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Pop-Up Camping

My husband, in certain lights, greatly resembles a pit bull. No, not in looks, but in tenacity. I guess it’s the hunter in him – the single minded must get the mammoth sort of roots. It is a fine quality in many regards. I’m sure it serves him well at work and in hobbies. But there is one arena in which it is kind of irritating to deal with.

Large purchases. When Matt is desirous of something (and he always is, serially), he researches it within an inch of its life. He weighs pros and cons. He gets opinions from all who have opinions to offer and he discusses it with me ad nauseum.

Obviously this has its benefits. He makes good decisions. But the interim can be a bit hard to live with. I will frequently make moratoriums when I can’t stand it anymore and he won’t be allowed to talk to me about it for a day or face my wrath. I have also cut deals with the devil and acquiesced to a purchase with the understanding that I don’t have to hear about tools or cars or whatever for a certain period of time (and he is also not allowed to purchase them).

Right now he is latched on to pop-up trailers. It’s a subject we go back and forth on. I love the look and function of tear-drop trailers and would love in many ways to have one, but storage space and cost prevent me. We both like the idea of being able to more easily camp with the family; having a setup that would hold all our gear and bedding so we just have to add food and clothes for a weekend away is super appealing. But tear-drops are very expensive. You can build your own, but it’s a big process that might be fun if we had a bit more time, but we don’t. And it’s still expensive. They also generally only sleep two, though you can find some that sleep four. Once again, expensive.

Pop-up campers are a natural because they do this but at a more reasonable price and in addition they also sleep more people than a tear-drop or small travel trailer. Some will even fit in our garage. So we’ve looked at new ones. Matt has been scouring Craigslist. And we’ve been talking about it for a few weeks. Spending a big chunk of change always puts me on edge, but part of me is tempted because we would like to camp more and this is a good way to do it and it would also put this whole thing to rest. Only slightly kidding.

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What in Goat’s Name?

Friday we were lucky enough to witness a goat herd trucking along the side of a street about 4 blocks from our house. We don’t really live in the country but as we live on the edge of civilization, there’s some country mixed in pretty close by. It’s kind of fun. Presumably these bad boys escaped their confinement and were running back and forth along the road. They were definitely smart enough to stay away from cars. It was pretty funny to behold.

Beyond that it was a pretty average weekend. We actually got two “quiet” evenings at home. We rented The King’s Speech, though we didn’t actually get to watch it. We went shopping and to the pool and did all of that sort of stuff. Ben was pretty challenging. Tabby was her usual helpful self. She’s so easy it really makes me concerned for the teenage years. What is she storing up for later??

But nevermind that. We celebrated Kelly’s birthday. We started Bootcamp. We got back into routines. It was good. And goaty.

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What’s Cooking: Volume ???

One of the best things about coming home is being back in my own kitchen. While we’re at home, eating out is a nice treat, but while traveling it becomes monotonous and excessive and all any of us wants is to be back in our own kitchen eating “normal” food.

Here’s what we’re cooking up this week:

  • my parents had us over for 4th of July and made salmon using this recipe, a family favorite, and corn on the cob, green beans and a fruit salad … possibly the perfect summer meal
  • we made up buffalo chicken salads using Frank’s Buffalo sauce on breaded chicken tenders (though we’ve done just grilled chicken tenders) … we serve them up on mixed greens with carrot shreds, blue cheese and a dressing 2 parts buffalo sauce and 1 part ranch
  • we made one of my all-time favorite salmon recipes, salmon with lemon relish … it is super good for summer since you serve it over a bed of spinach
  • Ben’s new favorite fruit is cantaloupe and I’ve been recently making up fruit salads with cantaloupe and strawberries – it’s incredibly pretty in the bowl

Stuff I want to try SOON Continue reading “What’s Cooking: Volume ???”

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A Long Strange Trip

So a funny thing happened on the way to the airport. Well I guess technically it was the days leading up to our flight. Matt’s stepmom mentioned something about our flight being at 10AM. I knew it was a morning flight and this seemed about right to me, though I thought it was a smidge earlier. But when we checked in online and printed our boarding passes the night before both Matt and I looked at our flight times and sure enough … right there it said 10:49am.

Upon arriving at the airport, we tried to log in and check our bags and got errors. The clerk informed us after some back-and-forth that our flight was actually at 9 AM and we had just missed (by minutes, I swear!!) our cutoff for putting our luggage on the flight, and ourselves as well it seems. No amount of cajoling, crying, etc. mattered. We could NOT get on that flight. Since we’d already checked in and it was just a matter of our bags, it was pretty irritating, especially since, as I noted later, they’re happy for your bags to be on a different flight if it suits them, but if you make the mistake, you are screwed.

