Category Archives: Memes

Time Travel Tuesday: Wedding Edition

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I forgot about Time Travel Tuesday this week until I saw someone’s post on their blog! I guess thinking and planning around the holiday this week threw me off.

My Life as Annie hosts Time Travel Tuesday in which we look back at some time in our lives in relation to the topic of the week. This week the topic is our wedding.

My husband and I were still in college when we got married. I had one semester left — only 3 classes actually needed to graduate (it took me five years to complete a four year course 😳 ) and he had two. Actually his adviser advised us to marry — he told my husband his grades were dropping because he was dating too much and he needed to go ahead and get married. And we thought, well, ok then! 😀 (Interestingly, his grades did improve afterward!)

We got married in December. In all my wedding dreams, I had never wanted a Christmas wedding — but I had a choice between that December or the following August, so I took that December! I am one of those weird people who doesn’t like red, so we chose blue and silver for our colors.

I hadn’t been to that many weddings — there is so much I would do differently now. But the point is to join a man and wife, and we did accomplish that. 🙂

We got engaged in May just before saying good-bye from college in SC for the summer, then he went home to Idaho and I went home to Texas. I worked on wedding details through the summer, and we conferred on the phone a lot, then he came to Texas at the end of the summer to meet my family and finalize plans before we both left to go back to SC for school. We had never heard about wedding coordinators then (I am so glad someone invented them!), so we were planning everything ourselves. A lady in our church did a wonderful job with wedding cakes, so we asked her to do ours, and asked her for a recommendation for photographers. We each just had one attendant since most of our friends were from school and couldn’t come. My maid of honor’s mother made her dress in a blue floral fabric I loved — sort of like a jacquard, but not quite (I wish I had kept a swatch of the fabric!) The best man and ushers were in gray tuxes, and in looking back, I probably should have had the guys in blue and the maid of honor in a silvery fabric, because it ended up looking like the colors were blue and gray — which people had fun with since I’m from the south and he’s from the north (northwest, really, but that’s north enough for some people. 🙂 ) But we did have silver ribbons in the flowers and such.

I don’t remember whether we got a recommendation for the florist or just found someone in the phone book, but when Jim came, we made a trip to the florist I had picked out. We walked in that August day and told them we were planning a December wedding — and they promptly told us December was too busy and good luck finding a florist who would do a wedding in December! I was in tears, and as we drove home, Jim saw another florist shop. He parked the car and went in and asked if they would do a December wedding — and they said sure!

We had our first serious disagreement as a couple over wedding plans. 🙂 I had only been to weddings in my church, and they were all pretty much done a certain way. One element that was always included was that the bridal couple knelt on a little prayer bench during a part of the ceremony, and the pastor prayed for them. My husband-to-be had never been to our church, much less to a wedding there, and, not knowing that this was “always” done, said he didn’t want to kneel because his shoes weren’t in the best shape and he couldn’t afford to get new ones and he didn’t want to display the old soles of his old shoes to the congregation while he was kneeling. Of course, in my mind, we just couldn’t not kneel! It sounds so silly now — it would have been fine to stand or to angle the bench somehow so the soles of his shoes weren’t in people’s faces. Nice guy that he is, my husband conceded. I don’t remember if he got new shoes or just tried to spiff up his old ones.

So we had everything pretty much set before heading off for fall semester. I was actually student teaching that semester, and my supervisor was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep my mind on it while planning for a wedding, but I assured her everything was all planned, and everything was fine. I can’t imagine doing that now — but I was young then. 🙂

The semester finally ended and we headed back to Texas with a few days to spare before the wedding. We couldn’t afford a nice restaurant for the rehearsal dinner, so Jim and I made dinner and served it at the church fellowship hall. My pastor’s wife set some very nice tables for it. Everything was going fine until the night before the wedding — our best man was driving by himself from Idaho to Texas and wasn’t there in time for the rehearsal. Jim asked the father of my maid of honor (from the C family that I have mentioned a couple of times before) to stand in if the best man didn’t make it in time, and he agreed to. But thankfully the best man arrived in the wee hours of the morning bearing gifts from Idaho. Jim’s parents didn’t come. They didn’t have any problems with our getting married, but it was a combination of being too close to Christmas and too much out of their comfort zone, I think. They are very, very private people — very open with their family and circle of friends, but not at all prone to travel new places and meet new people. I will admit that was a sore spot for a long time. Even though I understood on one hand, on the other I thought — for one Christmas out of all the Christmases of your lives you couldn’t do something a little different? And you couldn’t extend yourself for your youngest son? But — what can you do? You can’t be bitter and hold it against them ever after, so we just accepted it and moved on.

