Tips

Meringue Cookies

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I had never tried meringue cookies until a few years ago when we were visiting our friends that live in Las Vegas and they had a container of them in their pantry.

It’s not something I had ever seen in the grocery store, but I did find them at Whole Foods and bought myself a container… Once after trying them in Vegas. 😂

So that was the only two times… In my LIFE… that I had meringue cookies, until… I saw them on Pinterest recently. I don’t know how Pinterest knows just the right things to show me 🤷🏽‍♀️. I think I was actually looking up royal icing and since you make that with meringue powder it noticed the connection and had to throw it out to see if I’d bite… And I totally did.

But, I didn’t see any recipes that used the Wilton Meringue Powder, only recipes that say how important it is so make sure you only have egg white and nothing else… AT ALL. Sorry, but I don’t have time for all that madness, I just wanted an easy recipe using my cheater meringue powder… Which was also not easy to find.

I was trying to order from Amazon but they won’t ship to California… They’ll ship to every other state… But California 🤦🏽‍♀️. So I asked my trusty Facebook friends and they said I could find it at Wal-Mart. I went on my search for all things baking and there was no meringue powder to be found 🙄. But… I thought I remembered seeing baking things in the craft area as well on a previous visit, so I made the trek across the store and found it! 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 If you are looking for meringue powder make sure you check by the baking pans in the craft area… Baking is an art after all! 😘

Since Pinterest wasn’t much help for a recipe using meringue powder, I had to try to navigate my way through the Wilton site… I did find a recipe but I wouldn’t say it was the most descriptive… So I’m going to write it in easier to understand (for me anyway) terms and hopefully you’ll me able to follow along.

What you’ll need…

  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extra
  • 1/8 cup meringue powder
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2/3 cups granulated sugar

You’ll also want to have:

  • A mixer (I used my mother-in-love’s old Kitchenaid mixer and am loving it, but this one looks like it has all the same attachments and is much more affordable)
  • Piping bags with tips (I bought this set and these bags are amazing! The tips are pretty cool too)
  • Icing color (I used these gel drops)
  • Baking mats… you could use parchment paper, but I didn’t have any so I ordered both parchment paper and these baking mats from Amazon at the same time and I don’t know how I lived without these mats before… LOVE them!

Before you get started, you should know that these need to cool in the oven for several hours, so they are best made at night so they can stay in the oven overnight and be ready in the morning.

Step 1

Preheat oven to 250°F. Place your baking mats into your baking pans.

Step 2

In large bowl, whip Meringue Powder and water with electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form, do you even know what soft peaks are? If you don’t, I took a picture, essentially it’s when you see little lines forming and it isn’t a runny texture anymore. With mixer running, gradually add sugar. Whip until stiff peaks. Add vanilla extract and icing color and whip until well combined, scraping down bottom and sides of bowl as necessary.

Step 3

Fill your piping bag with the meringue and squeeze out 2 inch circles onto your baking mat about 1 inch apart from each other. I also did smaller little stars between my bigger circles and they turned out super cute as well.

Step 4

Bake 50 minutes or until outsides of meringues feel firm and crisp, turn off the over and let them cool for several hours on the pan. If you make these at night they can stay in the oven overnight. Once cooled, peel cooled meringues off of baking mat. Keep them in an airtight container at room temp for up 2 weeks.

Tips:

  • Use granulated sugar, I felt that it kept the consistency better for piping. I tried the second batch with powdered sugar and it seemed way too soft.
  • You can experiment with different flavors, but…. after trying 4 additional flavors, I think vanilla is still my favorite, even thought I love almond and coconut flavors, they just didn’t taste as great as the vanilla.
  • You can double the recipe. This is actually half of the recipe that Wilton has posted and it made so many cookies that I was glad I only did half because my oven wouldn’t have had the space for 4 pans.
  • I also bought these spatulas with my other baking goodies and they make it much easier to load your meringue into your piping bags towards the tip and not have to squeeze it down from the top.

