Castle in the Clouds

  Our first travel trailer. I don't remember camping much with my family as a kid. This is likely because we always had the same vacation destination: a family plot in Baldwin, MI. There was no cabin there. Instead, there were two structures: a small, silver camper and an old single-wide trailer. The silver camper is gone but the single-wide still sits there and is used by extended family members to this day.  It wasn't until I was a teenager that my step-mom and dad bought a pop-up trailer and we started camping elsewhere in the state. My memory isn't the greatest, but I'm almost certain they got the pop-up after I started dating Ken. Eventually, my parents upgraded to a fifth wheel that my dad still pulls around to various nearby camping spots. Ken, by contrast, didn't have a set vacation destination growing up. His family camped. They started out with a truck-bed camper, I believe, and eventually upgraded to a fifth wheel.  Ken and I vacationed both in Baldwin an...

  Me and Ken with the Stanley Cup I recently went away for a scrapbooking weekend with my friends and family. I wasn't in the mood to lug my scrapbooking supplies around, so I only brought a few smaller projects. I had coloring books and colored pencils for those moments when I really didn't want to do anything. I also had my laptop, tablet, photo scanner, and several boxes of old photos.  My first priority was to finish up my nephew's senior pictures. I had some editing left to do from our summer session. I am happy to report I am all caught up now!  I finished up his baseball pics and sent them off to his mom.  Once I had completed that task, I colored for a bit. Eventually, after my sister finished borrowing my computer to do some video editing for her job, I hooked up my photo scanner and started feeding in pictures. I have a feeling I have some of these floating around on an external drive or CD somewhere, but, just in case I can't find them in the future, I sca...

  The Disney Dream docked at Castaway Cay. I hope to be able to take a major vacation every year. Most of the time, I expect I will be traveling alone because the kids are all getting to that point in their lives when vacation time is precious and they have adventures they want to have that don't include mom. Luckily, that time has not fully materialized just yet.  In the summer of 2022, I took KC, Allie, and Riley down to Florida for a week's worth of Universal Studios. That meant my 2023 trip would be with Gage and Hallie. For some reason, I really wanted to do a cruise. A Disney cruise, specifically.  Why Disney? Well, my cousin had taken her kids on a couple of Disney cruises over the years and she loved it. In fact, to this day, she says Royal Caribbean and Disney are her two favorite cruise lines. Knowing this and being a huge Disney fan myself, I was determined to spend the little bit extra (okay a lot more extra) and book with Disney. When I suggested this to the ...