If you're one of the people who knows me in person, you've probably heard me complaining that my phone is evil. At this point, the battery, from a full charge, has about 20-30 minutes of talk time in it before it disconnects my call. And if you know me very well, you can understand that this is unacceptable :-) It takes me 20 minutes just to warm ( Read more... )

It's been my goal ever since I was a kid to visit all 50 states. I'm at 31 right now, and have been stuck there ever since January of 2005. You don't travel too much with a kiddo :-) Well, at least not if you don't have a lot of money. Anyway, when I was filling this out it took me FOREVER to remember them all ... I knew it was 31, but got stuck at ( Read more... )

Last fall, a bunch of friends and I were kind of all dreaming about renting a vacation home this February for a weekend or so. Just a fun get-together where everybody meets in a central-type location. But even at the time, the sane part of me knew it wasn't really going to happen. I am delighted to learn though, that one of those friends really IS ( Read more... )

The last time I was in San Diego, I was 11 years old and I was visiting some cousins I didn't know that well. My grandmother paid to fly me there (my first flight alone!) and my cousins met me at the gate. I remember being scared that I wouldn't know who they were, but thankfully they saw me first. I must have looked pretty scared ( Read more... )

When my husband and I were young and carefree, we dreamed of all sorts of really creative ways to make money. We had a cousin who lived in Alaska for the summer and worked in a cannery, which was kind of lame, but she earned a lot and was able to see Alaska - room and board paid. Another friend of mine worked at Yellowstone in the same type of deal ( Read more... )

I am so thankful that we are back home in Washington and won't have to do any traveling over the holidays. But I know so many people who live far from their friends and families who will be flying home for short amounts of time this season. And I know even more who wish they could go visit for the holidays, but just can't afford it. One of the best ( Read more... )

This gorgeous lodge is calling to me in a big, big way. I don't know how we are ever going to afford a real vacation, but my step-mom said something to me the other day that really stuck out. She said, "You guys are really great about coming to visit family all the time, but what about a vacation for YOU? You need some down time for you to rest and ( Read more... )

I realize now that we probably paid too much for our plane tickets when we went to Reno. I knew there were lots of places to get discounted tickets, but didn't really know what was a good deal. I just went to a few different sites and booked the lowest price. But now that I've seen the cheap airfares on this Web site, I'm hitting my head on my desk ( Read more... )

Counting our blessings up to 100I don’t know what I was expecting when our family took a trip to Auburn, Calif., for my great-grandmother’s 100th birthday. Perhaps I thought we’d make an appearance but not stay long. For one thing, I was very concerned about 20-month-old Benjamin trashing her assisted living apartment ( Read more... )

My mom came to visit yesterday, and though we tried to think of other things to do, we eventually decided to go to the ocean and then have yummy Ocean Shores Chinese food. This is basically what we do whenever anyone comes to visit, including Jessi, who is coming tomorrow and we had already made plans to do this, but my mom didn't really want to do ( Read more... )