I am the Mama » Travel

Back to School

themama — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:06:33 +0000

No, not me. My oldest son. He’s in a year-round school so our short (but long enough!) summer break is quickly winding down. We didn’t do any of the fun things we planned on…no summer learning adventures this year. We did make it to the zoo a couple of times and he spent almost a week in Tennessee with my mom, brother, and sister-in-law. They did lots of fun things together that we just couldn’t afford to do with him ourselves. But no museum, no day trips to the beach, nothing fun like we did last year. I feel bad about this. It’s mostly my fault. The only days I feel up to doing things like this are Mondays and Fridays because of my class schedule. And every week, those 2 days pass without us doing anything. Partly because I’m a poor planner and partly because we’re just flat broke.

But next week (assuming the unemployment glitch gets straightened out and we get our money we’ve missed for the past 2 weeks) we are driving to the beach for the day. I will drag my lazy tail out of bed at o’darkthirty, make sandwiches, pack sunblock, and hit the road for a day in the sun. It will be our last hurrah before school starts again and our time together is lost to the demands of homework and extracurricular activities.

Now I’m just praying for sun and for that money to come through. This is my last chance for the summer, and I don’t want anything to mess it up!

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Fun Stuff Friday — The Aquarium

themama — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:41:12 +0000

So I mentioned the zoo last week for FSF (That’s Fun Stuff Friday!) and today I’m talking about something that you also have access to with the zoo membership…the 3 North Carolina Aquariums. One of our “Learning Adventure” days this summer was a mini-vacation that included a day at the beach with a friend of mine who goes all the way back to middle school days, then a trip to the aquarium at Fort Fisher and a ferry ride on the way home. This was a very inexpensive trip for us. We hung out at her parent’s beach house on the beach day, then drove down to Wilmington where we’d gotten a hotel room for $30 (gotta love priceline.com!), were admitted free to the aquarium with our NC Zoo Society card, and then paid $5 (I think, may be a bit higher or lower) for the ferry. It was a great trip and cost us very little out of pocket, even once we factored in gas.

The aquarium we went to was great. We got to see an albino alligator (beautiful animal!), turtles, ducks, fish and much, much more. It was a lot of fun for the boys, and mom and dad enjoyed it as well! It is a bit of a drive (the others are even farther away, but we hope to be able to afford some more mini-trips at some point to see them) so if you can turn it into a mini-vacation I highly suggest it. Nobody likes being stuck in the car with cranky kids for 6+ hours in a day!

Overall, I recommend them, especially if your family can be admitted at no charge!

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Wishful Wednesday — A Vacation!

themama — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:57:41 +0000

We’ve made 2 very quick day trips to the beach this summer. All three kids have loved every minute of the sand, surf, and sun. I wish we could take them on a longer trip. We have a long weekend coming up later this month…I’d give anything to have a hotel room (or small house…then we could make our meals and save money) right on the beach for that weekend. Sadly, like almost everything else, this is not in the budget. I suppose I should just be grateful that we could afford the little day trips and that we’re close enough to make them, but I’m sad that we can’t do more. I remember some great beach trips my family took when I was a kid and it makes me sad that we can’t leave our kids with memories like that this summer. Hopefully next summer is different!

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The Museum of Natural Sciences

themama — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:05:39 +0000

Since intersession is almost over and we’d done practically none of the educational things I’d had big dreams of doing, we got our butts in gear yesterday and headed to Raleigh for a day at the museum. We chose the Museum of Natural Sciences because it sounded the most interesting for a 6 year old. Admission is free, so except for the gas we burned on the trip and the $4 parking fee (oh, and the coffee I had to buy to stave off a caffeine headache) it was free family fun! We left Sanford after an early lunch at home and were able to see the entire museum and make it home for dinner.