Please let me know what you think and if you have any other fun ideas for me me to try!

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Bars

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So I got the Costco sized Honey Maid Graham Crackers and then realized they are best when used by December 31, 2019. And normally I would be ok with using things after the best by date… except we had an unopened box of Honey Maid Graham crackers… that were like a year past the best by date and they both smelled… and tasted foul. So… I won’t be making that mistake again… at least with Graham Crackers, I’m totally willing to try something past the best by date if it is another product.

Anyway, I had a cookie exchange party with my cousins on Sunday and I was trying to think of an easy, fast, recipe that I could make between church and the party and I came upon these… and I could use more of our Graham Crackers these before they go bad. I made the recipe and didn’t think about the cooling time needed, so they came out not so pretty when I tried to cut them and pack up up to leave the house quickly… so I did not take a picture of the final project… But I am making more today for our neighbors and for my hubby to take to his Rotary Club cookie exchange tomorrow, so… I’ll get a picture today!

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • ½ cup unsalted butter (that’s 1 stick)
  • 1½ cups graham cracker crumbs (that’s about 15 full crackers with all 4 pieces)
  • 14 oz sweetened condensed milk (that’s 1 can)
  • 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup peanut butter chips (the bag comes with 1 2/3 cups of chips so if you are going to double the recipe, make sure you get 2 bags)
  • 13 x 9 pan
  • This is all you need!
  • I never knew making a graham cracker crust was this easy… Ha!
  • I tried smoothing this… I would definitely use my tilting method instead.
  • I would also mix up the chocolate and peanut butter chips to have it more evenly blended.

Step 1: Making the crust

First, set your oven to 350 degrees on Bake before you make the crust so it will be ready when you are. And also… Grease your 13 x 9 pan… I forgot… And got a workout trying to get the bars off the sides.

You’ll need 15 sheets of the graham crackers, I broke mine into smaller sizes to fit into my food processor so they would get ground up easier.

I used my Kitchenaid Food Processor on Sunday and that thing is a beast. I can never figure out how to get it to start, then I remember that it has to line up correctly, and I still, for the life of me, can’t figure out how to put it all together. I think, if I remember correctly, I had to have the base using with the handle locked into place before I locked the lid into place, but I feel like I’m going to break it every time I use it. It was my late mother-in-loves, but she’s not here to show me how to use it, so… I keep it, but don’t use it very often. I should probably watch a YouTube video, because you can learn to do pretty much anything on YouTube. But… today I decided to try my immersion blender food processor attachment instead, because that thing is sooooooooo much easier for me, and wouldn’t ya know…. it chopped just as well, and it was a lot lighter, and fewer pieces to wash after. If you don’t have one… it’s pretty amazing!

Next up, I took a cold stick of unsalted butter straight from the fridge into my glass 2 cup Pyrex Measuring cup and cooked it for 1 minute and 15 seconds. Yours may take more or less time, so do what works best for you to get your butter melted. I linked you to a 3 size measuring cup set because it’s only 5 cents more to get all 3 sizes (1 cup, 2 cup, and 4 cup) than it is for you to get just the 2 cup size right now….

Mix the melted butter into the graham cracker crumbs, after combined, press your mixture into the bottom of your greased 13 x 9 pan.

Step 2: Adding the toppings!

Open your can of condensed milk and pour it over the pressed crust. I tried smoothing it out with a spatula on Sunday, but found that I had better luck by just picking up my pan and tilting it from front to back and side to side to get the condensed milk spread over all the crust without flipping some crust on top of the condensed milk.

Next I added the cup of chocolate chips, just sprinkle it all over, then the peanut butter chips, just sprinkle them all over… Now that I have done this twice with chocolate chips first, and peanut butter chips second, I realize all the peanut butter is on the top… so you may get a better mixture swapping back and forth from chocolate to peanut butter, then back to chocolate and back to peanut butter. But… it all tastes the same… so that’s up to you.

