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Travel Blog

Welcome to the Travel Time Mama Travel Blog. I am so glad you have taken a moment to share some of our family adventures. I hope that my blog and website will inspire you to travel with your family, be it a cruise, a road trip, a "stay-cation" or a day trip. I believe every family can make travel of some sort a part of their life. Travel is a mindset as much as it is a physical destination. I also believe that realistic expectations are the key to a successful travel experiance. Which is while you will see the good, the bad, and the ugly that happens when we travel!

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Eagerly Anticipating & Packing & Preparing

4/30/2013

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Our vacation is just around the corner, so close I can almost taste it! Needless to say, we are all excited. Because I am organized ( er...um.. obsessed) our packing is almost complete. We have a few last minute things that will need to toss in the luggage the day before we go, but other than that we are good to go. That leaves plenty of time during the next week to anticipate and plan.

One of the thing that I am working on this week is trying to plan our rest stops and food breaks during the 9 or so hour drive to New Orleans. It is hard to pin exact stops down because there are so many things that can slow us down. However, having a few pre planned options always makes me feels better.

On our last trip, we all had fun at one of our impromptu rest stops. The kids ran around, collected pine cones, and had fun exploring the little rest stop on the side of the highway. It was certainly a good break from driving... for everyone!

Never underestimate the fun a child can have climbing on a picnic table.

Be sure to take random photos of trees... upside down

Everyone is really excited about the pine cone.

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Destination: Marathon Key, Florida

4/24/2013

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I chose the Marathon Key as our overnight stop in our quest to drive the Florida Keys. Distance wise, it made sense and I found this cute little beach resort for just a little over $100 a night.

The resort itself was small but charming. A lovely little slice of beach, ocean and sand and a clean room with kitchenette. We had an amazing time strolling the beach. It was a little windy and cold the first day, but we did do a little impromptu wadding before we checked out.

Side view of the resort... steps away from the beach!

Fun little bridge to a mini island- not sure it was on our resort property.

Impromptu wading (otherwise known as swimming in our clothes because we were not planning to swim!)

Sassy Diva goes swimming

We had fun finding crabs, bugs, and fish. DC's socks got wet. He was not a happy camper. He hung them up in the van to dry and I found them there 3 months later. I am not kidding.

Did I mention the coconuts? They were everywhere and falling from the trees. We were nearly murdered by them a few times. DC cracked one open for us using his bash it into the rock method. I think he cracked his hand as well. Eating fresh coconut, right on the beach. is amazing.

This is my sister. Don't let the happy in this photo fool you. Turns out she has a bad reaction to sand and more specificly, the sand fleas. Seroiusly, it was terrible. Being from Oklahoma, we did not know about these mean little bugs. We all got a few bites, but her's were horrible.

There was a private fishing dock on the property.

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Destination: Savannah, Georgia

4/13/2013

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In fall of 2012, we took a 10 day road trip from Oklahoma to the Florida Keys. One of our stops, and the reason for the trip was to pick up my oldest son from Savannah, Georgia. I will admit, the trip was spur of the moment, and most of my planning involved making sure we had enough car food to avoid eating out. Thus, I did not do a lot of research on the places we were stopping.

My oldest really wanted to show me Savannah, so we spent some time exploring and taking photos. I thought I would share a few of my favourites with some snippets of what we enjoyed about Georgia.

Beautiful moss covered trees.

Yummy Georgia Pralines. We get excited about our sweets.

Sassy Diva loved the birds at the beach, the sand and water.. not so much.

We spent a few hours at the beach. It was peaceful and not very crowded. And WINDY!

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Scarborough Renessaince Festival, Waxahachie Texas

4/6/2013

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This was our first renaissance festival and a fun experience for our little travel crew. I managed to convince my Mom (leilateluie) and my oldest daughter (Sissy) to join us. LB & DC were not able to join us, So that just left me and the 2 youngest.