I don’t have the energy to write a full review, but some of the highlights were:

The 5 whale skeletons. It gives you an amazing perspective of the true size of these animals!
A giant ground sloth skeleton. I never really thought much about them, but assumed they weren’t much bigger than a sloth you’d see today. So very wrong on this one! They were HUGE!
Various dinosaur bones and skeletons. My kids love dinosaurs, so they really enjoyed these.
The “Meet the Animals” show where they brought out real snakes for the kids to see and touch, as well as explaining why we shouldn’t be scared of them. (That didn’t stop me from nearly having a panic attack when he pulled out the first snake, though!)
Seeing many venomous and non-venomous snakes behind glass, so they’re a bit easier to identify out in the real world. The only venomous snake that’s common in Lee County is the copperhead, by the way. And now that I know what one looks like, maybe I won’t freak out if another benign snake gets in my house!
The giant *live* cockroaches. We frequently saw palmetto bugs (which is a nice name for giant, ugly roach) when we lived in SC and those things terrified me, but they’ve got nothing on the ones we saw yesterday!
The Discovery Room where the kids could play and touch everything. They really enjoyed that.
The Living Conservatory, which houses butterflies and other living things.

We thought it was a great little trip and both of the boys enjoyed it. I’m not sure they learned much, but it was a lot of fun and certainly more educational than sitting around and watching TV, which is what was the most likely thing to happen since it rained pretty much all day. Worth the drive, for sure!

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Chivalry IS dead.

themama — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:58:26 +0000

We had a nice holiday at home with our families (a trip that almost didn’t happen because I woke up sick Monday) but I am so glad to be home tonight…and to have a legitimate excuse to avoid traveling for the rest of the holidays. Though some people acted like I shot their dog when we tried to explain that I was going to be WAY too pregnant to travel home in December, a fact that I thought was pretty obvious by the fact that I’m *having a baby* less than a month after Christmas. This is NOT new information, people! But I digress…

Back to the intended topic…chivalry. Which is really just common courtesy as I see it, but apparently it no longer exists. On Tuesday I had a regularly scheduled doctor’s appointment to check on the progress of the baby and make sure I was OK to travel for the weekend. When we got there, there wasn’t a single seat available in the waiting room. I’d never seen it so packed. At least one-third were occupied by men who were accompanying their partners. Kudos to them for making the effort, but is it really too much to expect that at least ONE of them would get off his behind and offer his seat to a woman? Particularly a PREGNANT woman? And I wasn’t the only woman left standing. There is no way I would have let my husband sit next to me while other women were having to stand up.

The same thing happened at a restaurant over the weekend. The waiting area was full and all of the seats were taken. Not a single person offered their seat to either me or my mom. Again, no way would I have allowed my teenager/child/husband to sit while a woman was standing. It’s mind-boggling. I haven’t mentioned it lately, but the pain from the pelvic separation has gotten much worse and over the weekend was excruciating due to hours in the car, sleeping in a bed that wasn’t my own, and the fact that I am just reaching that very pregnant and extremely uncomfortable stage. (My husband commented just the other day on the fact that he caught me waddling, something that I had managed not to do just yet.) So for me to be forced to stand in these situations was beyond unbearable.

Additionally, there were several occasions where I was in a veryveryvery long and slow-moving line for the bathroom and nobody once offered to let me move ahead. Six+ years ago, when I was pregnant with my oldest son, I always saw people being considerate of pregnant women in bathroom lines. I’ve allowed pregnant women to move ahead of me many times. Do people not do this anymore? Was my leg crossing too subtle? Should I break out the peepee dance next time to elicit more sympathy? What if I make a not-so-subtle cell phone call to my husband and ask if he can bring me a dry pair of undies from the car?

I hate to sound whiny or like I think I deserve special treatment. I’m actually the opposite most of the time. I don’t really like to use those special parking spaces for pregnant women and generally prefer to just cope with the every day pregnancy grumbles. After all, I did make this choice. But sometimes it all gets to be a bit too much, especially during the holidays or when we’re traveling. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that others use a little consideration. On a good day I may just smile, say thank you, and decline. On a bad day, you’ll probably become my hero.

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