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Philadelphia in Ten

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This past summer we moved to Northern Virginia (just outside of DC) for a job my husband took. Between house shopping, the Holidays, and just getting settled in our new house, we are finally ready for adventure and exploring the area. One benefit to living in the DC metro area is that it is central to the East Coast. New York, Philadelphia, the Appalachians, and the Outer Banks are all just a half day's drive.  The other week my brother-in-law had a work conference in Philadelphia. And since it is only 3 hours from us, he decided to fly himself  and my eldest niece into DC for weekend before and then drive up to Philly . At the end of his conference, we had planned to met up and spend the weekend in Philly. So come Saturday morning, we headed north …  in a "surprise" winter storm. It was glorious chaos. It was meant to be a whirlwind trip, 36 hours exploring the historic city. The snow and wind was an added bonus to the mess.  Our route should have taken less than 3 hou
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Travel Planning is My Happy Place

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I am planner. I love having a plan, even at the most base level. I do this for almost everything. And I do this because, once you have a basic plan, you can build and shift as the situation needs.  One of my favorite things to plan is travel. I can't tell you how many trips I have planned for my family that may never come to fruition, but I enjoy it immensely.  Travel planning is most definitely the biggest rabbit hole for me. I start planning one trip and three more are born. If we were to do all the trips in my notebook, we would be busy until 2030. (Which one trip is scheduled and actively being planned for that year already.) The hardest thing about daydreaming travel is being realistic about how we can travel. I would live full-time in our RV if I could, but that's not realistic. I would take my kids to everything that is available to do and see (and eat!) when we do travel, but that's not realistic. Reality is hard and no fun sometimes.  We have a few major trips comi
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The 2022 Reading Plans of a Girl Boss

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"I may have girl bossed a little to close to the sun..." At the beginning of 2021, I received my new kindle. I hadn't really read for fun in quite a while and wasn't even sure what I liked to read anymore. I decided to get a Kindle Unlimited account and set my reading goal to 100 books for the year. I honestly didn't think I would even make it to that. But half way through the year we moved out-of-state and I found myself with a heck of a lot of time on my hands. I ended up surpassing my goal by 75% according to my Kindle Reading Insights. This did not include any printed books or other eBooks and stories I read by other means, e.g. Book Funnel and Wattpad.  Fast forward almost a year... During the last week of 2021, a few of my favorite authors were taking part in a giant book giveaway.  And when I say giant, I mean around 500 eBooks were free. I ended up downloading almost 300—I was a bit picky—onto my Kindle. Now I have way more than I need, not to mention all
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Welcome to the Mess!

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Fact: Life is messy. Nothing about life is clean and smooth. No matter how neat and organized you are today, life has a way of completely and utterly changing in a split second. Fact: Life is beautiful, in spite of the mess and because of the mess. Some of the most awe-inspiring pictures of life are in the mess of life. A picture of a tornado ripping through the landscape, the explosion of a volcano, a solar flare, the chase of a lion after a gazelle, and the first picture of a new life. This blog is a journal of a messy life trying to find the beauty in it all. I am not perfect, in fact, I am no longer trying to be. I want wonder, sanity, and fun. I want to stress over the perfect tickles, not the perfect hospital corners. I want the beauty in the mess.
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