Every wedding has its problems. I think it was the morning of the rehearsal that the pianist called and said there was one piece in the prelude that she couldn’t master and asked if she could leave it out. That was fine. Then the wedding day morning one of the soloists called and was very sick. I called the pastor, and he was familiar enough with the song that he could sing it. He was already singing a duet with another lady. Since we had so many unsaved loved ones, we had asked him to take a little extra time to just go over the picture in Scripture (Eph. 5:31-32) of a husband and wife representing Christ and the church and the invitation in Scripture to become a part of the bride of Christ. He did have that emphasis anyway, but we just wanted it maybe extended or explained a little more for those unfamiliar with it. He teased my husband when he and his best man were getting ready by saying, “I’m performing a wedding, preaching a message, singing a duet and a solo. What do you have to be nervous about?” 🙂

The only problem during the wedding itself was that just before I was to start down the aisle, the greenery around an archway came loose and in what seemed like slow motion began unwinding itself around the arch and fell. A dear lady near the front, the other half of the duet, stepped up and tucked it back in.

One problem we didn’t discover til afterward — in many of the pictures my eyes were closed!

Other than that, everything went fine!

Here’s the wedding party. I was trying to go for an old-fashioned southern look — my maid of honor and I both had hoop skirts on. But later on I felt my dress and veil looked more Spanish than southern! We had bought this dress but I probably should have gone with the pattern for the bridesmaid dress and had it made.

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Here’s one of the many with my eyes closed. 🙄 Isn’t that ridiculous?! I guess you could day I was looking blissful. I wasn’t terribly happy with the photography in general, but not much can be done after the fact. I am so glad for digital cameras these days! You’ll notice I didn’t do my hair — my hair doesn’t “do.”

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One of the songs we used was “O Perfect Love,” an older song not heard much these days, but I came across it in a hymn book and just loved the words. I think someone sang this on the kneeling-on-the-bench part of the ceremony. 🙂 The other song we used combined parts of “Nearer, Still Nearer” and “The Sands of Time.” I had heard that at another wedding and thought it was beautiful. Both songs have the same meter and work well with the tune of either. I am trying to remember which tune we used — and I am not sure (this was over 27 years ago!) I think the one to “Nearer, Still Nearer.” I can’t remember which of the verses we used — the first for sure, an I think the second of “Nearer” and these couple from “Sands”:

Nearer, still nearer, close to Thy heart,
Draw us, our Savior—so precious Thou art!
Fold us, oh, fold us close to Thy breast.
Shelter us safe in that “Haven of Rest”;
Shelter us safe in that “Haven of Rest.”

Nearer, still nearer, nothing we bring,
Naught as an offering to Jesus, our King;
Only our sinful, now contrite hearts.
Grant us the cleansing Thy blood doth impart.
Grant us the cleansing Thy blood doth impart.

O I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved’s mine!
He brings a poor vile sinner into His “house of wine.”
I stand upon His merit—I know no other stand,
Not even where glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.

The Bride eyes not her garment, but her dear Bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory but on my King of grace.
Not at the crown He giveth but on His pierced hand;
The Lamb is all the glory of Immanuel’s land.

Five things meme

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I saw this meme on several blogs a few weeks ago, but didn’t have time to do it then.

What were you doing 10 years ago?
June 1997: We were living in GA, finishing up the 3rd of our 4 years there and had also recently completed the 3rd of our 4 years of homeschooling.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
June 2007: About what I am doing now –enjoying the summer. I hadn’t started blogging yet, but I think I was reading others’ blogs at that time. (What ever did I do with myself before blogging? 🙂 )

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. chocolate chip cookies
2. popcorn
3. chips
4. M&Ms
5. Swiss cake rolls

Five songs that you know all the lyrics of:
1. Amazing Grace
2. How Great Thou Art
3. This Old Man
4. Honey
5. The Star of the County Down

