Summer Bucket List 2015

Since the summer of 2010 we’ve been putting together a family summer bucket list. We’ve had a blast putting these lists together each year and coming up with fun activities to keep the kiddos entertained and happy during our hot Vegas summers. A few things have become summer traditions such as going to Southern California in August, picnics up at Mount Charleston, and movie nights. But, it’s always fun to add a few new things to our lists each year. In 2012 we started to get creative with displaying our list because it’s important to see it and plan around it. Otherwise, we tend to get busy with our regular routine and forget about all the fun plans we had for summer.

We usually put our summer bucket list together around Memorial Day, but this year has been wonky with Jason’s broken ankle and year round school for both kids! So, we waited until our kids went on their summer track brake to really focus on the fun summer activities for this year. They’ll be on summer track break for 3 weeks. Then they’ll be back to finish off the school year for about a month, before having another 2 week break before the new school year begins again. It can get confusing, but that’s where a little preparation and being intentional about making the best of summer comes in handy! We’re determined to make the most of our time together as a family, be it summer or any other time of the year. This year, I purchased this cute chalk banner at Target for displaying our list. I got the kids to each write a few of our activities and then we hung it right over the kitchen window. We’ll definitely be seeing it constantly!

Emeric Family Summer Bucket List 2015

End of Summer SoCal Beach Trip
Family Bike Ride (I plan to just run alongside them, since I don’t know how to ride a bike. They think they’re going to teach me to ride. We’ll see what happens!)
Mystery Adventure
Bonfire
Art Day
Sky Zone
Picnic at Mount Charleston
Make Ice Cream
Camping
Family Movie Night
Swimming

Feel free to check out our 2012, 2013, and 2014 lists for more ideas for your own summer bucket list! It’s not too late to get started on having a super fun summer! What kinds of fun activities, trips, or projects do you have planned for your family this summer?

5 Tips to Enjoy Photographing Your Next Family Vacation

Traveling is my absolute favorite thing! I love to go on any kind of trip, I’m not picky. Long weekend getaways, day trips, road trips, family vacations, staycation, I love them all. And, if you go on vacation and don’t take pictures, did it really happen? I think not!

Seriously though, taking photos of your trips is part of the fun. Photographs are our memory keepers, our heirlooms, our triggers. Looking at a photo can help bring back all the emotions of that day, the whole vacation, or even that time in your life. Photographs can help us remember what we may have forgotten or overlooked. Photographs are not only visual reminders of times past, but they bring back so much more. They help us remember how we felt, how the grass smelled, what we ate, even how we felt when we woke up that day.

Yes, photographs are powerful. It’s important to document life. Not just the fun, beautiful moments, but the ordinary days too. But, that’s for another post. Today, let’s talk about how you can document your family vacations. We work hard for that time off from work. We plan, we save, we sacrifice, all so we can spend a week or so away from our routine. To spend time with the ones we love and maybe show them something new or go back to a place you love. Documenting family vacations through photographs can be tricky. We don’t want to spend our entire time behind the lens and miss out on the fun and/or not be in any of the pictures. But, we don’t want to forget to take any pictures and get back home and regret not having taken photos to remember all the fun you had. So, here are a few tips to help you balance out having awesome family pictures and enjoy your vacation too.

1. Have a Plan! I’m big on planning and making itineraries, but I’ve come to learn that with kids we need to be flexible. So have a loose plan of things to do and then figure out where picture-taking is going to be a must! Obviously, if you’re going sight seeing or to the zoo, you’ll want to plan on taking your camera with you all day. But, if you’re going to be relaxing by the pool, then you won’t need your camera there, at least not the entire time.

2. Use your timer setting! This works great for those fun and cheezy family photo ops and ensures everyone gets in the shot! We don’t travel with a tripod, but there’s usually a spot where we can set the camera up safely to get our photo.

3. It’s about the people! Here’s a pet peeve of mine. When people take tons of pictures of the Disney parade or the zoo animals, but hardly any photos of the family members. I get it. We all get caught up in the details and yes, the penguins are super cute, but at the end of the day, our family is what matters most. Don’t forget who is there with you. Take tons of photos of your kids playing, interacting, and having fun. A few scenery and animal shots are fine, but you want to capture your family in that space too. A photo of the Golden Gate Bride is awesome, but a photo of your kiddos walking on the Golden Gate Bride is even cooler! I’m sure you’ll think so too years after the vacation is over.

