Daily Walks

Last year, one of the ladies that I'm friends with at my son's school suggested that we go for a walk before the kids get out of school to keep up our steps for the day and not be completely lazy. We were arriving at the school about a half hour before school ended anyway. (If you get there early, you get a good parking spot which means you get our of there early. Otherwise, it takes 20 minutes to get home instead of 5.) Then, after a couple of months, we decided to start walking in the morning as well, after we dropped the kids off at school. So here we are, back at school, and it's time to start walking again. I love these short little walks we take. It's a time to catch up and talk about everything going on in our lives. It's a time to talk to another adult (because sometimes I don't get much of that). And it's a time to get a little bit of exercise into my day. We probably only walk about 1.2 miles every day, but that's an extra 2500-3000 steps for me. And sometimes, especially if I'm working on a crochet project or typing something all day, that's about it for the steps I get that day. Just imagine if I chose to NOT go on these walks. I suppose the whole point of this post is to share with you that if my lazy butt can get up and walk a little each day, so can you! And that it's much easier when you've got a friend that will motivate you to keep moving. So just do it!

"What Am I?" Guessing Game

If you've read any of my recent posts, you'll know that we recently took a very long road trip. And in an effort to save some money, I made a bunch of things to keep my 7yo son entertained while we spent so many hours in the car. One of those things is a little game that I made called "What Am I?" I took some photos of things VERY close up. Some of these things are easy to tell what they are while others are much more difficult! Some of them he had a real tough time figuring out what it was so I gave him some hints. If you want to download the PDF, there is a link at the bottom. And no worries, I included an Answer Key!

Click here for a downloadable PDF of "What Am I?"

Scotland: Day 12: Traveling Home and Scotland Recap

We woke up VERY early so that we could catch our flight home. It was possibly one of the most exhausting days of my life, but I was so glad to be heading home to my son, husband, and dog.

Our flight back to the United States went very smooth. However, our second flight was delayed multiple times and I ended up getting home a couple hours later than expected after our 2 hour bus drive. But that's not what's important. What's important was that we got home safe. And we all had a fantastic time. I will remember these moments forever.

Now that I've told you all about my trip, let's recap.
Scotland: Day 1: Travel Day
Scotland: Day 2: Edinburgh
Scotland: Day 3: Edinburgh
Scotland: Day 4: Edinburgh
Scotland: Day 5: St. Andrews
Scotland: Day 6: Aberdeen
Scotland: Day 7: Inverness
Scotland: Day 8: Inverness
Scotland: Day 9: Inverness
Scotland: Day 10: Loch Ness
Scotland: Day 11: Glasgow
I hope that if you ever get the chance, you will enjoy Scotland as much as I did. It was amazing and I absolutely loved every second of it.

Scotland: Day 11: Glasgow

I know that the title of this post says Glasgow and the reason for that is because we woke up in Glasgow and we fell asleep in Glasgow. However, disappointing for all of us, we didn't actually spend any of our time in Glasgow. I wish I had some things to tell you about this city, but I don't.

So we started our day by driving to Stirling where we stopped at the Church of the Holy Rude. It has the largest pipe organ in all of Scotland. It truly is a beautiful church. Anyway, we practiced and then set of to explore. Stirling is a great little town! It has so many cute shops and coffee shops and pubs. You could easily walk a great distance. After an hour or so of exploring, we had our concert. It went pretty well.

After the concert, we got something to eat and then explored some more. When our bus finally arrived, we were ready to go. And we drove to St. Mark's Parish Church of Scotland in Stirling. We had practice again and then changed into our formal concert attire. We had our last concert of the trip, which was definitely our best. And then we drove for a little back towards Glasgow to get a late dinner. It was pretty good. I'm not sure why they had us eating at so many Italian restaurants on our tour of Scotland, though. Oh well. We all had a great time. We ended up getting back to our hotel very late where we all had to pack everything up because our wake-up call was coming in just a few hours.

Snack Necklaces

This is a fun little craft to do with your kids before a vacation (or anytime, really). We made 8 of them before we went on our huge long road trip. They turned out great! I wanted to make these as cheap as possible so we went to Dollar Tree where we found some stretchy string, a bag of fruit loops, and some pretzels! You could easily use any other snack item that has a hole in it like cheerios, gummy lifesavers, chocolate covered pretzels, mini cookies, chocolate cheerios, etc. or you could use a needle and thread and go through squishy foods like grapes, blueberries, dried pineapple, gummy bears, popcorn, etc. as well as your holed snacks. Any combination of these things would be delicious. Part of the reason I chose what I did was because I could find them at Dollar Tree, which is cheap, yes, but also because I didn't want to worry about melting chocolate or candy. Plus, we were using string and not a needle and thread. So anyway, here's how we did it:

First, gather all of your ingredients.
Then, cut a length of string that at minimum fits around your head.
Slide your snacks on the string.
And tie the ends together.

See? Easy! And fun for kids to make and then later, eat!

Scotland: Day 10: Loch Ness

On this day of our trip, we spent a lot of our day in the bus on the road. We drove from Inverness to Glasgow. And in case you don't know, that is about a 3 hour drive. However, we stopped a bunch of times to take pictures and stretch our legs.
We even stopped at the Loch Ness Visitors Center. It was very interesting. You travel from room to room to learn more about the legend and how it has been disproved. It was a little disappointing that it felt like they spent the entire time telling you about how the Loch Ness Monster isn't real. For those of us that just love the story of Nessie, we will forever live with the hope that she really does exist (I'm joking, mostly).
After our tour, we drove some more. We stopped a couple times to see the tallest mountain n Scotland (Ben Nevis) and a couple other good photo op areas.

When we finally reached Glasgow, it was kind of late. We went out to get some dinner and drinks. Perhaps it was because we'd had such fun in other cities, but Glasgow's nightlife just didn't meet our expectations. I'm disappointed that this was really our only time to judge the city. The next day we spent all of our time in a different town so we didn't get the chance to see all the cool things Glasgow had to offer us.

Bubble Painting

A couple months ago, I had tried the bubble painting technique on a piece of pottery I was working on. I thought it had turned out pretty good. Then, I thought, "I bet my son would enjoy doing this!" After all, what kid doesn't like to blow bubbles in their drink. And this time, you don't even have to tell them to stop!

This is very easy. It doesn't take a lot of prep work and kids have so much fun. So first, you need to put something under your work so that you don't make a huge mess. I used a box. Then, mix together some dish soap, paint, and water. I didn't meausure anything. You need water to thin out your mixture, but you don't want too much or the bubbles won't have enough color. I mixed it all together with a straw and then let my little guy start blowing into the cup. The bubbles started flowing out after a while and made a beautiful little mess onto our paper. We quickly cleaned everything out and then tried again with a different color. And that's how we made our bubble art! Amazing!