Monthly Musings- June 2023

Fun, fun, fun questions to think about and answer- Linking up with Holly and Patty

1. Anywhere warm and sandy! Ideally, it's cold and icky when we leave Ohio for said warm and sandy locale. We love going to beaches in Florida and South Carolina. 

2. Packing tips- If I'm driving to my destination, then that means that I (probably) have a decent bit of room for packed things so my best packing tip would be to over pack! I love to have variety and choices of clothes and shoes to wear. Plus, the weather anywhere can change on a dime so I like to have plenty of clothes for various weather conditions. If I'm flying, I've got nothing by way of packing tips.

3, Road trips of fly? This is tough. I'm one of those weird people who really enjoys flying. I love the moment of take off and the feeling of ascending. I like the white noise in the plane. I like the little cups of Coke Zero that I'm handed and the tiny snack bags. I like being "whisked" away and not having to worry about the logistics of getting from home to my destination Can you tell I've never had a terrible flight, lol?? I've heard horror stories but thankfully I've had only decent to enjoyable flights.

Airportin'

If we're really lucky, the airport that we're at has Garrett's popcorn and our gate is near where Garrett's is sold. That unicorn has happened but once...

There are some obvious advantages to driving and then having your own vehicle at your destination. I guess I'm going to say that assuming I've gotten a good airline ticket price, I prefer flying. 

4. Favorite vacation memory as a child- we didn't have a lot of money in my family growing up so the travel budget was LITE!! For instance, we never flew anywhere. The first flight that I ever took was when I was in college and I did a study abroad program that I paid for. When I was growing up, our family only took one road trip that didn't entail us staying with family members in order to avoid the cost of paying to stay somewhere. For that vacation, we stayed in a motel because hotels were not in budget. I remember very little about that vacation. It was to a national park in Kentucky.

My favorite vacation as a child was driving to northern Michigan to stay with my aunt and uncle and their five kids who lived in the UP. So yes, there were ten kids and four adults staying in a not very big house(!) but we made it work and had lots of fun exploring the UP with our cousins in the process. (We unfortunately had one Home Alone type incident when going somewhere, the drivers of both cars thought that my brother Jay was in the other car and he was left home. I mean, it was only for an outing but it was so sad that he was left at home. Big families/ pre cell phone probs!).

Whenever we got together with my aunt and uncle's family who had the five kids (whether it was our house or theirs), it was crazy chaotic. The house that I grew up in was small with just three bedrooms (yes, for a family of seven!) and ONE bathroom (yes, for a family of seven!). Now imagine seven more people coming to stay at the house. Oh my! I can't imagine the adults who had to deal the logistics of where everyone would sleep, meals for a huge crew (we very rarely ate out). As a child, of course, I never thought about the adult considerations and only knew that we'd have a great time with our cousins. I'm glad that our parents, both mine and my aunt and uncle, didn't let a lack of money and lack of large house deter visits with our favorite cousin clan!!

The lighting is terrible but here is all ten of us kids in the UP.

Here is a picture with seven of us. My brother Jay, My sister Katy, my cousin Andy, me, my cousin Susan, my brother Joe and my cousin Dan.

5. Ocean!

6. I love grilled food no matter where it is grilled.

7. Cherry Coke Zero for the win for me this summer! 

8. Not super amazing but one time that our family was flying somewhere, two of our tickets were upgraded to first class! Donnie insisted that I take one of them  (he is truly the best!) and Jacob took the other one in first class while Donnie stayed with the girls and the poors (lol) in coach. One other neat upgrade happened to us. We were headed to Miami for spring break one year. A few days before we left, I went to our hotel's website to familiarize myself with the property, see if anything special was going on, etc. The website had a few packages listed including a couple that mentioned the breakfast buffet. I  didn't think our stay would qualify us for any packages but I decided to call to see if we perchance could upgrade to a package. Based on when we were staying, the person that I talked to said that we didn't qualify for any packages. Well, I tried! When we arrived at the hotel to check in, the person at the front desk handed me an envelope. Inside were vouchers for us to have complimentary breakfast buffets each day that we were there! I don't know why we were given this- if it had anything to do with me calling before we checked in or what. The breakfast buffet was amazing and such a great way to start each day.

We had planned to grab granola bars at a store and eat those for breakfast. A custom made omelet, fresh fruit, pastries with a diet coke in a fancy glass > a granola bar, amiright?

We loved the Trump!!

9. Ice cream or Popsicle- this one depends. If I'm inside, I prefer ice cream. But if I'm outside, a popsicle seems like the quintessential choice for some reason!

10.  I have camped but camping is not something that I particularly enjoy or would go out of my way to do in the future.