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. Pay off all our debts.
2. Buy a more adequate house
3. Give to the church (that should be listed first, shouldn’t it?)
4. Set up college funds for the kids
5. Find a special cause or person to give to

Five bad habits:
1. Eating too much
2. Eating the wrong things
3. Staying up too late
4. Not using my time in the best ways
5. Not exercising

Five things you like doing: (Not in any order of importance)
1. Reading
2. Blogging
3. Watching good TV shows or videos
4. Playing games as a family
5. Visiting with friends

Five things you would never wear again:
1. Swimsuits in public
2. Mini-skirts
3. Short shorts
4. Headbands. I wish I could, but they just roll off my head.
5. Can’t think of anything else. There are plenty of things I wouldn’t wear but most of them are not things I used to wear. Most of the changes in what I would wear come from becoming a Christian and having a better understanding of modesty.

Five favorite toys:
1. The computer
2. My camera
3. The Wii
4. For my kids when they were little: Legos and
5. Little Tykes riding toys (we had the red car with the yellow top and the green tractor)

I won’t tag anyone since I can’t remember who all has done this, but feel free to do this one, too, and let me know if you do so I can come and read your answers.

Wordless Wednesday

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See more Wordless Wednesday entires at the WW Hub or 5 Minutes for Mom.

(There is an explanation of this in the first comment. 🙂 )

Works-For-Me Wednesday: Verifying Founding Fathers’ Quotes

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With next Wednesday being Independence Day, many of us will likely be posting quotes from the Founding Fathers. Just after publishing several such quotes in our ladies’ ministry newsletter a few years ago, I discovered to my chagrin that many of them had no historical verification. There is a great article called Unconfirmed Quotations at the Wallbuilders site which discusses several of those quotes. Hopefully this will save some of you the embarrassment I suffered. 🙂

Incidentally, Wallbuilders, “an organization dedicated to presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built,” has a number of great articles here.

Click on the WFMW graphic above to visit Shannon’s site for a wealth of great tips.

Time Travel Tuesday: Salvation Edition

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My Life as Annie hosts Time Travel Tuesday in which we look back at some time in our lives in relation to the topic of the week. Annie asks, ”
This week I decided we should revisit our time of salvation, or a special time in your spiritual life. Was there a moment when you became a Christian, or did it take a while? Can you remember that special time in your life?”

My testimony was one of the first posts on my blog, and when I figured out how to make “pages” (listed across the top of my blog), I made a page for that there so that people who visited could easily see it and click on it if they wanted to, because one of my desires in making a blog was to be a witness to people. I thought about writing a shorter version here, but since I thought it through carefully and wrote it out there, if you don’t mind, I am going to refer you there: here’s the link.

The Favorite Places to Eat Out Meme

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Elle at A Complete Thought tagged me for this meme based on eating out — one of my favorite things to do! Thanks for thinking of me, Elle!

The instructions are:

1. Link to name of person that tagged you.
2. Include state and country you live in.
3. List top 5 favorite local restaurants.
4. Tag 5 other people and let them know they’ve been tagged.

I am in South Carolina of the USA.

It helped me to think of this in terms of favorite types of restaurants, so I’ll do it that way.

1. Favorite fast food place: Wendy’s. Love their singles and fries! I think Fuddruckers probably has the all-time best burgers, but only a couple of us like them, and they don’t have a drive-through. 🙂 Wendy’s is probably where we go for hamburgers most often.

2. Favorite Mexican food place: Corona’s. Love their chicken chimichangas! I did look up the recipe for those once — but when I can get them so expertly done, why would I go to all the trouble? 🙂

3. Favorite all-American restaurant with a little shop: Cracker Barrel. I tend to order the same favorite things at particular restaurants, but for a while there a few of us were going to Cracker Barrel for lunch pretty often, so I tried several different things there. Love the chicken and dumplings, meatloaf, and sugar-cured ham, and in the fall they often have a baked chicken with gravy and dressing entree that I am nearly drooling just thinking of. Sadly, my family doesn’t like to go there much and my lunch buddies are teaching, so I haven’t been there in ages. It is decorated with a lot of antique-looking signs and pictures and objects and has a fun little shop connected to it.

4. Favorite Australian restaurant: Outback. Honestly, I don’t like the atmosphere — it’s too noisy and dark. But I love the Drover’s Platter — ribs and chicken with a baked potato and side salad. And because I can’t eat all of that at one sitting, there is enough for lunch the next day. It’s pretty expensive, though, even with getting two meals out of it per person, so we only go once, maybe twice a year, usually for someone’s birthday or our anniversary.

