Currently Wandering

Seasons and Sacrifice

Post author By Sam
Post date March 9, 2014

We are often asked how long we plan to travel. The answer is both simple and complicated.

There are things we enjoy, and things we believe strongly in, that do not fit well with a traveling lifestyle. I love woodworking, home automation technologies, and technology meetup and hack fests. Jess loves regular photography shoots, regular gym access, a pantry, and neighborhood friends for the kids. We miss having more opportunities to teach our children the value of hard physical labor. Though we attend local church meetings every Sunday, we all miss other regular church activities.

We believe that life should be balanced, but not necessarily in each moment, or even in each season of life. Some seasons have more school and less money. Some have more work, more driving kids to activities, and housework. We are blessed to be able to spend this season of our life traveling. This season requires the sacrifice of some good things for the overall experience.

Sacrifice is the practice of giving up something good for something better.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…” – Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

We love traveling. We love how it directs the time we spend, the places we go, and the act of intentionally choosing each day the way we will love. We will travel as long as it supplies, for this season of our lives, what our family needs. This season could be a few short months, or may extend into years. I am confidant that we will know the end when we get there, and that this season will have been a success.

A new season will begin, and it will be time to spend time on other things, we will move our life in a different (and perhaps slightly more normal) direction. But today? Tomorrow? Onward, little Family, to new and exciting places!

This Week on Instagram

This Week on Instagram: March 1-7, 2014

Post author By Jess
Post date March 8, 2014

This Week on Instagram March 1-7 2014

We ultimately decided to postpone Cara’s potty training. It was a rough decision, but after two weeks and everyone miserable it was for the best. That decision made, we set about exploring more of San Diego this last week with visits to the Mormon Battalion Museum, San Diego Zoo, USS Midway Museum, and San Diego Safari Park. Too tired on Thursday to explore, we spent the day running errands, doing laundry, catching up on school workbooks, and then a drive in movie that evening to see the Lego Movie! So fun. Friday morning we packed up the Airstream, said goodbye to San Diego and drove north to a beautiful beach-side campground near Point Mugu State Beach. Going to sleep to the sound of waves crashing against the shore is extremely therapeutic.

Continuing north this week up Highway 1. We are excited for the drive!

Tags San Diego, This Week on Instagram

Daily Life

Irregular Mail and Credit Card Trouble

Post author By Sam
Post date March 7, 2014

We pulled into a gas station a few nights ago on our way home. On autopilot, I pulled out my wallet, and selected the card we always use for gas. Instead of asking for my zip code, the pump terminal presented a message I haven’t seen in awhile: “Card Expired.”

Um, What? A quick inspection of the card confirmed that it had in fact expired a few days before. We usually find out that our credits cards are about to expire when the new cards show up in the mail. Our mail turned out to the the problem.

For the past few months, we’ve been using a mail forwarding service called Traveling Mailbox. We have a temporary forward set up from our address in Utah to our address with the service, and we request our mail when we have a known address for a bit. We had sent a bundle of mail to the RV park in Anaheim where we stayed during our Disneyland visit, but the package had never arrived. A few days after we left, the bundle showed up….. back in North Carolina, where our Traveling Mailbox address is. For some reason difficult to figure out, the postal service had refused to deliver our mail to the RV park, and returned it.

We checked the contents, and indeed, our new credit cards were in the bundle. Now, the only option we have is to send the mail here to San Diego, and make sure it gets here before we leave.

We have mixed feelings about Traveling Mailbox as a service. They do a good job themselves, but we would have appreciated some guidance from them in managing the postal service, and how to get our mail reliably. I imagine that mail forwarding services all suffer a bit of the same fate on account of working with the postal service.

By the time our new cards get here, they will have traveled to Utah, North Carolina, California, North Carolina again, and finally to San Diego. Getting important mail can be painful at times, but somehow we manage it anyway!

I did get gas by the way: having a few cards for situations just like this means that we had backup in place. Just as long as they don’t all expire at the same time, anyway!

Tags getting mail while traveling, mail service

Pennyslyvania

5 Fun Things to do on a Quick Trip to Philadelphia With Kids – Pennslyvania

Post author By Jess
Post date March 6, 2014

5 Fun Things to Do on a Quick Trip to Philadelphia with Kids Having navigated Washington DC successfully for 4 months, I thought I was prepared for another big city. I was definitely wrong. Philadelphia is OLD. The streets are crowded, the parking scarce, and it seems that no no takes credit cards. I’m so glad we had friends to act as tour guides and point out the best parts of their lovely city. Touristing is always better with friends anyway, right? Here are a few things to do on a quick trip to Philadelphia with kids:

When We Visited: November 2013

Ages of Kids: 8, 6, 3

Tips: Bring lots of cash – most vendors/small restaurants don’t take credit cards.

1. Ride the Train. Since there are no RV Parks within an hour of Philadelphia, we graciously courtesy parked the Airstream at our friends’ house in Havertown and took the train in to the city. It was great. The kids love trains anyway, and it gave us a way to avoid parking. Check the cost compared to parking all day in a lot though – while it may save on the hassle, it could possibly cost more than driving in.

2. The Franklin Institute. ASTC Pass participant. There’s a giant statue of Ben Franklin in the Rotunda and a small light show. They also have a room that’s all about the heart, including a two story, beating replica Cara was terrified of. The other kids thought it was cool. They also have a planetarium, and a small younger kid’s room.