Step 3: Bake it!

Bake it uncovered in preheated over for 25 minutes. Then… here’s the part when I messed up… you have to let it cool before you cut it. So… I waited about 5 minutes, but you should probably wait more like 30-45 minutes. I’ll wait that long today and let you know how it works out for me.

Step 4: Share and bring some happiness to those you love

We will be sharing these with our neighbors and my hubby will be doing a cookie exchange with them too. They were a hit at the cousin cookie exchange, so I’ll definitely be adding these to my holiday baking list.

Just some tips…

These are the measuring cups and spoons I use… and while they are affordable, and lightweight, they also melt in the dishwasher… so I have a couple deformed measuring spoons. If I were to buy myself some new measuring cups and spoons, this is what I would choose next time.

I hope you enjoy these! They can stay fresh if you keep them covered at room temp.

You can double the recipe for a thicker bar.

You can make this recipe your own by adding your favorite flavor of chips, or nuts, candy, or even coconut.

Going Live…

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Because I failed miserably the first time I went live on Instagram, and had to search the internet, just to find out that there was no way to recover my Instagram Live if I didn’t click on the Save button before posting it… But I did find that I could do a screen record, as long as it was still in the 24 hours that my Live stayed… well… live. So… I made a video to share with others who may run into the same issue that I did.

Hopefully this will help you before you do your first Instagram Live…. or in case you made the same mistake I made, hopefully it’ll help you learn how you can still save a copy with a workaround. Below is my second live on Instagram, I did click the Save button before I posted it, and it did save to my phone, so I was able to upload it to YouTube. 🙂

I personally use this screen recorder on my Android devices

And I use this video editor to crop out anything outside of the screen that I’m trying to capture.

And if you didn’t know…. IGTV is pretty awesome. It allows you to upload videos between 1 and 10 minutes… you know how you can only load 1 minute clips to your posts on Instagram or in your Stories??? Well… with IGTV you can post a longer video, then you can share a clip of your video as a post on your feed, and you can also share the clip to your story so that people can click on it and it will take them to your longer video. I thought it was pretty fabulous when I learned I could take longer videos and not have to crop out only my favorite minute.

What’s your favorite thing to go Live about?

The Superhero Family RV Trip – Day 4

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So we didn’t actually leave the house until 12:27 am… And you might be wondering how I remember that almost 5 months later… but I have Google Maps to thank for that! If you have your timeline tracking enabled, you can look back to any day and see where you were and what time you were there. So it looks like we drove for 1.5 hours then stopped for a few minutes, I feel like we may have stopped for gas.

We arrived in Idaho at 2:42 am and finally pulled into the Montpelier Creek KOA Journey at 4:07 am. I am pretty sure I nodded off for a couple minutes here and there on our way there. And as soon as we pulled in, found the map with our spot marked out for us, we pulled into our pull through and we went to sleep. I don’t remember if we even hooked up, or if I said we could hook up in the morning so we could dump and fill before we left. I really loved the full hookups and pull through sites, because we didn’t have to find the dump station, or stop along the way to dump and fill up. Not that I was ever the one to do the dumping or filling, but it was convenient to be able to just relax in the RV with the kids while my hubby was outside getting us up and running again.

We woke a few hours later and while Ryan was prepping us for our departure, the kids and I went for a little adventure around the park. We saw the biggest dandelions I had ever seen in my ENTIRE LIFE, and there was a cute little creek that you could sit on a bench and watch. I’m pretty sure the kids told me they thought they saw a piranha in there… They had a swimming pool, which we didn’t use because we had no time to waste, and they had a fun playground that the kids enjoyed for a bit, we went into the little store… but I think we only bought ice (we had an ice maker in the RV but… I didn’t trust drinking water from those fill stations), then the kids played Mega Connect Four for a bit.

  • So I didn’t take this picture until we were leaving Montpelier… Oops!

