my journey, destination unknown
On a rainy, carless Sunday in Brooklyn, the girls and I sat eating a bagel discussing out choices of what to do. I handed our travel book Lonely Planet NYC to Camille to see what she might come up with. A few of her selections were not open on a Sunday, but one was open…
Yesterday, we headed into Blue Ridge for the Arts in the Park Festival. I remembered to bring our soda mug for $1 refills. The girls enjoy looking at the art, but Chloe especially liked looking at all the DOGS! Big ones, little ones, all of them. I got a new broom. If I have to…
From our train trip to NYC earlier this month:
My first trip to Paris with kids, I had not done my homework. My eldest was about a year and a half, and I hopped in a taxi from the airport with her. No car seat. The peripherique in a taxi with a toddler and no car seat? Never, ever again. Since that time, despite…
A few weeks ago, we were fortunate enough to travel to Latvia, Spain, Germany, France, and Luxembourg … thanks to the third annual European Union Open House Day. We started out one block from our apartment, at the EU Delegation offices. I had always wanted to go inside, and was happy for the chance! A…
As I’ve mentioned previously, I love to get the kids ready for a trip by helping them discover the wonder of it via books, music and movies. We will be spending a few weeks in France in July — a week in Paris and a week in Nice. While both girls have been to Paris…
By the time Camille was “this many,” she knew her impressionists. She could tell a van Gogh from a Monet. She had been to Giverny and stood on Monet’s bridge. Chloe suffers from second child syndrome. We have not exposed her nearly enough to our favorite art, poor thing. A couple of weeks ago when…
Earlier this month, we were in Brooklyn for a weekend. On Monday, we checked out of our hotel and (finally!?!) found a good bagel place. The weather was grey and rainy, so we really were not in the mood to explore places by foot outdoors, especially while carrying all our conference swag, our clothes and…
One thing that I love to do before a trip is to try to prepare myself and the kids for the place we are heading, especially when it is a new place for us to go. I get books, movies and music that relate to the place in some way. For movies, I look for…
A couple of months ago, I had the irresistible urge to get to the ocean. This seems to happen every year in the winter. I must get to a place where I can see the sun rise over the horizon, hear the waves and feel the sand. It doesn’t matter if the ocean temperature is…
I woke up early on Sunday and tried to catch up on all the videos and photos I had taken on Saturday. But by 11am, the kids were still asleep and I was more than ready to get out of the hotel and do something. Unfortunately, the drizzle turned to rain…we found breakfast (the girls…
For the third year in a row (2007 and 2008), we headed to Brooklyn to the gathering of the “kindie” music scene, now called now called kindiefest. What fun it was to see so many of our favorite musicians and our online friends all gathered in one spot! The girls got the chance to participate…
Fort Mountain was our address this weekend. The “Trading Post” had wifi, but in the so-called “cottages” I could barely squeak an Edge connection on my phone. More on our weekend later this week…. As we were leaving, my parents pulled up to the cottage with a plan. Not quite fully formed, but a plan….
Okay, I’m no DC local. And I have not seen nearly all that DC has to offer. But I have found a blog called, obviously enough, DC Like A Local. Not only have I agreed with a lot of the advice provided, but I have also found useful tidbits of information from the posts. Things…
Besides going to the White House Easter Egg Roll and taking the bus to Vienna to see a kids’ show (more on that coming soon), we’ve also taken in a few more of the sites of DC. I’m in the midst of a documentation release and the weather has been not so nice, so we…
Not long after the sun rose, we started down Pennsylvania Ave towards the White House, stopping for coffee and muffins along the way. We joined the throngs of families and headed towards the entrance gate and security check. It looked exactly like entering the Austin City Limits Festival, except that we had to go through…
On Tuesday, after we dropped Jim and Marty off at the airport, Barbara, the girls and I headed off to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. While the wildflowers weren’t as numerous as I remembered in the past, it was such a nice place to be! We wandered around the gardens, then the woods and…
On Sunday, we woke early and headed down to Austin. Barbara, Phil, Jim and Marty were planning to walk, Suze and Luis to run, the girls and I to drink coffee and cheer them all on. (In the end, Jim chose to run.) It was FREEZING early, so as the race started, I ended with…
On Saturday, the girls and I got up early and headed to the airport in the rain for our 8:40 flight. The weather was bad, but not bad enough to delay the flight. The plane was tiny, so Camille had to sit in the row ahead of Chloe and me. There was a medical emergency…