Quadrupling our mistake was the fact that we were 1) a family of four 2) flying on a holiday weekend. Standby was not much of an option since they predicted they could get us on basically one at a time, maybe two. And the idea of hanging out in the airport all weekend to see who stupidly missed their flight (like us) with two little kids already at the end of their vacation rope was not much appealing. We could also pay fare-difference and fly as a family on Monday for around $600, but as we were already packed up and ready to go, heading back to Matt’s parents’ house, unpacking, etc. etc. was pretty depressing, especially since we’d miss the whole weekend and all the time we needed to get ready to go back to work.

We checked out other airlines which were either entirely unavailable or ridiculous (thousands for us to fly on such short notice, one-way). So we hit on a slightly crazy idea … rent a car and drive back. For around $400 (though I think once all fees, etc. were paid, it was closer to $500) we could rent a car, drive back and be home the next day. It wasn’t a cheaper option, but it was in many ways a more palatable option. We’ve done the trip many times before and it’s all easy-interstate. Everything was packed and we could just go from the airport and head out.

So … we did. We did a long stop-over in Paducah, KY for lunch at a Chick-fil-A with a play center and a stop at Walmart for various other provisions. $90 netted us a portable DVD player with two screens and that plus the $10 copy of Scooby Doo, Where are You?? we picked up, plus some various other bribes, kept the kids happy for MANY hours. We grabbed some road-trip food and an insulated bag so we had snacks. We made stops here and there for traffic and gas and … POTTY/diaper breaks.

We made our best time after rush hour and when the kids were sleeping, so we pushed through to Hays, KS and stayed at the dubious Days Inn, home of the worst shower I’ve ever had. The next day after our continental breakfast and another 5 hours in the car, we finally made it to the Denver International Airport and returned our car.

Matt and I are both still FLOORED at how amazing the kids were. Of course possibly watching mommy lose her sh*t in the Nashville Airport impressed upon them the gravity of the situation. Or maybe they were so engrossed in Scooby Doo they just didn’t care. But they were amazingly good. The road trip overall was kind of fun in a weird way. It felt sort of like we were back in college again and someone had dropped two unsuspecting children into our back seat.

Of course it’s much easier to be Zen about all this now, but we definitely made some lemonade and dealt with the situation pretty well. As we kept saying, it could have been much worse. We decided there were four people on standby who needed to get to Denver for whatever reason much more urgently than us. And we’ve got 4 flight credits on Frontier for our next trip. That said, not something I’m keen to do again in a big hurry.

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Nashville, Baby!

So we were gone last week. My good girl side wanted to pre-write a bunch of stuff and let it post automatically while I was gone, but my get real side revolted when she realized how much packing she still had to do. Packing up 3 people to head off on vacation (Matt packs himself, of course) is no joke. Neither is getting to the airport and wrangling all of the crap (giant carseats). But usually after I get all of it squared away, I can kick back and more-or-less enjoy vacation.

Such was the case with our Nashville trip. We left Denver on Thursday and got in very late. Friday we spent the day with Matt’s mom and caught up with a friend from Matt’s childhood and his family.

Saturday we left for Gatlinburg, TN, gateway to the Smokies, with Matt’s step mom, Sherrie, and his siblings and his sister’s husband. We checked out Cherokee, NC (tourist trap), rode go-karts, went to Dollywood, went hiking, checked out Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (tourist traps again) and generally had a nice time, however hot and sticky it was.

We got back into town mid-day on Wednesday and the kids were DONE with being in the car (it’s about 5 hours from Nashville to Gatlinburg). They had fun running around Matt’s parents’ house and got good naps before we went to dinner with some good friends and their darling new baby.

Thursday we met up with Matt’s mom again for breakfast at the Pfunky Griddle. There are griddles in the middle of the table and you get unlimited pancake batter and cook them up yourself adding whatever selection of toppings you’d like. They also had delicious mashed potatoes that you could grill into potato pancakes. Super good. We also explored that area which has many new and interesting shops. The kids got home in time for naps and got to spend the evening with their grandparents while we went to dinner with friends and enjoyed a quiet kid-free evening.

Friday we headed off to the airport early … and that is where it gets interesting. I’ll save the rest for tomorrow. More photos here.