Travel

Our mini vacation in Budapest

By Jen | August 18, 2011 |

Last week we went on a little mini vacation to Budapest, Hungary. Our annual conference for work was being held in Hungary, so we took advantage and spent a couple days with friends from the organization. We spent 2 1/2 days in Budapest. I was really surprised at how beautiful Budapest is! It is also quite kid friendly! Little parks and little play spaces in restaurants! This is something that is now a plus when traveling with kids! The best part though, were the swimming pools! I remember being excited about swimming pools as a young girl and I guess not much has changed because I really loved spending a good amount of time in the pool every day, but so did the kids! I didn’t take as many pictures as I am used to taking, but that’s only because most the fun times were had in a swimming pool,…

Fish Eyeballs and Other Stuff

By Jen | March 12, 2009 |

Who ever knew I would actually be okay eating a fish eyeball? Certainly not me! I did it tonight for the first time in Barcelona. I don’t know the name (and at the moment I am too lazy to try and find out what it’s called), but it was a plate full of teeny little whole fried fish. Crazy!!! The funny thing is that Maisie LOVED them! She was eating them like they were candy! She was totally into them until about the fifth one. That’s when an eyeball got stuck on her front tooth and I laughed about it and pointed it out to the table, where there was gagging and gnashing of teeth. Well, not the gnashing of teeth, but there was gagging. After that, she didn’t want anymore. She went on to eat shrimp. I swear this kid is a better eater while in Europe than in…

Disneyland, rain or shine!

By Jen | December 20, 2008 |

This last Monday we all went to Disneyland for a day of Disney goodness! Amy and Jason’s good friend let us in for free!! YAY! We had been planning on going on Monday for a while. Even when we found out that a big storm was coming in on Monday, we still decided to keep with our plan! Amy and I went out and bought ridiculous “emergency ponchos” that looked like garbage bags with hoods. They were so fugs. But we ALL wore them. Green for the boys, red for the girls in honor of Christmas. For some reason, I didn’t get a picture though!! All the kids had so much fun! My niece Avery, who is five, LOVED the roller coasters and would laugh hysterically throughout the whole ride. Because of this, I would call shotgun on riding with her as much as possible. Maisie had fun as well,…

Packing… the story of my life

By Jen | December 5, 2008 |

It’s sort of sad when you travel and move around so often, that you just keep your child’s toys in a suitcase. Really, there was nowhere else to put it. I guess we could have bought some sort of toy bin or basket, but we would just be packing it up to move again at some point in the near future. The time has come where we are packing up again and let me tell you, it plain sucks. I hate it. I despise it. Not because I hate packing or organizing or whatever, but because I hate what it does to Maisie. It is so hard for her to see her toys be zipped up, not to be seen for who knows how long. This may sound ridiculous to some of you as I get that there are kids who don’t even have toys, or kids who don’t have…

Highlights from our trip to Paris

By Jen | November 30, 2008 |

We had a really fun time in Paris, seeing our friends, walking around our old neighborhood, and visiting our favorite parts of the city. The last time we were in Paris was last February and it was a very difficult trip for the both of us, so it was sooooo nice to be able to enjoy the city with our old friends without having to deal with any real ISH (issues, in case you have forgotten). There ended up being a bit of drama before we left and I had to take the train by myself (Justin’s flight was cancelled from Barcelona to Amsterdam, so he just met me in Paris). I managed fine thanks to my friend Jeanie! The train was 40 minutes late though and they kept announcing it would only be five more minutes. So I waited and waited and waited OUTSIDE while it was snowing (but…

Belgian Waffle

By Jen | November 8, 2008 |

I am in Brussels, Belgium right now and had a very real and wonderful Belgian waffle yesterday. It was NOTHING like the “Belgian waffles” that we have in the states. NOTHING!!! Only a million and a half times better!!! YUMMMMM!!! But they aren’t called Belgian waffles here. Only waffles… of course. My friend nicely corrected me on that one before I made the mistake of asking for a Belgian waffle. Thank you for friends. We are having so much fun here spending time with fellow CAI friends and also working on a big service project for the city called, Serve The CIty! I’ll post more on that later!

Train Ride Photo Shoot

By Jen | October 24, 2008 |

The other day our little family took a trip to Amsterdam to visit friends. Thankfully, Maisie slept all the way there, but on the way home, we needed to entertain ourselves as it can be a looooong train ride! So we got out the camera and took some pics!