There was so much going on, it is little difficult to decide where to start! So when in doubt, lets go with food. Everybody's gotta eat, right? Food is plentiful and pricey . We saw everything from steak on a stake, kettle corn, apple dumplings and Scottish eggs to red beans and rice, and sausage on a stick. We opted for the turkey leg (tender meaty goodness!),big soft pretzels ( my favourite) from the walking vendors, fried ice cream (gross... we chunked it in the trash) and gyros (interesting). The festival drinks are Dr pepper products and of course Adult drinks. We spent $6 on two 20 oz Dr peppers. Our total cost for food and drinks was about $30. ( We shared everything.)

No food or drink can be taken into the festival, but I did have boxed shelf stable milk, a boxed juice, and fruit snacks tucked in Sassy Diva's bag. Felt kinda bad for taking it in but it was a good thing, because she would not eat any of the festival foods. She did take a few tiny bites of the bread from the gyro, but that was it. Now that we have food, and my rule breaking covered, lets move on to our favourite things.

People watching was a blast!

Me:

I loved people watching! It was awesome to see everyone in costume. Lots of visitors were dressed up as well. I saw Santa Clause (?) a very purple wizard with a person sized stuffed (purple) dragon attached to him, a creepy jester, and mermaids in the mermaid lagoon.
The large turtles in the petting zoo. I know, I am impressed by odd things.
The interaction - you will be greeted, possibly mocked, and engaged in conversation, like it or not!
The Rat Circus show. Yes it was rats, with an awesome handler who put on a great show. Funny!

This was neat shop area with metal sculptures and fountains. Pretty & pricey!

D.B. (7):

Cale, the fire juggler. He loved the part where he breathed fire. It was also pretty neat that he came and talked to us when we first arrived and gave us a run down of the festival and invited us to his show.
Dragons. We searched out all things dragon related. There was a cool dragon skeleton on top of the monster museum lots of shots with dragon related items.
The mythical monster museum This was $3 pp and he loved it. Personally, I was not impressed. Think Halloween type setting, with drawings and descriptions of mythical creatures and sculptures.
The camel and donkey ride. No surprise here, my kids love animal encounters.

Drinking fountain...

Sassy Diva (almost 2!):

Riding the Llama. I was a proud mama, she did it by herself!
The petting zoo (the baby chicks, cows, and a guide dog who was checking out the petting zoo himself.
The drinking fountain in the form of a juggler standing on his head (Pictured). She was fascinated and a little freaked out by it. We hung out by it for a while while Joshua played with new found friends on the play ground.

Good things to know:

The travel crew- Sassy Diva, Dragon Boy, Sissy, and Cat Lady!!!

Many of the shops are elevated a bit, and it was a pain to get the stroller up and in. I visited fewer shops than I would have liked because of this.
They sell nice magazine type programs for $3. We bought one, but other than DB checking it out, we did not use it much. It was to windy to read it. I was going to use it in my travel scrapbook, but there was a juice incident, so that is not going to happen. Next time, we will print out the show schedule from the web site.
It is big! Plan to walk a lot, but there is plenty of places to sit and rest.
Lots of shows going on! We saw the rat circus, the belly dancers, the fire juggler, a comedy dude, knife throwing, and more.
There was a parade of people! This was fun to watch. DB did not enjoy it much.

The Dungeon. I had read reviews and knew this was a haunted house, I forgot to tell my mom! She and Steph went in not knowing this! They got quite a scare!

The camel ride! Only $4 per person to ride an elephant or camel. The handlers were friendly and the animals seemed well cared for. Sassy Diva threw her first and only fit of the day here. She wanted to ride, but we had already exceed our budget, and this was the last thing we did.

She did ride the llama, as I mentioned earlier. That was your typical "pony ride" experience. I did not get a photo. I thought I was getting it on video, but I didn't.

My stupid camera battery went dead after 15 photos, so I ended up using my iphone for most of these shots. I am always having some sort of camera issue and I never get all the photos and videos I want!!

Overall, the kids and I enjoyed the festival. I can see us going again. My mom and oldest daughter went off and did stuff on there own, So I will add more details on their experiences later. I will tell you that they bought some strange things. But, for now I post a few more photos.