Although David and I have talked for years about one day making a big trip west, our dream crystallized when we learned that every fourth grader in the U.S. gets a national park pass for the year, enabling them and their family to get into all the national parks for free. This seemed like motivation enough for us. I told David that Noah needed to be five before we could make a trip like this, and lo and behold, his fifth year of life has coincided with Amelie’s fourth grade year of school. Our swim team friends were all real-deal travelers — I mean, regularly making huge road trips with…

We’re only driving this route west one time, and there are things I want to remember. The lush emerald green of Missouri, the highway lined with Black-eyed Susans. Wide-open land around the University of Kansas, the Fort Riley airfield with its rows of dark, stern Chinook helicopters.     Great big swaths of cornfields of Kansas and the wind, always the wind. In Kansas I keep company with a few of my friends: Dorothy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Henry of 100 Cupboards, Laura and Mary, just as I kept company with Hannah, Nathan, Jayber, and all my other Port William friends driving through Kentucky. I want to remember…

August has been the month of starting school and the month of getting ready for our road trip to the Grand Canyon. David and I have been dreaming of this trip on and off for years. Awhile back, I told him “Our youngest kid needs to be five before we can do it.” How did it get here so fast? Noah is five and a half and can hold his own with family hikes, the church approved David taking his first ever 3-week vacation, and so this is The Year. By the time we leave, our kids will be 11, 9, 7, and 5. Great ages for a big adventure.…

David and I arrived home from New York at 5:00 pm Thursday. We thanked our babysitter profusely, unpacked, did 5 loads of laundry, watered the yard, fed the chickens (and our kids), and collapsed into bed. On Friday morning we woke up, packed two suitcases, and the six of us hit the road for Pittsburgh.   We were tired, but there was something sweet about being together as a family for 9 hours in the van after several days apart. Plus, the minute we arrived home from New York I thought, I’m not ready for real life yet. So it was very pleasant to get to turn right back around…

Another neighborhood we wanted to explore was Chelsea, so we set out for the subway first thing Wednesday morning, our last full day in the city. I should say here that by this time I was done lugging my heavy camera around the city, so photos from today are a little more sparse. Once we arrived in the neighborhood, we found coffee and a chocolate croissant at this amazing little Italian coffee shop where the man behind the counter greeted customers by name. There’s no carafe of half and half in the shop, no way. If you want milk for your coffee, it’s served in a tiny ceramic jug. I…

  I forgot to post this shot of our wonderful, skinny hotel, The Jewel. We slept in ’til 8:00 on our first full day in the city, then set out to find breakfast on the walk to Bryant Park. We stopped in a great little place, Gotan, on 46th Street: David ordered a breakfast biscuit, and I got avocado toast. It makes me laugh that avocado toast is so trendy right now. People in Columbia are talking about it, restaurants are serving it (if you get a chance to stop by the stand at Soda City Market, theirs is delicious). And it was listed on every hip cafe menu in…

David and I were given the astonishing gift of a trip to New York City this month. Some friends knew that seeing the Broadway musical, Hamilton, was near the very top of his bucket list, and gave us tickets and their airline miles so we could go. We’ve known about the trip for a couple of months now, but the reality didn’t really start sinking in until a few weeks ago, when it was time to book a hotel and plan in earnest. I’m excited to tell you all about it here!   The plan.   So this is how we planned the trip. We decided that if we were…