Our news
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About Us!
At the time of this writing, my wife (Kristen) and I are in our early 40’s and our kids are Hope (11) and Autumn (5). I work in the Finance industry and have been at the same company for almost 20 years! Kristen is predominantly a stay at home mom but also continues to run
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Busy start to August 2025
After getting home from Costa Rica, we had some family over for ice cream cake to celebrate Hope’s birthday. It was pretty low key family time since we had celebrated her on numerous occasions during our time in Costa Rica. A few days later Kristen and I met up with some of her friends at
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Playa Del Coco – July 2025 Monkey Farm and Catamarans
After scuba diving on Monday, the next big thing that most of our group wanted to do was horseback riding (specifically riding on the beach)! We looked into a couple of places and Monkey Farm had the best reviews within the closest proximity to where we were staying. Directions said that we were only about
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Playa Del Coco 2025 – Scuba
We were finally heading back to Costa Rica! With flights confirmed and rental car booked we were all set to leave at 3am on a Saturday. This gave us time to pick up my mother-in-law and then pick up my mom and get to the airport around 4am for our 6:30am flight. The shuttle from
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Playa Del Coco, Costa Rica – July 2025
We started thinking about going to Costa Rica pretty much right after our last trip to Costa Rica 😊! While we were in OBX during summer 2024, we pulled the trigger and reserved an Airbnb in Playa Del Coco that was ocean front and big enough for our expanded group of 12 people. The Airbnb
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Lake Tobias Wildlife Park, June 2025
After the accident earlier this year, we were staying local for a while and couldn’t do any long road trips. Luckily Lake Tobias is only about a 1.5 hours from our house and the kids had gotten tickets from my parents for Christmas. We planned a day trip to drive there, explore the park and
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Curve Balls
Sometimes life throws you curve balls and you have to figure out how to adjust. Coming into this year we had several vacations planned for later in the year and were looking forward to some spring camping trips. I was also excited about ramping up running and potentially signing up for Labor Pains 12-hour trail
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November 2024 – Quick Trips
From Halloween through the end of the year was full of quick day trips and weekend trips. Between busy season at work and Hope’s rock climbing competitions we normally stay local and do less family vacations at the end of the year. In late October I had to go to a one day conference in
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Pigeon Forge, Take Two – November 2024
After our first trip to Pigeon Forge in September, we knew we wanted to spend more time in the area for hiking, local attractions, and Dollywood. The kids surprisingly had a five day weekend from school at the beginning of November and we were initially thinking of Iceland or something more international; however, the cost
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Shenandoah / Harrisonburg Camping – October 2024
Last weekend we did our annual October camping trip to kick-off Halloween season and enjoy some hiking. Over the past few years we have stayed at a variety of campgrounds just before Halloween and most of the time they have activities for the kids; crafts, pumpkins, hay rides, trick or treating, costumes, and decorating campsites.
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Herrington Harbor South, June 2024 Boat Trip
Taking an overnight trip on the boat this year was like camping…on the water…it was amazing! My in-laws upgraded their boat a couple years ago and we try to go out on the water with them whenever schedules, weather, and kids permit. It’s challenging to get all of these things to align with enough notice