.

I loved when you watched the Women’s Conference broadcast with me the other week and really tried to listen. You love our church, Heavenly Father, and Jesus Christ and do your best to be good and listen and understand at church. I’m sad you are missing out on Activity Days with friends, but grateful that we can work on it together!

I’m proud of your creativity, your love of art, and your love and support of our family. I’m so grateful that you are ours!

Love,

Mom (and Dad!)

Rachel’s birthday was a bit chaotic this year. As she put it, “Monday is the WORST day to have a birthday!” Luckily, she is amazing and rolled with it when all our plans went sideways.

Her birthday was the last day we planned to be in Portland, OR and out of all the activities we planned to do while we were there, she picked visiting OMSI (the Science Museum everyone raved to us about!). On Sunday afternoon when I went to look up their schedule, we found it is closed on Mondays! Plan ruined.

“That’s okay, mom. We’ll find something else fun to do.” See? Rolling with it.

Starting out in the morning, daddy made Pletta (Swedish pancakes) for her breakfast, and while he cooked she opened her presents from Andrew, Cara, and the grandparents. G&G Madsen got her an Elsa Doll with the idea that if she wanted a different one (they were extremely hard to come by right then) or something else I could take her shopping later. G&G Curren sent money for Kindle Books (always love that!), Cara wanted to get her a HUGE bag of candy corn, and Andrew picked out a new snorkel and fins since we accidentally left ours at Camp Noyo over the summer.

After breakfast, Rachel and I decided to take the Elsa doll back and get her a loom case for all her bands, loom, and c-clips. We found one at Michael’s that she loved and was immediately happy with.

Since we were in Portland, the idea was to go out for lunch to some local food trucks only it turns out the ones we chose were not open for lunch. A little disappointed, but undaunted, we googled up a nearby pizza place and went out for pizza instead. Crisis #2 deflected.

We then spent a few hours searching bike shops in the area for a new bike for Rachel. In our haste to upgrade her in the spring, we ended up with a fairly lousy department store bike which just doesn’t fly in this family. She went from loving biking to absolutely hating it and that just made us sad! Knowing we needed something with better shifting capability, but not wanting to to spend a lot of money (pretty tricky!), we managed to find a used Diamondback in her size for $100. Sold. She is SO much happier now!

After dropping everyone else back off at the Airstream, Rachel and I went to pick up her pre-ordered Frozen figurine cake from the nearby Safeway. Learning my lesson from last year, I had ordered one instead of trying to take the time to make it. On impulse, I called ahead to make sure it was ready. They couldn’t find it. They didn’t have the order. They had no idea what I was talking about.

My poor mama bear came out and I’m afraid I was not so nice over the phone. Meanwhile, Rachel is bawling in the backseat because that’s the ONE thing she REALLY wanted for her birthday. We arrived at the Safeway, and the assistant manager was amazing. She immediately apologized, said they found the order but it wasn’t done and set about making it right. Rachel picked out a cake, the manager added her name and the Frozen toys (which was a nice touch even if the cake wasn’t all decorated according to theme), had us pick out ice cream and refused to let us pay for any of it. Totally above and beyond, and Rachel left feeling hopeful and happy! It really made her day!

We were staying in the neighborhood of some traveling friends, and had plans for dinner and birthday cake at their house. Although late, we managed to make it over there and had a great evening (even if the only camera I had on hand was my phone). It was fun to be able to celebrate with friends and have a little party!

While her birthday didn’t turn out quite the way she expected, she was happy and I think that’s what matters most!

Later that week, we were able to follow-up on Mom & Dad’s present of horseback riding (She was excited she only had to wait a few days!). Still promoting experiences rather than presents, she decided this was the activity she wanted to do most. Luckily, I found an outfitter nearby that did 1 hour trail rides up into the hills near Elbe, WA. They were fantastic! It ended up being just the two guides (one younger girl about Rachel’s age) and us. We wound up through the forest, to an overlook of Alder Lake and then back down. They even graciously took us the “really long way” back because it was for Rachel’s birthday.

My horse was a little spirited, but I was up for the challenge, and they put Rachel on a sweet, gentle horse that could do no wrong. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her giggle as much as she did when we urged those horses to a trot. She was in heaven.

If you are ever in the area, I definitely recommend giving EZ Times Horse Rentals a call. I couldn’t recommend them more! Oh, and while you are in the area. Stay at Alder Lake and eat some Pizza in a Train. Super fun area of Washington!