4. Share the camera! Don’t be afraid to share the camera with your spouse, even if you are the better photographer 😉 Depending on the age of your kiddos, you can even let them take a photo or two! This will give you a different perspective and views from your trip, you’ll actually get to be in some of the photos, and enjoy the day or activity without worrying about taking pictures.

5. Know your camera! I can’t stress this enough. Even if you prefer to shoot on auto-mode (which is totally fine!) It’s good to learn your camera settings. Play around with the various settings and functions prior to your trip, so you aren’t dealing with camera malfunctions or blurry photos due to “user error”.

BONUS: Have Fun! Don’t feel stressed our pressured into taking perfectly composed images during your family trip. I used to do this and it took the joy out of it sometimes. I had to learn to leave my “job” behind me and be a mom and enjoy my vacation. So, now we don’t even take our big DSLR cameras on most of our family trips. I will take my DSLR for some trips, but 80% of the time we simply pack our Fuji X100s digital viewfinder camera and that’s it! The camera is small, lightweight, but does a great job for capturing our family vacation snapshots. Of course, we also take tons of photos with our iPhones too! Come follow along on Instagram 😉

I sure hope these simple and easy tips help you when taking photos during next family vacation. Do you have any tips you’d like to share with me too? When’s your next trip?

Taking a Break | Visiting Valley of Fire State Park

On Black Friday, rather than deal with crowds of eager shoppers looking for great deals, we took a little road trip to visit the Valley of Fire State Park. It’s about an hour’s drive north from Las Vegas and well worth the drive to get away for a bit. To our surprise, the park entrance had a super long line and we ended up waiting about 20 minutes to get to the gate. I guess we weren’t the only ones not interested in shopping!

I know I say this all the time, but I really do just love getting outdoors with my family and enjoying our time together unplugged from the world, even if it’s just for an afternoon. We sometimes (read lots of times) are so overwhelmed with being busy, that we forget to slow down. We know we should, but we end up getting wrapped up in our day to day routine. We get lost in the chaos of life. This is why it’s so important to be intentional with our lives and our relationships with others, especially our family. It’s important to carve out time to be together to visualize how you want to spend your time with each other and make it happen. For us, we find that being outside exploring nature, brings us together. There’s less bickering and whining out there. There’s time to breathe and laugh and just be.

What kinds of things do you do when spending some time with the ones you love? I’d love to hear about it and get some ideas for my crazy bunch too! xo

Family Travels | Visiting Texas

As I mentioned yesterday on my little recap post, we just got back from our trip to Texas this past Thursday and it was definitely a much needed break. Life has been so crammed with activities, appointments, work, and such that we’ve just been feeling very rushed and unable to catch up. Thanks to a great friend, we got an awesome deal on airline tickets so we decided a getaway to visit family in Texas was just what we needed. We didn’t plan anything, as we were just going to relax and unwind. It worked out perfectly. Way better than I imagined it would! I’m a planner, winging it is out of my comfort zone.

We spent our first 3 days at my cousin’s friend’s lake house. They’d been planning this getaway with a bunch of their friends too so we totally just crashed the party!! We didn’t really know most the folks before this trip so I was kinda nervous about just spending 3 days with a bunch of peeps we didn’t know. But, I gotta say we totally just made some lifelong friends. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming. It truly felt like we’d all known each other forever by Sunday night! And it was a total blast to see my kiddos playing in the lake where I spent so much of my own childhood playing and swimming in.

After the lake house weekend, we spent a day at my cousin’s house playing farm! Jason and Diego got to do some target practice (Yes, I was freaking out!) They took a walk in the woods, fed the chickens and collected their eggs, and ended the day riding a horse. By this point, we’d had enough of the country life and us adults went out for a nice date night in town about an hr away but it was worth the drive! Don’t worry, the kiddos were well taken care of and had plenty of fun catching up computer games and ipads! It’d been days since they played with their electronic devices! We went to this awesome sushi spot that was so yummy and had a great time!

