Tag: Summer Trip

Posted on in Conscious Parenting, Summer Trip, Travel

An Amazing Family Summer Trip Last Part

Our final stop was Gatlinburg, Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While there we visited Pigeon Forge. This stop included WonderWorks, The Comedy Barn, Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s Stampede Dinner Show, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, miniature golf, go kart racing, TopJump Trampoline Park and rafting the Lower Pigeon River. Then on our way home, we wound our way through the Blue Ridge Parkway and stopped to see family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

8/9/2023

  1. Sent the 10 year old to walk a dog at dusk alone.  He opened the front door, screamed, dog barked and he said, “There’s a bear.”  Really?! I grabbed the back of his shirt, pulled him inside, and slammed the door.  Then I watched the black bear walk to our car and grab the handle of the sliding door with its mouth and then ramble away as we all are trying to watch it through the window.  We were warned by our AirBNB hosts to lock the car doors and leave no food in them as the bears in the area know how to open unlocked car doors.  Guess we saw an attempt.   I went with the 10 year old to walk the dog after the bear left.
  2. Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee are sensory overload in every way.  Like Orlando but on steroids because it is more compact.  The kids want to do EVERYTHING and of course that is not possible.  I am having to deal with disappointment and find my flexibility as weather has forced us to change plans. First time this trip which is saying something.
  3. We went on a float (rafting) trip today.  The 12 year old got 90% ready to go, got in trouble for watching screens without being ready, finished getting ready and then decided he wasn’t going. This meant Dad wouldn’t go either as he didn’t want to leave the 12 year old alone. This triggered me for the waste of money, the lost expectation of a great family afternoon with my husband, and suddenly changing our reservation with the rafting company.   So I went to the 12 year old, asked questions why he didn’t want to go, trying to understand etc.  He wanted nothing to do with talking it out so I told him he’d have to repay the cost of the trip.  He said fine.  He would go.  The 12 year old had a good time and was glad he went.  My husband thinks he was being a moody teenager.
  4. I hate parenting with screens.  Can I be a parent 30 years ago instead?
  5. The scenery here is beautiful and dramatically different from the west.  I love it.  My husband is a desert person.  I am a mountain person.  

8/13/2023

  1. The Smoky Mountains are a temperate rainforest.  The landscape is SO different from the west.  There is a picture of us on a hike.  The areas that recently burned regenerate a lot faster than those in the west or at least look like it.
  2. Juggling 4 kids and all their individual needs is difficult as I am often bumping up against the needs of someone else or even myself.  One 7 year old wants to do things in her own time and often gets distracted, will wander away from a task and generally takes her time.  And there is nothing wrong with that or at least I keep telling myself that.  However, it often runs into the needs of the group and getting out the door.  And then I am yelling at her to get going or I am going to leave her behind. I have to take a bunch of time I don’t have to dedicate to making sure she gets her tasks completed.  Struggling with how to give her space and time but it impacts the group.   Trying to start her earlier doesn’t seem to work.  I get distracted so then she knows she doesn’t need do the task.
  3. I was both excited and nervous to get home.  And then I barely sat down as I, with help, emptied the car, ran errands, looked through mail etc.   It seems like the to do list tripled, and the weeds in the vegetable garden…OH MY.  The kids were excited to get home and kept calling out all the things they “remember” as we drove through town.
  4. We finally hit traffic in the last two hours of our drive making it 3 hours.  We were really lucky and had very few slow downs during the trip but couldn’t avoid a summer Sunday on the congested highway corridor.  I am glad we made the conscious decision to not stop at one more historic site on the way home.
  5. I think we drove about 7000 miles in 7 weeks.  That was 5500 miles doing our loop and another 1500 running around to activities and hikes etc.   We broke one rental van and ended up with a better one.  Too many fast food or truck stop meals and too many repeats of the 12 year old’s musical playlist. 

So glad to get home.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Posted on in Conscious Parenting, Parenting, Summer Trip, Travel

An Amazing Family Summer Trip Part 3

Our fourth stop was Kanab, Utah. We visited Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Pipe Springs National Monument and Pink Coral Sand Dunes State Park. We also went swimming, motorized raft on the Colorado River, and horseback riding. Grandma and Grandpa joined us for a week and spent time with the grandkids that included star gazing. I wish I’d spent some time star gazing but I kept putting it off (sun went down after I went to bed) and it never happened.

