A Tent-Home Away from Home

Traveling as much as we do can take a lot on adults let alone children and dogs.  The one question we seem to get over and over again from friends and family is simply, "how do we do it?"  I could write an entire book on answering that very question because it depends on if your asking how we doing this emotionally, physically, financially, etc.  There is no simple answer for how my husband and I continue to bounce around and explore the world around us, but I can say we must make a pretty good team otherwise we would have crumbled within the first two weeks.  And this especially takes a toll on our toddler and dog.

Little Doodles is our almost six year old Schnoodle and she loves to run!  The first two houses we have rented didn't exactly have a back yard where she had any space to run so we always had to take her for walks or to a park for some fun time.  She is constantly anxious, acting as if we will abandon her at any moment and it's so sad to watch her when she shivers, shakes and pants uncontrollably.  She has unfortunately shown some serious medical issues caused by her anxiety in the beginning of wintertime and we have needed to take her to a veterinarian twice now to keep her healthy (luckily we think we've figured out the problem and she's now doing great!)  Believe it or not, she still seems to love long car rides so the traveling part isn't the problem, it's the constant new environments for her that are making her uncomfortable.  The best answer we have had yet is giving her her own consistent 'home': a portable tent!  Tents are the greatest and she has always had one since she was a little pup to lessen her anxiety and make her feel cozy and safe.  We call it her happy place!  She had two tents in our home in Massachusetts, one upstairs and one down and because they were getting torn and tattered through the years, we decided not to keep them when we sold our house to move.  But living in vacation rentals has taken it's toll on her and we've realized just how depressed she is without her tent.  So we splurged on a really sturdy one and she's acting like a pig in mud lately!  Talk about clearing the rain cloud over this cute lovable pup and replacing it with a home sweet home!

Our two year old is also having transition difficulties.  Most toddlers at this age are working hard on potty training and sleeping in a big girl bed.  Not having a stable environment makes those difficult tasks seem impossible.  Sleeping on a regular schedule is also become hard as well because she has to adjust to a new bedroom each month, accompanied with whatever blinds are on the rental windows, or if neighbors let their dogs out to bark before 6am (yes, we find it pretty obnoxious as well.)  I think our biggest savings grace has been daylight savings time because we didn't transition Keiki to the new time change.  Now she wakes up an hour later around 6:30/7am, takes nap at a more reasonable hour around 1pm, and then goes to bed about 7:30/8pm which gives us more time for bath and reading books in the evening and overall it's a more delightful schedule to all of us! But even though we have a better sleep schedule under control for this tiny tot, she still is more clingy, whiny, tantrum,   mood-swing prone then a typical toddler because of always moving around to what she loves to exclaim with excitement, a "new house!"  With the constant changing environments we thought maybe she would like a tent like our dog has so she could have a designated space to call her own.  And a tent is great too because it can collapse and just move from place to place with us as we continue our adventures.  Instead of the hyped, overly-expensive marketed ones out there, I simply went to the outdoor department at Walmart and bought an actual kids camping tent for $17.44.  Although it's pretty huge, it's perfect for creating an area for pillows and blankets for what Keiki likes to call her "cozy home," as well as give her space to spread out to play with puzzles, read books, jump around, and play with dolls, stuffed animals, and cars too.

Happy Easter from Our Family to Yours!

Happy Easter to all!  This Holy Week has been incredibly busy for us, which even included an unexpected trip to Virginia to see family.  Keeping family a priority during our adventures these past months has been truly a blessing!  Easter season is a great opportunity for renewal and gathering with those you love to celebrate all the gifts that have been provided to us.  What an amazing reason to celebrate today, and everyday!

Our Keiki has always been scared of meeting Santa and the Easter Bunny, but this weekend an egg hunt was hosted in Liberty Village in Flemington, NJ and we decided to give it a try.  For those living in New Jersey, I found a website njfamily.com which seems to list good events around each county.  Although she didn't get a chance to collect any eggs (big kids are much faster!), she was super excited about the sticker and coloring station.  There was also a small playground where she made new friends, and unexpectedly stood in line for 10minutes to give the Easter Bunny a hug!  Toddler's will always surprise you with their love and wonder!  On our way back to the car, we were greeted with a train switching tracks.  Aren't trains just the coolest?!

Move to New Jersey

We are officially moved into our rental house in Frenchtown, New Jersey.  It is a spitting distance from Pennsylvania so we are excited to explore both states simultaneously by crossing over a very long narrow bridge.  Although we haven't scratched up against any other cars yet on the bridge, I'm beginning to understand why folks pull their side mirrors in to cross over it - my goodness it's a tight squeeze for two Prius cars let alone SUV's and pick-up trucks!  We have rented this house for two whole months, longer then other places because my husband and I are beginning to prepare to settle down with our traveling excursions for a while.  The excitement of living carefree on the road to see family and explore more of the US east coast is starting to take it's toll and we are beginning to miss modern luxuries like having a permanent address, consistant neighbors and friends, dependable playdates for our toddler, a stable doctor as I'm in my 5th month of pregnancy... you know, normal everyday things that most people take for granted.  So we have decided to rent this house for two months to start creating some stability while we look for the next area we would like to more permanently move to.  At this point, it's still looking like we will settle down in the Bucks County, PA area but that will be job and house-hunting dependent.  In the meantime, We are excited to be in Frenchtown, NJ to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, Easter and my brother's upcoming wedding too!  Even though I grew up about 20minutes from here, I moved away 15 years ago to explore life in Boston.  Living away for so long it's amazing how much you can forget, and how much it all feels like new places to explore!!