We had to hit the road pretty quickly because we had plans to make it all the way to see Old Faithful. So we finally loaded up and hit the road at 12:33 pm.

Except… as soon as we left the campground and turned right on the road to head to Wyoming we were going as slow as a turtle. It may have been a little daring to make our first RV trip a 21 day trip, especially since we had no idea what we were doing. But… we were already on it, so it was going to be a learning experience. Ryan had a hunch that it was going slow because it was a cool morning and maybe the RV just wasn’t warm enough to get up and go. So we pulled over, and after a few minutes we tried again and we were up to speed in a minute or so. Around 15 minutes later… we were in Wyoming! We kinda passed the sign, so I jumped out and ran back to get a picture of it.

We stopped at another Sinclair for gas… and our gas stops suddenly turned into lunch stops. Ryan would get the gas going, then he would usually run inside to use the restroom… I on the other hand would take the opportunity to move around the RV while the RV was not in motion so I wouldn’t get nauseous. The kids could get out of their seats and sit at the table while I got lunch ready for them and sometimes we would be hanging out at the pump for 30 minutes or more.

Then we made a pit stop to take some pictures with this beautiful background and white puffy clouds. Then we drove through Jackson Hole Wyoming, then on to see the Grand Tetons.

Then… we saw where the Buffalo really roam. They weren’t crossing the street, so they didn’t slow down traffic… though I did see the traffic seeming to slow down on Google maps, and I was hoping that the slow down meant we were going to see something really cool. I just had NO idea that we would see hundreds of Buffalo right off the side of the road.

So… we did what any tourist would do… pulled over and took in the amazing sight for a few minutes. But not too many minutes, we still had destination Old Faithful on our mind.

We finally arrived at the entrance to Yellowstone at 5:49 pm and arrived at the parking lot for Old Faithful at 7:00 pm. I knew it “closed” at 8 pm, and I knew it could erupt every 55 minutes… so I was hoping that it would erupt within 55 minutes from the time we arrived and didn’t happen to erupt 1 minute prior to our arrival where we would have missed the last “showing” of the day. I later figured out it was the Visitor Center that closed at 8 pm, and Old Faithful itself did not turn off at 8 pm… duh! It erupted about 10 minutes after we got to the viewing area, and it was an amazing site to see!

What I completely forgot about, until about 30 minutes away from Old Faithful was that I had downloaded an app called Gypsy Guide Yellowstone… I wish I had turned it on sooner. It is like having a personal tour guide on board. That’s actually where I learned about the timing of Old Faithful and where to go. He also mentioned to go into the Old Faithful Inn, he didn’t tell us what we would see, he just told us we wouldn’t want to miss it. I’m pretty sure he was talking about the massive clock… and all the beautiful wood. So after a quick picture, we walked back out to the RV to grab some dinner and head on to our next stop for the night in Cody, Wyoming… at our first Wal Mart! We pulled out of the parking lot at 9:05 pm and it was still daylight… it was so crazy!

But first… we spotted some Elk, so we pulled over and got out of the RV to walk over to get a closer look. Someone stopping to see the Elk told us they had just seen a bear… Oh my goodness, I was walking back to the RV as fast as I could, especially since Ryan was ahead of us with Alexandria, and he had the bear spray and I was trailing behind with Victoria and Bobby as it started getting dark fast.

Sometimes Google Maps didn’t give me what I thought were the very best directions… and the drive from Old Faithful to Cody was one of those times…. we were driving on what seemed to be a dirt road, under construction, in the pitch black of night and I never knew when we would get back to real road. We did see some deer, which was frightening to me since it was so dark, but we saw the most beautiful moonlight reflecting on the lake, and my Google Pixel Night Sight actually makes it look like it was still daylight out, but it was very much night.

