Travel Archives - Enjoying the Small Things

Summer at the Lake

July 13, 2018 By Kelle

Hello from the woods of Michigan where we awoke in our little cabin bunkhouse last night to the sound of thunder and steady rain, and I tried to stay awake just so I could trace the cozy memory a little longer before falling back asleep. Sleeping in a cabin in the woods during a storm is definitely up there on my list of favorite sleep memories–along with squeaky baby noises the first night in the hospital after my kids were born, waves crashing against a cliff (St. Thomas) and falling asleep to flames flickering from our bedroom fireplace during a snow storm in Vail. I think that about does it.

Also, I’m using the term “woods” loosely. It’s not so much Little House on the Prairie Woods, but I’m pretending it is because I’m in summer character, and no one can stop me.

In full summer character, we…

Hold funeral ceremonies for monarchs…

The safari animals all attended and properly mourned, and Lainey officiated the service with a beautiful account of the things she imagined the monarch did in his short life. Like flutter. And sniff flowers.

Speaking of honoring, I’d like to take a moment and honor the Target Dollar Spot which came through for our summer in the only way the TDS knows how–100%. When I walk through the aisles of the Dollar Spot the day new merchandise goes up (because Lord knows I’m there), I am half delighted and half annoyed at how two-steps-ahead clever these merchandise creators are.

Little summer nature scavenger hunt bags with the things you need to find adorably printed on the front? High Five, Brenda in Dollar Spot Product Design. Why are you so damn clever?

I scraped up a bunch of cute Dollar Spot summer treasures (they were SO good this year), packed them in a little suitcase for the cabin, and we’ve been having so much fun with them.

The little safari hats and vests and critter/clipboard nature hunt sets? All Dollar Spot.

We also brought a craft bag with us on our trip–acrylic paints and paint brushes, Sculpey clay, Shrinky Dink paper and colored pencils, embroidery floss for friendship bracelets, and a bunch of supplies to make jewelry this year.

Several on IG asked about what paints we use for our rocks. We use acrylic paints and spray them, once dry, with clear satin spray.

And yesterday, we crossed off “Set Fairy Traps” from our summer bucket list. We used the little individual-sized cereal boxes, and the kids each painted theirs, added stickers and decided what they were going to put in their traps to lure the fairies.

Dash’s (he was so concerned about the fairies knowing it was a trap and thinking they weren’t going to go in):

Lainey’s (she made little sweet treats out of clay and added an entire menu of what was offered):

And Nella who opted out of making a fairy trap at first, but after she saw that the fairies visited (with glitter evidence and candy treats), she came running to me and said, “I want to make a fairy house.”

Dash was so excited when he saw that fairies actually came to his house but super bummed that they were too sneaky for his trap.

When we aren’t making things, we are adventuring.

Miami Beach Part I

January 19, 2018 By Kelle

One of my favorite things about young mothering is the impromptu adventures. Before school, we had the liberty to do it as often as we liked, and I can’t tell you how many precious memories I have of calling Heidi at 8 a.m. with “Hey, want to pack up bags and go somewhere?” and hearing her answer an enthusiastic YES before I ever elaborated on where we were going or how far we were driving. Back in the day, I could break down a stroller in less than six seconds, pack an overnight bag in two minutes and have the kids buckled in their car seats in less than one.

It had been a while since one of those adventures, and a day of hooky was calling. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that the famous Museum of Ice Cream (basically a colorful Children’s Museum built completely around the theme of ice cream) had a Miami pop-up. That was all I needed for an adventure invite, so I bought tickets, booked a hotel and planned a day of hooky. Two days later, the Museum of Ice Cream announced that the Miami location was sold out of tickets for good, so perfect timing. I’ll post about the museum in Part II of this post next week. The kids loved it (like a giant interactive playground with free sweets), but it’s such an interesting concept, built heavily on the Instagram generation. I’m wondering if twenty years from now we will laugh when we look back and say, “Oh my God, do you remember the Museum of Ice Cream?” like we remember 24-hour streaming of music videos on MTV.

But on to Miami…

Here’s how we do Miami: full throttle.

Miami is colorful, diverse, loud, electric, and about as extra as you can get. I love it, I love it, I love it, but at the pace at which we hit the city, I get my fill quickly, so 24 hours is usually how we do it. Basically, we ride a unicorn through South Beach–and forget the saddle: we go bare back. Full speed, until the unicorn passes out. Let’s put it this way. If Miami was a massage therapist asking how much pressure I wanted on my shoulders, I’d say, “Make it hurt.” We go to the most electric part of the city though, which is just a portion of what Miami really offers in terms of culture and opportunities. I’d like to explore some of the other areas in the future.