The next morning, we left my cousin’s place and headed to do some sight seeing. We spent the day at Natural Bridge Caverns exploring the underground caverns, playing around the canopy challenge, and panning for gems. It was a really great day (minus some whining & bickering from the kiddos) I highly recommend checking it out if you’re ever in the San Antonio area. It ended up getting really cold that day and night, but we braved the chill and walked around San Antonio’s River Walk on our way to dinner.

The next day was even colder, so our trip to The Alamo was pretty short and we went ahead and made our drive to Austin early. Once in Austin, we found the coolest movie theaters we’ve ever been to, Moviehouse & Eatery! It’s a big multiplex cinema with conventional theaters, IMAX, and dine-in theaters with awesome reclining seats! We opted for the dine-in experience and munched on bottomless popcorn, fish and chips, gourmet pizza, and for Jason and I, a nice bottle of riesling. Yea, watching Big Hero 6 and drinking wine was a fabulous way to end our trip!

So, although this is most definitely not our typical vacation, jam packed with activities and sight seeing, it was most definitely an unforgettable time spent with family and friends. It taught me that sometimes it’s good to let go, relax, and go with the flow rather than having it all planned out. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my itinerary vacations, but I think we can add some of these trips into the mix too 😉

How do you like to travel? Do you like to wing it, plan it all out, or somewhere in between?

7 Tips for Traveling with Children and Having Fun

As most of you know, I love to travel and I have totally passed on the travel bug to my family! YAY 🙂 We love to go on adventures big or small and explore new places! Flying for a family of 4 can get expensive, so lots of our trips are road trips! But, on the occasion where we do get to fly, we still use the same system for traveling with our kiddos because it seems to work great for us! So, if you’ll be traveling with children this year and are a little nervous (as well you should be!) take a deep breath and check out the tips below on how to make traveling with children less stressful and lots more fun!

1. Prep the kids. If you’ll be in the car for a few hours, let them know. Tell them how long the flight is going to be. Depending on the age of your kiddos, you don’t have to be exact. A simple, “We’re going to be on this plane for a long time.” Is enough. This helps keep the “Are we there yet” chants at bay, at least for a little while!

2. Keep your expectations low. Kids are kids. They will get cranky, they will ask a million questions, they will get bored, they will need to go to the bathroom 5 minutes after you asked if they needed to go and they said no. If you mentally prepare yourself for these situations, they may not seem so major when they actually happen. Don’t expect perfection from them, but do tell them what type behavior you want from them. I find that if I tell my kids how I want them to behave beforehand, it’s easier to redirect them when they get rowdy or off track.

3. Have entertainment. Yup, I am not above having my kids watch movies or play games on an ipad or laptop when I know it’s going to be a long trip. We also pack them books, small toys, pencils, crayons, and paper to draw. For our last road trip we printed out a few family-friendly road trip games online, such as license plate games and I Spy. We even found Road Trip Bingo game cards!

4. Plan a surprise (or two!) On our road trip to Ensenada, Mexico this past spring, we used our Happy Family Movement Road Trip in a Box kit. This was a blast! The kids really loved opening up the packages at the designated times and taking breaks to play with water guns, blow bubbles, or just have a dance party in the middle of nowhere! The kits are no longer available to purchase, but you can totally make your own! Just grab a few fun dollar type toys, wrap them up, give them instructions on when to open them and wait for the fun to happen! You could do simple things like temporary tattoos, gummy worms, stamp kits, an inflatable beach ball, etc!!! The possibilities are endless and will definitely make for a memorable trip!

5. Rest. This one, I learned from experience! We totally didn’t plan for much rest on our summer trip to the east coast and we hit the ground running when we go there. This was a huge mistake and we ended up with some major cranky jet lagged kids in Washington DC! Once we slowed down a bit and they got a good night’s sleep, we were great. The remainder of our trip was awesome! From now on, we start our trips a bit slower, don’t plan a ton of activities when we first arrive, especially if there’s a time difference, and we find it makes for a much better trip overall!