5. Favorite “nice” restaurant and steak place: Steak and Ale. We actually don’t eat steak a whole lot, but I like theirs. I like to go there for anniversaries. This was the first “nice” restaurant that I ever went to on a date, and I remember when the waiter came to our table and told us his name was Vincent and he would be taking care of us tonight — well, it sounds silly now because I’ve been to many restaurants where the waiters do that — but I was just so impressed! That one also definitely had more of an old English feel to it.

Now that I am thinking types of restaurants, I am also thinking of favorite place to go for breakfast, favorite Italian place, etc. — but I’d better stop since I am at five.

You’ll notice that these are mostly chains (at least in the southeast) and not local, unique restaurants. One reason for that is that I don’t want to reveal my city or name a place that could be g**gled and traced to my city — I don’t think anyone would go to the trouble to stalk me, but I just want to play safe. And we tend to go more for the tried and true rather than the local places — we should try those out a little more. But I’m afraid I haven’t liked some of the local indigenous places. There is one in particular that is only in our city that’s pretty famous — and I was so disappointed in it when we tried it! My husband and I even discussed whether it was an “emperor’s new clothes” type of thing, where everyone was saying how great it was while secretly they all thought it was awful. 🙂 But I don’t think so — I think we’re just out of the loop on that one. There is another little place that is an old house converted into a restaurant. It’s reservation-only because it is not very big and it’s very popular. The meal is served buffet-style and is always great. My husband has taken me there for an anniversary or birthday lunch a couple of times and I’ve gone with my friend Carol a few times. Love it!

Now I am supposed to tag five people. But I have seen this around a lot and I can’t remember who has and hasn’t done it. So if you’d like to, consider yourself tagged and let me know in the comments, or let me know in the comments what your favorite restaurants are.

Works-For-Me Wednesday: Gleaning ideas for banquet, shower, and party themes

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wfmwheader_4.jpg For 14 years I went to a church that had an amazing group of people who coordinated the social functions of the church — banquets, father-son outings, church picnics, etc. At any kind of banquet (they had three annually: a sweetheart banquet in February, later changed into a “Midwinter Banquet” to be more inclusive of everyone in the church rather than just those in relationships; a missions banquet in the fall, and a ladies’ banquet in the spring) they had beautiful and imaginative ways of working a theme out into the decorations and favors. It didn’t occur to me until my last few years there to start a file to record some of these ideas for future use. I made file folders for the different types of banquets and a couple more for baby and wedding showers, then I would include a copy of the program and maybe even a page of notes of some of the details. In the shower files I’d include a particularly cute invitation or ideas about games or centerpieces, etc.

Several years later I found myself the coordinator of the ladies’ group at church, and one of our functions is the annual ladies’ luncheon (used to be mother/daughter banquet, but once again, we wanted to make it more inclusive). I haven’t copied any of the ideas verbatim — in fact, I think I have only used one variation of one of the themes there — but sometimes it is inspirational just to flip through that folder. The memory of seeing a theme creatively worked out through the details of a banquet spurs more creativity in applying the process to different themes.

You could even expand this to include a file for different types of party ideas. We’ve had the generic birthday parties at the putt-putt place and simple ones with just cake and ice cream and presents, but a few times we’ve had themed parties — a train one, a Lego one, an army one, and a detective one — that were a lot of fun. The Family Fun magazine web site has tons of ideas for themed parties. We found a few ideas for the detective party just by searching on the internet, and what we found plus a little thought led to more ideas.

I’m starting a Word document to jot down other theme ideas as they come to mind to possibly be worked out later.

(An updated P.S.: You can also find a wealth of ideas for banquets/luncheons at the Creative Ladies Ministry site, a book called Let’s Plan a Party from Regular Baptist Press, and the Sweet Monday ministry for ladies’ meetings).

For more works-for-me tips, visit Shannon’s place at Rocks In My Dryer.

Time Travel Tuesday: Cooking Experiences

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My Life as Annie hosts Time Travel Tuesday in which we look back at some time in our lives in relation to the topic of the week. Last week I suggested our first cooking experiences might be a fun topic, and Annie graciously decided to use that idea for this week’s theme. Thanks, Annie!