Tips for Day 4:

  • If you don’t have Google Maps…. get it! And turn on your timeline tracking if you ever take a trip and want to remember where you went.
  • If you are going to visit Yellowstone, get Bear Spray… we didn’t need it, but we had it just in case we did need it.
  • If you want a tour guide definitely get the GyPSy Guide for Yellowstone, I think they have it for other locations too… so look into it for any travel that you might want to enjoy listening to, rather than trying to read while you are taking in the beauty around you.
  • If you are driving to Cody, Wyoming for the night… try to leave before nightfall… and hopefully the construction will be done (it may even be done now) so that you don’t have to brave dirt roads in the middle of the night.
  • Give yourself some time… that’s probably a tip I would add for EVERY SINGLE DAY because I feel like we were so rushed. We didn’t have time to spend time in places because our schedule was packed full, and I don’t regret any of the places we got to see, but I would definitely take a second trip to almost every place because there was so much more we could have done had we had more time.

The Superhero Family RV Trip – Day 3

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We got to sleep in, then wake up and had a homemade delicious breakfast with family thanks to Ryan’s sister! She was amazing for driving all the way to Cedar City and back to pick us up for the night the night before, and by the end of the day, she would do the same trip again. Thank you, Jen! You really made an unfortunate situation soo sooo much better!

After breakfast, the kids enjoyed throwing rocks into the pond, playing guitar with Uncle Brian, then Auntie Jen told us about the splash pad, so… we got the kids swimming gear together (that is one of the things I packed when we knew we may be without the RV for the whole weekend) and headed out to the splash pad. There were playgrounds there too! If you are ever in Alpine, Utah and looking for a cool place for the family to hang out, you should check out Alpine Splash Pad. While we were at the splash pad, we got 1 call from Amen diesel saying the replaced the clamps on the hose where the coolant had been shooting out. They were going to take it for a test drive, then let us know if that fixed it. A couple hours later, they told us it was ready.

I had Ryan leave me and the kids at the house, so that he could make the 3 hour drive back to Cedar City with his sis to get the RV, drive it back 3 hours, then pick us up so we could continue on to Idaho. I didn’t think the kids would do well with 10 hours of driving in a day when they could just have a 3.5 hour trip. We had reservations for the night in Montpelier, Idaho, it was the closest place we could find to Yellowstone that had vacancies. Apparently, you need to book in January if you want to stay in Yellowstone, and since I was booking our sites in May and June… I had to take whatever we could get. If we stayed one extra night in Utah, Old Faithful would have been an 8 hour drive away, which easily turns into 10 hours with gas stops… and then we had another almost 3 hour drive to Cody, Wyoming where we planned to stay the next night. So I stayed in Alpine with the kids, did a couple loads of laundry, helped the kids shower, which meant I got completely soaked, but they all got clean, then I turned on The Greatest Showman on the tablet for them to watch while I showered, and they were all asleep before Ryan got back.

I packed up and waited up… he arrived around 11:45 pm, we loaded the kids, laying down, drank our Active, then hit the road. It was really dark… and we were driving through a lot of trees, with those signs that say watch out for wildlife… but thankfully we didn’t have any animals dart out in front of us.

Tips for Day 3:

  • If you plan to visit Yellowstone in the summer, and want to stay there… make sure you make your reservations really early or you’ll be stuck staying further away. We tried to stay in Alpine, Wyoming, but that was booked too. Montpelier, Idaho has a great KOA and it’s only a couple hours away from Jackson, Wyoming.
  • Speaking of trip planning… you MUST get the RV Parky App. I originally tried to plan our trip on RoadTrippers, but before we could even start our trip, they started charging and limiting the number of stops you could add to your trip for the free version. However… RV Parky lets you add unlimited stops. And I love that you could add your destination, then search around there for places to stay. The places to stay included reviews, so you could know ahead of time if it was a good option for you. We were in a really big RV, so some of the reviews helped me decide that we likely would have trouble getting in and out. And while I only planned to stay at Walmart 1 time, we ended up staying at at least 3 Walmarts in our 21 days.
  • Allow for more time. I booked our trip solid. The purpose of the trip was to go to my sister’s wedding in Michigan, and while I planned for about 6 hours of driving a day, it took way longer than that, most days. So, we had to rush to see what we were going to see then keep on moving so we wouldn’t get behind schedule.