6. Start travel traditions. We love to goecache! So, for us going on a trip also means we get to do a fun geocache in another state. The kids expect it now and it’s part of our road trip tradition. Whenever we travel to California or Utah, you know we’re going to have Chick-fil-a because we don’t have any in Vegas. Also, when we go on road trip, you know Johnny Cash’s Everywhere Man is gonna be playing! Our traditions aren’t too big but they’re ours and we love them! Whatever your tradition is, big or small, your kids will love it. Traditions make kids feel special and who doesn’t love that?

7. Have Fun! Some of my best memories as a child are from family vacations and I really want my kiddos to have these kinds of memories too! I love it when one of my kids starts off a conversation with, “Remember when we did/went…” We know that traveling with children can be tough and tiring, but it’s also so worth it! And the best part about traveling with little ones is that they don’t remember the time when you were stressed out at the rental car ticket counter or the time they made you upset because they broke a coffee mug at the souvenir shop, nope, kids tend to forget that stuff pretty quickly. They’ll remember the little things. The ice cream cone you got them at the beach, the fun rides they rode over and over, the jokes you told, the giggles, the fun, the good stuff. And at the end of it all, that’s what really matters. The good stuff!

Here’s to safe travels, fun adventures, and making memories that last a lifetime!

How to Encourage Kids to Eat Healthy & Be Active

OOPS, so I haven’t blogged all week. I feel bad about it. I really enjoy blogging and it helps keep me sane. But sometimes, life gets crazy and there aren’t enough hours in the day to do what needs to be done and work, laundry, dishes, all these things tend to pile up on you…BUT, that’s for another blog post because I finally did carve out some time this morning to share a bit of my family life with you.
Most of you know, I’m a mom of two kiddos! I blog about them a ton, especially when it comes to doing fun stuff together and going on family vacations and adventures! Today, though I want to talk about how important it is to lead by example and how to encourage kids to eat healthy and be active. When I started this weight loss journey and began exercising regularly I did it for me. I mean, yeah, I wanted to be able to run around with my kiddos and not be out of breathe, I wanted to be a good example to them about eating healthy and keeping active. But guess what? These things don’t happen by osmosis. Kids don’t just become interested in eating kale chips because you are. They won’t trade video games for jumping jacks because you tell them they should be more active. Nope. You have to engage children. You need to get out there and do these things with them. They not only need to see you go for a run, they need you to invite them to join you. It took me a little bit to realize that while I was enjoying the benefits of a healthier, more active lifestyle, my kiddos weren’t as involved as I wanted them to be. So, I made a conscious decision to change that! And for the past year or so, we’ve been making changes for the kiddos too!

Here are a few things we do & you can use to help you and your family eat healthier and be more active:

Making easy Lexi's Clean Kitchen no-bake nut-free Powerbites! Check out the recipe :) Kids love these! — Making easy Lexi’s Clean Kitchen no-bake nut-free Powerbites! Check out the recipe 🙂 Kids love these!

Cook together! Having my kiddos help me cook dinner or a healthy snack helps a ton when trying new things. It doesn’t mean they’ll love it, but they will at least try it because they helped make it. And, even if they don’t like a certain dish or vegetable, it’s still a great way to spend time together and talk about the benefits of healthy foods verses junk food.
Make Exercise Fun! Kids are kids. You can’t pop in a workout DVD and expect them to love the burn! You gotta make it fun for them and for us, that means taking it outside. Whether we’re going on a family hike, a bike ride with daddy, or a 1 mile run I like to let them know we’re not just having fun but also exercising. We’ll do fun little “boot camps” or challenges at the park. Jason & Diego will play football or basketball. The important thing is to stay active!

Be Sneaky! Yup, I am not above tricking my kiddos into eating healthy. I mostly do this by adding spinach & chia seeds to all our smoothies and making fresh juices with both fruits & veggies! Smoothies are usually a few spoonfuls of greek yogurt, a banana, milk, berries, a bunch of spinach, and a tablespoon of chia seeds. One of Elysse’s favorite juices is made with 5 carrots – 1 cucumber – 4 celery – 2 big handful of grapes! It’s fun to experiment and try new combinations and of course, have the kids help 😉
Share your Passions! I love to sign up for races and my favorite are obstacle races and lots of times my hubby runs along with me. It’s fun to take the kids to watch us run and cheer us on. By race day, they are super excited because they saw how much we trained for that day. They see us put in the work and then see the results of our hard work. Nothing like your kid see you succeed and be proud of you!
Get them Involved! Not only do we sometimes take the kids along to see us race, we also sign them up for their own races! Of course, there is nothing competitive in these races, it’s just a ton of fun for them and that’s what we want. There are lots of races that have fun 1 mile family runs or are kid/stroller/walker friendly. We want our kids to enjoy a healthy, active lifestyle now and as adults!