I don’t remember exactly what my first cooking experiences were — I think I received a Girl Scouts cooking badge. But the first thing I remember cooking was fried chicken when I was maybe 11 or 12 or so. I must have had some experience with it before this — I can’t imagine starting out with this on my own! But for some reason I was cooking fried chicken with a friend — and we were so afraid of the hot oil that we’d drop the chicken in and then run to the back door. That sounds like a disaster in the making, doesn’t it? But somehow we avoided setting the house on fire or burning ourselves. I also remember making oatmeal cookies with a friend — it called for brown sugar and we didn’t have any, so we just used regular white sugar (I didn’t know then about the emergency substitution section in most cookbooks). The cookies all ran together — it looked something like those pizza-pan sized cookies you can get at the Chocolate Chip Cookie Factory, only they didn’t have those then, so we couldn’t claim we were imitating them. 🙂 They tasted good — they just didn’t hold a cookie shape.

I also remember now being younger than this and roasting a hot dog over the flame of a gas stove with a fork.

By the time I got married, I had been cooking for my family of 8 for a while — I would usually at least get dinner started before my mom came home from work — so having to take on meal preparation wasn’t that big a leap for me. I do remember when we were dating and both in the dorms, we didn’t have access to ovens, so a popular thing to make for one’s boyfriend was one of those boxed cheesecake mixes. Often at dinnertime you’d see a girl going to meet her guy with a cheesecake she’d made, and I do remember making those for Jim on occasion. I don’t remember what the first meal was that I cooked for Jim, but I remember a couple of early cooking disasters. Gravy was something that took me years to learn. I do fine with it now — though we pretty much only have home-made gravy when we have turkey. But my first attempts were awful. I remember one time getting my electric hand-held mixer out and “beating” the gravy right in the pan to try to smooth it out. Another time, the texture was ok, but it was really, really light. I thought I had read somewhere that red plus green made brown, so I put a few drops of red and green food coloring in. It turned very green, and nothing I tried made it look a normal color. For some reason, instead of dissolving in tears I started laughing hysterically, then Jim came in to see what was going on. I couldn’t make myself eat it — the color was just too awful. But we joked about green gravy for years, and for years I also kept a jar of ready-made gravy in the cabinet “just in case” mine didn’t turn out.

Another time I was making popcorn the old fashioned way in a saucepan with some oil in it (this was before the days of microwave popcorn. They had then these big popcorn poppers usually with a yellow plastic domed lid — but we didn’t have one). I had a little can of popcorn that I thought was enough for one batch. I was talking with Jim while I made it, and he saw me dump the whole little can in and knew it was too much, but just sat back to watch what happened. Blissfully unaware, I kept talking and shaking the pan back and forth — when suddenly popcorn erupted over the sides of the pan and spilled everywhere. I don’t remember exactly how I reacted — I’ll have to ask him — I think I just said “Oh! Oh!” He did help me clean it up, after he stopped laughing at me. 😀

Updated: I am adding this in after my initial post because I just remembered it. 🙂 Once in our early married years, when I was trying to be the frugal Mrs. Housewife, I discovered rutabaga was only 19 cents a pound. I had never made or even seen it before. But I got some and came home and looked in my cookbooks to see how to make it. There was a recipe to include it in mashed potatoes and another recipe with apples. So I made the mashed potatoes — and the rutabagas turned them kind of an orange color, but they tasted ok. The apple dish was “ok” but not spectacular. When my husband came home, he noticed the mashed potatoes were off-color, but he was trying to be polite and not say anything, while I was anxiously awaiting his comments. Finally I asked him how he liked the potatoes. He cautiously said, “What’s different about them?” I told him about the rutabagas — and he was thoroughly grossed out. That’s one of the few things that he just thoroughly cannot stand. When I mentioned that the apple dish I had made for dessert had rutabagas, too, he said, “Oh, no, not the apples, too!” So — no more rutabagas for this household, no matter how cheap they are. 🙂

You can read more “time travels” back to early cooking experiences at Annie’s today. Feel free to share yours, too, and add the link in there!