Is Miami kid-friendly? Absolutely. We love South Beach and found a little boutique hotel on Collins, one street behind Ocean Dr., which feels a step removed from all the middle-of-the-night partying and yet still part of the scene we come for.

First stop: The Wynwood District which is probably where I’d stay next time if I came without kids. Wynwood Walls, an outdoor museum showcasing large murals by some of the world’s best known street artists, is definitely the highlight of the area, but the surrounding streets are just as colorful, full of warehouses that have been converted into craft breweries, art galleries and hip bistros. Even the sidewalks are covered in art.

Wynwood Walls was like a giant playground for the kids with several outdoor “rooms” to hide in.

They played Camouflage Hide-and-Go-Seek which was so much fun. Can you spot the kids in the two photos below?

Lainey went through two rolls of Instax film and put another photo in our Handstands Against Cool Walls collection.

Another great Wynwood find: Cielito ice pop shop. Oh my God. The popsicles don’t have any added water, so they’re just pureed fruit, cream, etc.

The big kids got unicorn pops (some creamy/sprinkle concoction with candy ears and a horn), Nella got watermelon (soooo good!), Dash got chocolate, and I got what quickly became the best popsicle I’ve ever eaten–pineapple jalepeno with some sort of chili salt.

We happened to book our trip during a Florida cold front, but thankfully the sun wasn’t shy, so the beach still felt warm and inviting.

Walking the beach is always a fun experience in South Beach as the lifeguard stations are all designed and painted differently, but all of them representative of Miami’s art and style.

We found a decent kids’ menu at The Beacon Hotel on Ocean Dr. (where Brett and I stayed a few times before we were married :o) for dinner, and Dash was cracking us up with his night time shades that he refused to remove.

Notice Dash’s store behind him. :o)

I know it won’t be long before I look back and wish I would have done more of these adventures. I fell asleep in a tiny hotel room Wednesday evening with Dash and Nella cuddled next to me, listening to Lainey and her friend laugh and play Uno in the bed beside us, and I felt so grateful for this little window of life, the way the kids are growing, the times we have to squeeze in crazy little adventures like this.

I’ll share the carnival that is the Museum of Ice Cream next week. The kids are still talking about it.

(past Miami trips: 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015)

Happy Weekending!

Deja Vu: Christmas in Chicago

December 19, 2017 By Kelle

I knew last year at this same time–thirty minutes into our winter trip to Chicago–that I had done a dangerous thing–stumbled into a kind of magic that would be hard not to want to return to every year. If tickets were astronomical, it would be easier to say “not this year,” but Spirit’s $105 round trip bare fares called us like the sirens, leading us to the Town of Christmas Magic while we forgot about the fact that bare fare means bare service.

Brett says this “Howdy” must be a hand paint job because Spirit would never spring the $$ for a custom job. “Like a flight attendant must have crawled up there with a magic marker.”

Listen, I am thankful for the option of an airline that keeps their prices low. But Lordy, do they ever set us up for the jokes to follow. I think they had two employees running a check-in line of about 937 people at O’Hare, and one of those employees was practically watching everyone while eating a sandwich on break. I swear I heard him look out, laugh and say to everyone, “You suckers.”

I don’t care. It was worth it.

Why yes, I did give my kid a balloon on the plane to keep him entertained. Except it was a wubble balloon, and the little blow-up part that is supposed to stay inverted flipped out to clearly resemble a nipple so that it looked like I gave Dash a giant boob to play with. And why yes, he did toss it into air so that it floated two rows back behind us. “Excuse me, sir, could you hit that breast back to us? K, thanks.”

There are certain things that will take your breath away in life–a beautiful landscape, new babies, an incredible act of kindness. Let me add to the list walking into a city apartment one late December night, after lugging kids through the cold, to find this scene waiting for you.

My dear friend to whom this apartment belongs speaks the same language as my heart. We text throughout the year about all these secret little moments of motherhood and life hidden behind the obvious–the things we recognize and know the other one does too. She surprised me and ran into the city the day before to put up a tree in the corner. It is an act of kindness that went so far, I bottled up what it felt like so that I can pay it forward. My kids immediately found the toys, I lit candles and turned on music, and then I scanned the room slowly, drinking up every inch of the scene and tucking the happiness overflow into pockets of my brain to save forever.

(this little window–our favorite corner of this place and the perfect nook to people watch)

We wanted snow and got just enough tiny flurries Friday morning to say we got it…

…yet keep the temps up enough so that we could comfortably walk around and enjoy the city.