How do you encourage your kids to eat healthy & be active? Feel free to share your tips too!

Summer Bucket List | Ethel M. Chocolates & FroYo

It’s summer and yea, with trips out of town, bbq’s with friends and family, and so on & so on, we let the kids have a few more treats than usual! When we put together our Summer Bucket List, we added a few intentional “treat” days to the list. We figured a trip to the chocolate factory would be fun on a day when we had nothing to do. So, on a Monday after lunch we took a trip to the chocolate factory. I think my kids were expecting Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, so when they saw that it was just a hallway with information and a window into the actual working factory, it was not very exciting! But, we did learn a few things about how chocolate is made and we got some free samples at the end. Of course, we did buy some chocolates to take home and we walked around their cactus garden. It was super hot that day, so it was a short walk!

After doing some back to school shopping a few weeks ago, we went over to Yogurtland for some yummy froyo! The kids love being able to serve it themselves and pick out their own toppings! It was a nice treat on a hot summer day for sure!

I’ll be back tomorrow talking about why traditions are important in families and sharing some photos from our yearly back-to-school California trip!

Summer Bucket List | The Happy Family Movement

Our kids look forward to summer all year long! They know that summer will be full of fun times and adventures. This is mostly because of our Summer Bucket List! Our friends from The Happy Family Movement have put on this summer bucket list challenge and each year it just gets bigger and bigger!! There will be some fun giveaways from their awesome sponsors, a facebook community, and lots more!

I like tell the kids a few days in advance to start thinking of ideas for the summer bucket list and then usually one evening after dinner we’ll sit and share our ideas and some of the ideas make it on the list and some don’t, but we always work together to create it. This really makes it fun for the kids and they are more excited about it. This year we decided to have an actual bucket and we’ll fill it with the pictures we drew of the activity as we do them and hopefully, by the end of the summer the bucket will be filled with our pictures and we’ll be filled up with memories of another fun summer!

There’s still plenty of time to get your list together and join in on the fun! Your family will look forward to the big & little adventures you’ll have throughout the summer. The list doesn’t have to be big or filled with expensive outings to be fun. Just think of some things you all can do together as a family in the summer, write it down, then go have fun!

Here’s our list (I figured we stick to the 14 in 2014 theme!)

Make sandcastles at the beach
Enjoy a picnic at Mt. Charleston
Family dance party
Discover a new playground
Make loom necklaces
Bike Wash
Boogie board at the beach
Go out for frozen yogurt
Visit Wet N Wild
BBQ with friends
Visit Ethel M. Chocolate Factory
Geocache day at Red Rock Canyon
Hiking at Bryce Canyon
Watch a 51’s baseball game

I’ll be blogging with pictures as we start checking things off our list! So, what fun adventures do you have on your summer bucket list?

Bubble Run Las Vegas | Race #2 of 14 for 2014

Last Saturday I ran the Bubble Run with a few friends and my 5 year old daughter! It was her first 5K and she just loved it. I knew people would be dressed in costumes, especially tutus and I explained this to her and asked if she’d like a fun outfit for the run. Her reply was this, “No way! I’m not wearing a tutu! I’m in it to win it!” Clearly, she has a bit of a competitive streak!!

We picked up our packet on Friday and since kids under 6 run free she didn’t get a tshirt or bib. Of course, they sold kid packets for $20 and I had to get her one. I’m so glad I did. The bib really made her feel legit and the goggles they provided worked great to keep the bubbles out of her eyes. Friday night, she could not fall asleep from the excitement, but had no problem getting up early for her ‘race’. She was ready for the fun to start.

It was so cute seeing her reaction at the starting line when the bubbles/foam started coming down! The race had a total of 4 different color bubble stations: pink, green, blue, and yellow. We did a bit of running and walking, but I think for a little 5 year old, Elysse did great and never complained about being tired. Every time she saw a bubble station she would start running and we ran all the way to the finish line. I was very proud of my little runner! After the run, they had a little area with a DJ and they were giving away prizes and of course, lots more bubbles! It was hard to get our little party animal out of the bubble pit!

