As I looked at our smashed-up van, and our hungry, scared, needing-to-pee kids, and my frustrated husband, and the anxious woman who had hit us, and the kind police officer who joined us at the scene, I prayed that I would be able to take my own advice.

Forty-eight hours is not a lot of time to spend in New York City. It feels like even less when it’s dumping rain for half of those hours. And it feels like even less when you’re running from place to place with a toddler in tow, and that toddler has his own ideas about the […]

We almost didn’t include Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine in our travels. Did I just cause you to spill your maple syrup in astonishment? To choke on that piece of lobster you’re eating?

Back in February, Todd and I traveled to Cancun, Mexico for a vacation with two of our closest friends, Nate and Erin. That trip boasted many a lively conversation, but perhaps one of the liveliest had to do with the topic of personal mission statements. Why such a conversation should become heated may seem strange, […]

Unlike our jaunt into Chicago, where we had a fairly clear sense of where we wanted to go, what we wanted to see, and why it was significant, we were pretty much flying by the seats of our pants when we began to venture into the Northeast region of this beautiful country.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” said the very astute Robert Frost in his poem Mending Wall. I first heard that poem when I was a kid living in Illinois, and I shrugged it off both because I was young and because I lived in a place that didn’t systematically erect walls between neighbors, […]

“Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre, but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet’s dream, silent as a city of the dead.” (quoted in The Devil in the White City) Chicago is a really cool city. The architecture and the landscaping are beautiful, […]

Have you ever heard somebody say that they were planning a family vacation to Kansas City, MO? Or that it’s on their top-five list of places they want to see? Probably not, but I’m telling you, that’s crazy. That city is full of history, beauty, and culture, and if you’ve never dreamed of visiting it, […]

I mentioned in my last post that we are doing a pretty good job of beating up our RV. As if to prove my point, the very next day we sprang a leak in our bathroom behind the toilet. The leak was coming from the fresh water line (THANKFULLY) but that made it no less of a nuisance. It was as if the Winnebago (whom our friend Chad dubbed the Watson Winnie) knew that I had written about it and then sprang a leak just for spite. Watson Winnie, I’m sorry. We love you. Please stop being mean to us.

RV’s are not hardy vehicles. At least, the insides of an RV are not hardy. In the short time we’ve owned ours, the front a/c has not worked properly, the water tank leaks somewhere but no one can find where, an air vent cover has popped off, the toilet paper holder has come off the […]