Father’s Day Quotes

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Father's Day Quotes


1. To be popular at home is a great achievement. The man who is loved by the house cat, by the dog, by the neighbor’s children, and by his own wife, is a great man, even if he has never had his name in Who’s Who. ~ Thomas Dreier

2. “A man’s children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season.” ~Author Unknown

3. “A father is a guy who has snapshots in his wallet where his money used to be.” ~ Author Unknown

4. “None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of SUCH a Father who has not his equal in this world-so great, so good, so faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don’t be discouraged, for to be really in everything like him none of you, I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some points, and you will have acquired a great deal.”
~ Victoria, Queen of England

5. “It is a wise father that knows his own child.” ~ William Shakespeare

6. He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father’s care. ~ William Penn

7. A father is someone you look up to, no matter how tall you grow.

8. Fathers are people who give their daughters away to other men who aren’t nearly good enough so they can have grandchildren who are smarter than any body’s.

9. The father will be too small or too busy to interest the big boy if he counts himself too big or too busy to be interested in the little boy. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

10. “By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder, infinitely prouder, to be a father.” ~ General Douglas MacArthur

11.“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” George Herbert

12. By the time a man realizes that his father was usually right, he has a son who thinks he’s usually wrong.

13. If you want your child to talk to you when he is 15, listen to him when he is 5.

 

Time Travel Tuesday: Vacation Memories

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The topic for this week’s Time Travel Tuesday, created and hosted by My Life as Annie, is “Vacation Memories.” Annie asks:

We are traveling back (in our minds) to vacations… either a favorite one, or most memorable.
Do you have any special vacation memories? Where did you go? Did you camp out, or stay in a hotel?

Some of you who read here regularly will have seen a little of this in a childhood meme a few weeks ago.

I don’t remember that we actually went on vacations except to visit relatives. I don’t remember going to amusements parks as a family: my first memory of a hotel was during my high school senior trip.

When we did visit relatives, we usually went to see my father’s mother and brother who lived in LA (we lived “next door” in TX). The thing I loved about that particular uncle was that, of his 5 kids, 3 were girls close to my age and all of our birthday were in August. One was a year older than me, one was the same age I was, and the other was a year younger. I remember once we celebrated all of our birthdays at once with a big party complete with relay games. I think that was the first time I ever had a big party like that.

My father’s mother, affectionately nicknamed Nannie, had children in TX, LA, and AL and she would drive around to visit them all. We used to call her the Galloping Grandma. 🙂 There were a few times she took me with her, and I enjoyed traveling with her.

Other than that, if we went anywhere it was to the beach. I grew up in Corpus Christi, TX, and we made multitudes of excursions to Padre Island. Camp-outs, cookouts, birthday parties — a lot of that kind of thing happened there, besides just regular Saturdays at the beach. We moved from there when I was 13, and I had forgotten how much I missed it until we want back for a family reunion when I was in my early 30s.

Since being married and having kids, one of my favorite vacations was to Charleston, SC. Our kids’ Christian school’s Easter break was a different week than the public schools’ spring break (I wish it was like that ever year!!), so we didn’t encounter all kinds of other families on break. Our pastor used to live in Charleston, so we asked him about places to see and stay. He told us about a hotel right on one of the beaches. It was a little more expensive but oh-so-worth it to be able to go down to the beach any time (and going to sleep with the sound of the surf was nice). We do have modesty concerns and don’t want to go to beaches with the kinds of things people wear — especially with 3 boys — so having that area of beach almost to ourselves for a few days was wonderful. Plus we went on one of the carriage tours (only marred by someone behind us chatting on her cell phone so we couldn’t always hear the guide clearly. Grr!) and visited the Yorktown and went on a harbor tour. It was one of the loveliest vacations ever.

Another time we went down to Clearwater, FL, because my oldest son was interested in Clearwater Christian College, and we took an extra day and went to Sea World. I just loved that, especially the dolphin show.

My husband has often said that all he remembers about family vacations as a child is driving and driving and driving and then having to sit around and listen to adults talk. 🙂 Though that is a part of vacations (and we do want the kids to value getting to know their relatives and not just think vacations are all about their entertainment), we have tried to have a few family excursions like the ones to Charleston or taken an extra day here and there just to do something as a family. Even when we have gone to visit relatives, we’ve tried to take a day or afternoon to see some sights. We used to camp a lot when the two older boys were younger.

Whatever we do, it is just nice to break from routine and spend some time together apart from the usual distractions and duties.