While it is hard not to create great expectations for this weekend–I look forward to it for so long–it is easy to have those expectations met, even if everything goes wrong. Because no matter if you get to cross off all the things you want to see and do in the city on your list or don’t get to do any of it…you have the city which, stripped down to the bones, is still excess–drenched with this electric festive energy, dripping with beauty, filled with people who come to be happy simply to stand in the middle of it and drink it in. I am one of them.

And then you add to the mix these other bits of magic–a home base where my kids want to hang out, a dad who comes along and loves all of this stuff as much as I do. He even bought a light-up Christmas hat just for the trip.

Siblings who arrived from Michigan…

While we did get to pack in so many adventures in a short amount of time, everything we do hinges around flexibility. In fact, I had bought tickets to White Christmas at one of Chicago’s oldest theaters but quickly traded plans to spend the evening out with my siblings one night while the kids stayed with my dad, and our time together delivered more than a theater ever could. We were walking around the city together, looking for a place where we could huddle and spend the evening together and were, of course, disappointed by all the long lines and wait times. We were about to take a table by the door at one restaurant when we made the call to look for something better. We get together maybe twice a year, and we were all in Chicago a week before Christmas–settling for ambience was out of the question. As we were walking, I saw a Christmas tree in the window of a step-down we almost didn’t notice. “Guys, wait! Look! There’s a fire in there. And a tree! And that bar!” We all crowded around the window and peeked in. “This is it. I can feel it.” We walked in to this charming scene and were given the table right by the fire. The rest is history.

As for the rest of the adventures…

Butch McGuire’s.
A friend told me we had to go there at Christmas, and when we walked in, I was all “Son of a NUTCRACKER!” Christmas Lights everywhere.

And two trains circling the ceiling, pulling Christmas cars…

Dash was mesmerized.

Willis Tower.
Last year, we did John Hancock, but we wanted to stand on the ledge with the glass floor this year. We got there when it opened, and Lainey requested that we repeat what we did last year–complete a puzzle at the top. So we huddled in a corner, overlooking the city, scrambling to connect the pieces of a Christmas puzzle with 100 pieces (I regret that part).

That ledge though. Took me a minute to not want to puke looking down.

Because it wasn’t blistering cold this year, we did get to experience ice skating at the McCormick Tribune rink in Millennium Park, most likely an experience we won’t soon repeat because it isn’t as charming as it looks when you are pushing the entire weight of a child who wants to “ice skate” but refuses to do any of the work. Dear God, my back. And then while every cell in my body was focusing on not dying, there’s some Brian Boitano out there, circling the rink, looking for every opportunity to throw in a triple lutz.

My sister and I took the girls for afternoon tea at The Allis at Soho House which was pure city perfection–a mix of cozy/glam so inviting we didn’t want to leave, and a scone that set the bar high for all scones to follow.

The slightly warmer temps also allowed us to experience Zoo Lights at Lincoln Park Zoo (completely free!) which turned out to be enchanting–very North Pole-ish. We rented a double stroller so Dash and Nella could huddle together with their hot chocolate, and we walked forever under lights as far as you could see and amidst a crowd of other young families doing the same. All these little babies and kids bundled up in strollers, enraptured by the lights–heaven.

Other simple city favorites my kids love:

Riding the subway…

Visiting Macy’s for their Holiday Lane and Christmas window displays…

Hailing cabs.

The rest of the weekend was filled with walking–popping in little cafes for hot cocoa when we needed it, shopping, holding hands, getting our family fill.

My winter bunny looking so big this year.

Everywhere we walk feels special, and my senses sponge it all up.

We’ll take this same picture another year and measure it against this one, pointing out how much she’s grown but that her magic dimple has stayed the same.

And I will, like other trips, slowly forget the details over time…

The funny things he said…

The way she still held my hand…

The sound of her giggle when she noticed she could “blow smoke”…

…but I’ll never ever forget the way this weekend made me feel.

…completely aware of every good thing that brings me happiness–a street performer passionately singing “Joy to the World”, a cozy restaurant packed with tourists at brunch, fur hats, colorful mittens, a stranger who gives up his seat on the train, holding hands, the sound of bells, the sound of coffee being poured, the sound of a horse and carriage on city streets at night, feeling the cold and knowing they’re happy and warm…

…my kids in my arms, my kids on my lap, my kids sleeping soundly beside me…

…possibility, excitement, wonder, love.

This city delivered once again.

(my friend left a bowl of ornaments and paint pens for us to decorate…so thoughtful)

We returned home completely filled up and so ready for this coming week of family time. Brett stayed home because he lived near Chicago for years and does not love returning to the cold. “Tell your family the Bahamas is our next trip.” And I smile because when it comes to winter in the city, it’s like the bell in Polar Express. Some people hear it, some people don’t. But for me, it always rings loud and clear.

Six more sleeps.

(See last year’s Christmas in Chicago trip here.)