7/18/2023

Whoo-hoo. We hiked Angel’s Landing at Zion National Park today. This was a stretch for us. (Angel’s Landing is a 5 mile out and back hike with 1 mile of rock scramble to reach the pinnacle. Popular enough you have to have a permit. After missing the early lottery last spring for a permit, I scored one yesterday in my first day before attempt.). My oldest and my husband decided not to join us. Oh wow, it was fantastic. The 10 year old started off grumpy, picking on siblings etc., etc. and I took my own advice, took a breath, looked around and Wow it is beautiful. It provided enough space for me to ask the 10 year old why he was grumpy. He didn’t have a good night sleep and that provided enough connection that he settled out after that. Then on the way back down, he took off way ahead by passing a message through his siblings about his plan. Oops, that led to a couple meltdowns that I was able to acknowledge and validate. Also, not freak out about the fact I basically lost a child and calmly take care of Mom as we sat down for lunch even though I didn’t know exactly where the 10 year old was. I was starving. And one 7 year old cried the last quarter mile because her legs hurt and she didn’t want to go any further. We were on the hottest part of the trail (100 degrees today by the time we finished) and we couldn’t stop. (Mom wouldn’t have started again.) I acknowledged, validated and accepted the crying and promised her when we got to the bridge I would carry her. I couldn’t carry her farther. Once she laid down a little waiting for the shuttle bus back to the car she rebounded. And now we get to say look what we did. Oh and the other 7 year old got her black bear, but it was her turn to I could say yes.

The beginning of Angel’s Landing at Zion National Park

7/25/2023

  1. Hummingbirds are tiny.  And how do they move their wings that fast?  One 7 year old said they look like big bugs.  At first, I thought they might be big dragon flies.
  2. Grandpa and Grandma joined us for a week of exploring Southern Utah. And I can totally see a few of my parenting strategies as I watch my father interacting with the kids.  It really is generational.
  3. The grandparents took all 4 kids yesterday to explore the national parks.  It was so quiet at the house while I was trying to work, I didn’t know what to do with myself without all the interruptions.
  4. We went horseback riding at Bryce Canyon.  I was worried about a couple of my kids as they are occasionally afraid of heights.  So for 7 year old #1, I took her aside and explained what it would feel like and put her on my knees to simulate the horse.  I didn’t do this with the other one because she isn’t usually afraid of heights.  So they load us early onto the horses, and the horses start shifting weight and 7 year old #2 starts crying.   And then, 7 year old #1’s horse moves on its own and she starts crying.  And I am sitting on my mule away from them saying it’s going to be okay.  It is okay to be scared but you won’t fall off.  They both sat with it and calmed down and once we go moving had a great time.  7 year old #2 wants to go again. It is really hard when you can’t go to your kids and they are upset. And it taught them they could handle it.
  5. It is amazing what the earth’s movement, wind and water can do and the varieties of formations over 200 miles.  If you want to be in awe and feel your life span is only a flash in the pan, come see the many canyons of Utah and Arizona.

7/27/2023

  1. Sand sledding is harder than snow sledding and sand stings when it is whipped up by the wind.
  2. Kids need downtime and choice.  Wednesdays are the slow days as I have morning and afternoon work meetings.  Activities are short and interspersed with the meetings. For this Wednesday, we were going to make the short drive to the Sand Caves and a museum.  All kid expressed interest but when time came to leave only one wanted to come as the others were engaged in playing.  When I told my husband I was leaving 3 behind, he asked why I wasn’t forcing them to go.  Once they get going they usually have fun.   In his mind, this is their one chance to see this and it shouldn’t be missed and they can always play later.  I told him that is generally true but that they needed to have a choice.  And for me, the stress and yelling of getting kids out the door, the bickering when they don’t want to go affects the activity.   I had a relaxing trip with one kid who wanted to be there and came home to 3 kids playing, excited and having fun.   They didn’t “miss” anything.  Kids don’t need to experience everything and downtime isn’t wasted time.  Why are we always pushing for every moment to be an experience or learning opportunity?
  3. My kids miss home.  They miss their space and their stuff.  They miss their routine and the familiar.  Both girls were over tired and crying how they didn’t want to share a room anymore.  They like sharing a room once a week but not continuously.  I validated their feelings and told them that sharing a room is hard.  I think we will see if we can mix it up a bit next location.  Being the youngest and twins gets the short end of the stick on room assignments.
  4. My oldest has diagnosed ADHD.   My husband is anti-medication and so far that is not a battle I am willing to have.  My father made a profound comment when talking about the 12 year old’s addiction to the screen, that he is using it to calm his mind.  We can have the medication calm his mind or the screen or to teach him other techniques but I am not sure anything will outweigh the ease and shininess of the screen.
  5. Umm….The 10 year old needed a haircut. The photo says it all. Brett may be out of the hair cutting business.
Kids cutting hair.
Posted on in Conscious Parenting, Summer Trip, Travel

An Amazing Family Summer Trip Part 1

My husband loves to travel, loves the change of going or living somewhere new. I like to travel, and I like the constancy of home. Since I switched jobs several years ago and accelerated by the COVID pandemic, I am now a remote worker and not tied to an office with flexible hours. Thus, my husband wanted to travel for the summer and after some trial and error on type of trip and location, we came up with a driving tour of National Parks. As a Christmas present 2 years ago, I received a deluxe National Parks passport book and the goal to visit and stamp the 400+ sites in the book. This trip fed nicely into that goal, and I was excited about the possibilities.