Obviously, this wasn’t a timed race or anything too serious for me (believe me, I have enough of those coming up!) This race was just a fun time and a good way to encourage a healthy lifestyle for my kiddos. I want them to grow up feeling strong and healthy and having some positive experiences and fun memories being active! My 9 yr old didn’t want to do this one, but he’s all signed up for Saturday’s Jr. Spartan!

What are some fun things you and your family do to stay active and healthy? I’d love some more ideas, so feel free to share them in the comments below 🙂

Spring Break Road Trip 2014 | Las Vegas to Ensenada, Mexico

In case you didn’t already know it, I love to travel! I love getting out and seeing new places. I get it from my parents 🙂 Anyhow, our last family trip was in August and it didn’t go so great (Elysse got sick and we had to cut it short!) You can read all about it HERE. Needless to say, I was itching to get away as a family. Diego’s school is year-round, so rather than the conventional 3 months off during the summer, he gets 3week track breaks throughout the year, the first was in November and now in March. We figured we’d take advantage of the time off and call it Spring Break! Our little road trip consisted of driving to San Diego from Las Vegas then from San Diego to Ensenada, Mexico. We arrived late afternoon to La Jolla Beach where we were all ready to run around in the sand and stretch our legs!

The next day, I got up early and went on a quick 2 mile run before our super fun whale watching tour. We were told not to expect too much since they don’t always see whales, but we were in for a major treat! We first saw a huge pod of about 100 common dolphins playing and jumping over the waves made by the boat. This was Elysse’s favorite part since she was really able to see them up close. And then, not only did we see whales, but we saw them mating! Yup, 3 huge grey whales (2 males, 1 female) were frolicking and courting right in front of our boat. It was an amazing sight! Talk about getting close to nature! Diego had a few questions afterwards….awkward!!! Aside from those whales, we also saw 2 others in the distance for a total of 5 whale sightings!

After the tour we had some lunch and drove the second half of our trip to Ensenada, Mexico. We were all beat from the drive, but we were super hungry so we found a taco place and enjoyed some delicious local food! The next morning we went to see La Bufadora, one of the largest blowholes in North America. The street leading to the blowhole is lined with vendors selling all sorts of things from food and drinks to toys and tshirts! The kids loved it and Diego got to haggle with the vendors! It was pretty funny, but they did come down in price for him 😉

Yes, they were hoping people would give them money. Nobody did!

I wasn’t expecting the weather to be as warm as it was so I didn’t pack swim suites. Elysse was dying to play in the sand at the beach, so we made a quick stop at Wal-Mart (yup, they even have Starbucks & Costco!) got some bathing suites for the kids and spent the rest of our afternoon playing at the beach, collecting seashells, and enjoying the beach all to ourselves! It was perfect!

The next day, I woke up a little early and did a quick 20 minute interval workout that my trainer gave me before we left. It felt great to get 2 workouts in during the trip, especially since I wasn’t being 100% paleo 😉 On our last full day, we drove out to La Cava de Marcelo, a cheese farm I had heard of on Trip Advisor. It was so worth the drive! We enjoyed a nice tour of the farm, learned how they make their artisan cheeses, and had a tasting of 5 different cheeses in the cave. Afterwards, the kids played around and we ate a delicious lunch al fresco! We ended our evening with some shopping along the main street of Ensenada and a seafood dinner!

This trip was a lot of fun and wasn’t too packed with activities, so we were all able to just relax and enjoy our days away from the routine. The drive back to the US however, was not very fun and traffic to get across the border was over 2 hours, even with ReadyPass, which is faster. I think the regular line was about 4 hrs!! As soon as we crossed the border we headed to Balboa Park so the kids could run around and stretch before the long ride home.

Huge thanks to Happy Family Movement for their Road Trip in a Box! Those packages made our trip a lot more fun. I’ll be blogging all about that on Monday, so stay tuned! Thanks for sticking around and reading all about our latest adventure! Do you have any fun adventures planned with your family soon? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below 😉