travel
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a lesson from vacation.
Hello, friends! We arrived home from our vacation on Friday afternoon sun-tanned, rested, and happy. An entire week away was good for our very souls. Best of all, we actually wanted to come home again. Our house felt dear and cozy, imperfections and all, our yard a wide green respite after eight days in a high-rise, and our life in Columbia a gift, even the hard parts. The very best thing our vacation did for us, I think, was invite us to live in the present. Have you ever noticed how innately good kids are at it? Of course they can be as restless as the rest of us at…
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boardwalk.
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vacation 2016.
Hello from our first ever week-long, just-our-family vacation! We’re at a timeshare resort in North Myrtle Beach that a generous person with our church’s domination offered us. We don’t know her, she just wanted to bless a pastor’s family. Words can’t describe our gratitude. Four days in, and it’s been absolutely perfect. More soon, but for now, beach pictures!!
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new smyrna beach, 2016.
This was the first time in close to seven years that the whole McWilliams/Gentino family could take a vacation together. We loved joining our Florida friends, Jim and Tricia, at their family’s house in New Smyrna, and always have so much fun with them. We also had family come visit from Orlando a couple of the days. It makes David and I so happy to see our kids become beach people; to be entertained endlessly with the sand and the waves, to want to wake up and go right back for more each morning. Their favorite thing about the beach? Judah: “Playing in the waves with my cousins” Amie: “I…
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may.
Hi there friends! May has been a very busy month for us! It’s funny that apparently the busiest month of the summer technically came before the summer started. We had 3 weddings (2 of which David performed), a ballet recital, our Classical Conversations summer practicum, and by this weekend will have taken 5 out of town trips! Amie’s recital was very sweet, and family and friends came to watch her. She had a great year in ballet and enjoyed being with her friends in class on Monday afternoons. We’ve decided to “take a year off” in favor of doing swim team with her brothers (which she’s been at since January),…
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lately.
Hello friends! I had a pretty wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday — David and the kids surprised me with a new laptop! You’ve gathered from my complaining/intermittent posting that mine was on the fritz for a looong time, but I definitely did not expect a new one any time soon! My last laptop was a refurbished Macbook Pro, which we bought in 2010, before moving to India, and I loved that thing into the ground. Now this one is the very first brand-new computer I’ve owned; it’s a 13″ Macbook Air, and I’m smitten. It’s so crisp! And clean! I have a “delete” key! And best of all — when I…
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one-year adoption trip.
We decided to celebrate our first year of adoption with a family experience. David and I are terrible about keeping surprises from the kids, but we managed to keep our overnight trip a secret until Wednesday morning. We sat at the dining table doing school work, and David came in from CrossFit and announced that we were dropping everything and heading on an adventure! Going on a “benture” is Noah’s favorite thing in the entire world, and something he requests daily (along with pumpkins, the Great Wolf Lodge, and the beach). Everyone was thrilled! So we booked a hotel room on Priceline, packed a suitcase, and hit the road. We…
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bee city.
On Friday we took a field trip to Bee City outside of Charleston. It’s a charming little farm and petting zoo where you can feed many of the animals, and the kids were enthralled. We got to see exotic animals from some of our favorite stories and movies (lemurs! llamas! lynxes!). We held a baby alligator, a tarantula, and a snake, fed birds and chased chickens. We learned from a reptile expert about alligators and scorpions and giant toads (and got to touch all three). Though we never did tour the bee farm, we ended up spending three hours exploring the place, with a break for a picnic lunch. The…
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great wolf lodge.
This is our fourth year going to the Great Wolf Lodge. The first Christmas we came back from India, we were looking for some new family traditions, and decided to give it a try. We had so much fun that we went back the next year, and the next! We specifically love going in December because it’s fun to go swimming when it’s cold outside, and because the Great Wolf Lodge is over-the-top about Christmas. The whole place is decked out and there’s a special evening story time with a wintery surprise at the end. Because Charlotte is just an hour and a half away, we’re able to go for…
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the sort-of-getaway.
I’m going to tell you up front; this is a story about being disappointed. This weekend I was headed to the Wild & Free homeschool conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, and I was really, really excited. I choose this particular conference in order to hear two of my favorite homeschool voices, Susan Wise Bauer and Sarah Mackenzie, speak, and because I like the encouraging ethos of the Wild & Free community. But there were so many other fun things about the trip, namely, a weekend away, all by myself. Two six-hour road trips alone! (you know you’re in a desperate place when you get excited about those car rides). A cozy…