1875 rental in Frenchtown, NJ

Frenchtown has a small town center filled with cute bakery shops, cafe's and art galleries.  The house we rented is close enough to walk into town and we can't wait for milder spring weather to walk around and poke in and out of all the shops.  The other really unusual thing for us is the history of our rental house.  We usually stay in newer or renovated places modified for high-traffic rentals.  But this place is more like staying in someone's home.  The house was built circa 1875, has 3.5 large bedrooms, a full bathroom upstairs and a half bath tucked into a basement hallway downstairs, a double stair case making for a grand entrance, an adorable updated kitchen but made to look like an antique country kitchen, large dining and living rooms, and a 4-season greenhouse window office that overlooks the backyard and the mountainside on the other side of the Delaware River - spectacular!  And being so closely located near family is going to make these next two month tons of fun!

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Guest Bedroom

Shed and tree swing

House in Summertime

*Most of these photos are sourced from the HomeAway advertisement for the rental house.  We moved our luggage in from the car before we remembered to take pictures before the chaos.

Visits to See Family and a Happy New Year

"Santa, are you in here?"

Happy New Year to all!!  We have been spending these Christmas holiday week with our families since our big move from selling our New England home.  These past two weeks have basically been a whirl-wind of bouncing around from house to house, packing and unpacking, and late nights catching up and talking about life with family and friends.  Crazy to think that this is the first quiet time I have gotten since we've sold our house! How have your holidays been?  I hope they were filled with food and good company like ours was!

Mystic, CT Seaport

Our first out-of-state travels started near Mystic, CT.  It was fun attending the luminary lights in the evening in the coastal town.  The most entertaining for our little Keiki was hearing "Christmas carols" performed by a group of pirates.  They were dressed in amazing wool costumes, right out of The Pirates of the Caribbean and their songs were altered for a pirate theme. Toy store, window shopping, watching the water under the bridge, and seeing all the ship masts lit-up with Christmas lights were also super fun.

There are two casinos in the western part of the state of Connecticut, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.  We are not fans of the gambling/smoking parts that casinos have to offer, but anyone who has been to them knows that it's only a small part of what's available.  Foxwoods is huge, I mean HUGE!  It now includes a Tanger Outlet mall so it's fun to visit because it's almost circular so you can just walk around, and around, and around as you shop, or in our case: check out the Christmas decorations.  We also visited Mohegan Sun because there is a life-sized gingerbread house that you can walk into.  No joke!  It's all made of baked cookies made to look like bricks and icing, and the life-sized cookie Nutcrackers pretty much as tall as me!  Over the past few years, it's become a tradition to take pictures with the gingerbread house each year for Christmas time.

George Washington Bridge
NYC in fog

Traveling to New Jersey to see my parents was our next state we visited.  They actually live pretty close to Pennsylvania so most of the activities we did were there.  One of the biggest things we have noticed is different in the states that any of our parents live in scattered over the east coast, is the amount of space and breathing room there is when compared to our "old home" state of Massachusetts.  When driving around, most roads pass lots of farm or open land and traffic is nowhere near as bad as what you would find in MA.  And people talk slower and greet each other at gas stations and grocery stores with that hometown feel.  We are starting to realize just how urban our "suburban" area was.  Even though we have only traveled less than 300miles south total, it really is eye opening the lack of 'Competing-with-the-Joneses' and almost slower pace then in the Boston area.    Not to mention how much slower paced it becomes if we travel even further south to see other family.    But I could write an entire other post on this subject so I'll save it for another time.

Playhouse on the Delaware River

Stranger things have
happened in New Hope

In PA, we went to the Bucks County Children's Museum and our two-year old loved it!  I haven't been back to New Hope, PA in probably 16 years and although the artistic town has grown tremendously, it still has a few of the eccentric shops that I grew-up loving.  The town also has an old locomotive train that runs public train rides every hour which was fun to watch too.

The Children's Museum has a flat-rate of $8 per person (children and seniors included) and is an interactive and educational environment for children.  I would say the best age range for the museum was definitely from tiny tots who can walk up to school age.  It was perfect for Keiki to explore the different stations and interact with the other children, who I was impressed they all played very nicely together.  The hands-on learning experiences included weather, archeological digs, light and sound, and exploration play for areas build like a hospital, post office, or train station.  It was a blast!!

Back in NJ we visited Northlandz one morning which boasts the world's largest model railroad and I now think I believe them!  It could easily take you 3-4 hours to walk through and take it all in.  There was up to 100 trains traveling more then 8 miles of track and 40ft bridges spanning huge canyons all inside a twisting and winding trip through what I suspect was an old theatre.  And not only was there trains, but over 200 doll collection and art, antiques, and organs - that the ticket collector played as a concert for folks visiting.  And as if that wasn't enough, there was a small train ride that you could go on outside too.  I'm not a train enthusiast by any means but this place was memorizing even for adults. But my favorite part was that throughout the place, there was a step-up and handle to hold for our two-year-old to see on her own so I didn't have to lift her up the whole time. She doesn't like strollers, but I would still recommend it for others who visit because you go through so much only to come to a sign that reads, "You are now 25% through the museum" and you are shocked thinking you will need to pick up the pace if you'll ever get your toddler through the whole place.  Yes, it's that huge!

So overall it was a very entertaining and relaxing time spent with immediate family these past two weeks but now we are off again to our first rental house for January of 2016.  It is a beach house on the central Connecticut coast!  First up is collecting all our forwarded mail so we can open our Christmas cards from friends and family and hang them in our new place so it feels more like home.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Clinton, NJ

Friday August 28 (Thursday night to Saturday early morning): We visited my parents in Clinton, New Jersey. My brother and his fiancé came over to help us pre-celebrate Keiki's 2nd birthday complete with vanilla & chocolate ice cream!