The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia

3. Independence National Historic Park. I’ve written a longer post on this you can see HERE. We earned our Jr. Ranger Badges, waited in line to see the Liberty Bell, and watched a ranger hand press copies of the Declaration of Independence. If you want tickets to actually go inside Independence Hall, you have to show up really early as they sell out quickly.

4. Eat Philly Stake Sandwiches. You can’t go to Philadelphia and not eat one. Unless you are a vegetarian I suppose. We found a fairly random little shop within walking distance of Independence Square using Google Search and made sure the place had good reviews before we went. Plenty of places sell them, so just find one that’s closest to you at lunch time.

5. World’s Largest TV & the LOVE Sign. At the Comcast Center in downtown Philadelphia is the largest TV in the World. The building’s lobby is also quite interesting so its definitely worth the stop. Nearby is also the LOVE statue, located fittingly in Love Park. We did a quick stop and then jumped back on the train headed to Independence Hall.

Other ideas:

The Benjamin Franklin Museum – located next to the printing press we visited, this museum looked very interesting. After learning about Jefferson and Washington, I would have loved to learn more about this great historical figure but we just didn’t have time. Although it is an NPS run museum, there is an additional cost to get in.

Please Touch Museum – This one has FANTASTIC reviews on Google and sounded like so much fun. We chose the Franklin Institute as it was free, but next time I think we’ll splurge on the Children’s Museum Pass so we can get in on a discount.

Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse – a free, safe place to play for children 10 and younger. Its 6 1/2 acre Playground includes the Ann Newman Giant Wooden Slide and more than 50 pieces of unique, age-appropriate and accessible pieces of play equipment. This sounds awesome!

Although it was a quick trip, I did love it there! I can’t wait to go back and explore more areas of the beautiful city. Have you ever been to Philly? What was your favorite part?

Tags 5 Things to do in Philadelphia with kids, Independence National Historic Park, Philadelphia Pennysylvania, Things to do in Philadelphia with Kids

Daily Life Most Popular Posts

A Day In the Life: City Edition

Post author By Jess
Post date March 5, 2014
6 Comments on A Day In the Life: City Edition

One thing I love about being on the road and having our location constantly change, is that there is no “typical” day. There are a lot of similar things we do everyday, but no two days have been exactly alike so far. I love it. Our days vary quite a bit too if we are in the city, or out at a State Park, or by the beach. I thought I’d share one of our days so you can get an idea of what it might be like. We are currently in San Diego, CA staying at an RV park in the city.

Sam and I try to get out of bed to work around 5:30am. He’s much better about it than I am. Often I’ll snooze my alarm and go right back to bed until the kids get up at 7am. They come out from the back bedroom, we snuggle, and then I send them off to get dressed and make their bed while I get going on breakfast. I am a breakfast lover. Pancakes, French Toast, Oatmeal, German Pancakes, Scrambled Eggs – you name it. We only have cold cereal once or twice a week and the other days I typically make breakfast. Today was French Toast.

After breakfast activities depend on our plans. This day we had plans to visit the San Diego Zoo, which I typically count as school for the day. I took a shower while the kids cleaned up and made sandwiches for us to take for lunch. Sam settled in the back on the bed with his laptop to continue working while we got ready to leave.

Rachel’s pretty good about wanting to do her own hair these days, although sometimes she still asks for help. She stands up on the toilet so she can see herself in the mirror. Most days I try to brush out Cara’s hair and do something with it.

The kids and I load up in the truck along with our adventure bag and a cooler for lunch while Sam moves out to the table to be more comfortable for work.

We arrived at the zoo around 10am and stayed until 4pm. Looooong day, but my kids do so well its really easy. We bring our own snacks, but occasionally splurge on something at our destination as well. We usually don’t buy souvenirs. We have no place to put them and a lot of times its just cheap junk anyway so our standing rule is that we just enjoy and leave. This time, however, I totally caved. All three kids wanted a small stuffed animal and they had been so good I said yes. Rachel got a leopard (her favorite), Andrew an elephant (no surprise there), and Cara got a cute little monkey whom she named “Monkey Socks”. They’ve played with them non-stop since then, so I’m thinking it was a good purchase.

We got back around 4:30pm and I sat down to relax for a minute, and the kids ran over to play with the neighbor’s daughter until dinner.

Most RV parks will receieve UPS or FedEx packages for you. Since we’ve been here for almost 2 weeks, we Amazon Primed everything we’ve been waiting to order. We had quite a few packages arrive, one which was Cara’s new ride a long bike. Sam and I spent some time putting it together and then we had Cara test it out. Success!

Dinner time and I was feeling lazy, so we went to Costco to get shopping done and eat. We all got Polish dogs and drinks for a grand total of $8.10. I love Costco. Getting home and fitting everything in the fridge and freezer is puzzle, but Sam can usually fit it all in.

Bedtime! The kids brush their teeth and get their pajamas on…

…and then we all pile on the bed to read scriptures.

We put Cara to bed first around 7:30pm (most nights) and then we read with the other two until their bed time around 8:30pm. Sam and Rachel are currently reading Fablehaven, and Andrew & I just started a new Secrets of Droon book.

After the kids are in bed, Sam and I typically stay up until about 10pm working. I’ll blog, edit photos, or plan our itenirary. Sam will try and squeeze in some more work, blog, or currently he’s working on taxes. Once or twice a week, we’ll quit early, snuggle in bed with the laptop and watch one of our favorite shows on Hulu. Current favorites are White Collar (although I’m pretty sure the season just ended) and Castle. Since we have to pay for internet by the amount we use we’ll occasionally watch a DVD while we work instead.