I was not excited about managing 4 kids with no childcare, the packing, the travel details etc. while working full time. To help mitigate this, I decided to take intermittent vacation instead of continuous vacation. I took two days off a week throughout the trip. We had two days to do all day activities and then afternoon activities on the other days with me working mornings and evenings. We did most of our driving on the weekends to avoid taking days off of work.

During this trip, I wrote my observations of the trip for my conscious parenting group. If you are new to conscious parenting, check out Dr. Shefali Tsabary. I work with a coach who graduated from Dr. Shefali’s Conscious Parenting Coaching Institute. The coach and the group help me parent with connection and emotional intelligence rather than screaming and strict discipline. I have modified the observations to make more sense to a general audience. However, background in conscious parenting and awakening consciousness may help with understanding. Feel free to ask questions.

I may do more detailed summaries of our stops for later posts, but initially I will stick with my initial observations. We started the trip on the East coast and our first stop was St. Louis. In St. Louis, we visited the Gateway Arch National Park, the St. Louis Zoo, the St. Louis Science Museum, Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site and the City Museum. We also played at Turtle Park and took a riverboat ride on the Mississippi River. Here are the observations from the week:

6/30/2023

  1. Kids don’t need all these activities we’ve planned.  The hit of St. Louis was Turtle Park, a playground down the road from our Airbnb.  The 2nd Biggest hit was the City Museum which is multiple big jungle gyms for kids.  And now they are enjoying sitting around playing D&D with each other and other games.  Still on with the activity schedule.
  2. Our society moved from corporal punishment for kids to shaming of kids to get obedience.  Where as animal training moved from corporal punishment to positive reinforcement training.  I know animals don’t have communication to allow shaming as an option, but apparently animals have more rights than our kids. I was at a NPS National Historic Site Museum (not super interesting for young kids) and watched a mom with 3 kids guessing between 3 and 10.  The middle one started crying. She asked him to stop and then took them outside when he wouldn’t.  She then stood there berating/shaming him to get him to stop crying. After a bit, they came back in without a crying child but he was emotionally detached.  And I so wanted to say, “there is a better way” but obviously couldn’t.  This is absolutely something I have done in my unconscious past and something I still do sometimes in my awakening self, so no judgement, and I was seeing how I must have looked to my kids in the moment where I am yelling and shaming them.  I also thought that if this is the interaction with others we are modelling to our children, is it any wonder our society is so screwed up sometimes. 
  3. My kids don’t like fast food, hot dogs, pizza and other typical on the go at amusement park places as much as they think they do.  They haven’t realized it, but they’ve eaten the best when we stopped at Subway or when they ordered sandwiches and salad than when we ordered pizza and hot dogs.  I wish it was easier to get vegetables on the go.
Posted on in Motherhood, Parenting, Travel

First Post – Introduction

I’ve considered writing a blog for some time. A place where I can put thoughts out into the world. I’ve been on a personal journey since I became a mother, 12 almost 13 years ago. When I became a mother, it is what I wanted, and it was so much harder than I thought is was going to be. Then, I had my second child, 10 almost 11 years ago, and I came to the conclusion that motherhood shouldn’t be this hard. I was tired, frustrated, annoyed, resentful all the time. So being a smart, driven woman, I started researching, reading, and taking courses, trying to find the quick cure to all my parenting woes. In the process, I had twins, 7 almost 8 years ago.

And that led me on a journey to where I am now. To understanding that there is no quick cure. That I have been living my life unconscious as dictated by my parental and societal indoctrination. I never questioned what I was told. If it was authority, I did it or believed it. And that in a nutshell, is what made parenting so hard. It is what made my life unfulfilling before I became a parent. And now I am working to unravel that unconscious indoctrination and figure out who I truly am.

All while raising 4 children, working full time, supporting my partner and wanting to make the world a better place.

For the first few posts, I am going to post about our 7 week family trip around the United States this summer. I wrote my observations during the trip for my conscious parenting group. Their comments on those observations helped jumpstart me to actually start the blog.

I hope you enjoy following my awakening to consciousness and that I bring a little good to the world in putting my thoughts out into it.