The Superhero Family RV Trip – Day 2

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Day 2 we got to start our day with a nice hot shower in our friend’s house before we headed on to Utah to visit Ryan’s sister and her family. When we got out to the RV to take off, we realized that the refrigerator had turned off at some point during the night and the food wasn’t as cold as it should have been. Apparently the battery runs out of power, so my aunt, who has her own trailer, and was giving us lessons as we went along, told us we could switch to propane when we dry camped to keep the fridge cold if we weren’t keeping the generator on all night. So… we started doing that (when we remembered).

Speaking of generator, we also learned that you can’t power the generator on with a dead battery, so you had to start the RV first, then power on the generator if you were going to use it while driving. Another thing, you have to have the generator on while driving if you want to run the A/C in the back of the RV. So many things to learn!

So we made our first stop of the day in St George at a Sinclairs (one of those Dinosaur gas stations) to gas up, and made lunch and ate it while we filled up, and I’m sure Ryan cleaned the windshield as well, that was his third job (1 – Driving, 2 – Getting Gas, 3 – Cleaning the windshield). One app we used almost every single day of the trip to find the least expensive gas, that was nearest to us, was Gas Buddy, I HIGHLY recommend you get that for any road trip. We set it to Diesel so that it would only consider gas stations that had diesel, then you could open the station and see what type of amenities they had. Most of the time we just needed gas, but sometimes we needed to dump and fill up with water.

Then we got back on the road and started heading up the grade toward Alpine, Utah when the thermostat got really hot, the little alarm (a different one) made noise and said we were overheating, and the engine slowed way down. We pulled over on the side of the 15 and called AAA. If you don’t have AAA, you should get it, we have the Premier membership, and it allows for one 200 mile tow a year for each cardholder, which has absolutely saved us in our personal cars, like the time we were moving here and Ryan’s car broke down hours from our new home, and we got it towed for Free! So, we found out from our friend Mike that there’s Premier RV for when you are in an RV, and you need to add it on a couple months before you trip, so we did, and it sure came in handy when we broke down on the second day of our trip! Thank you, Mike!!!

While we were hanging out on the side of the freeway for hours, the kids got to play with puzzles, color some of their favorite characters, and just hang out watching movies. We found out most repair shops are closed over the weekend, and since it was almost 5 pm on a Friday we may have to wait until Monday to get a diagnosis.

The first company AAA sent out was Bracken’s Auto Tech. Austin came out in his tow truck with some coolant to see if filling that up would get us up and running again. After he filled up the coolant, we tried driving the RV again, the temp had gone down, but within 30 seconds of driving, the heat went all the way back up and the engine slowed back down. He realized all the coolant shot right out and went onto the ground, so it was going to need more than just a refill. He thought we may have to get an Uber to get me and the kids to wherever the RV would be towed since they don’t usually have room for 2 adults and 3 car seats in a tow truck, but I had a friend in St George, also named Austin who had volunteered to come pick us up if we needed a ride.

Thankfully, next AAA sent out All Ways Towing to get us towed to Amen Diesel (they were actually opened on Saturdays). The driver of the first tow truck was Hunter, he came with an extended cab tow truck to pick us up, and they sent a separate tow truck to pick up the RV. So my friend Austin got to stay at work once he knew we were taken care of. Thank you for the offer, Austin! Hunter knew we were trying to pack some bags in case we would be without the RV for the weekend, and he had fun keeping the kids entertained. Once the RV tow truck arrived and they got it loaded up, Hunter drove us to Denny’s where Ryan unloaded me, the 3 kids, the 2 car seats (1 with a sleeping child) and the bags, while he headed to Amen Diesel to get the 3rd car seat with Hunter.

We spent 3 hours at Denny’s eating dinner and waiting for Ryan’s sister, Jen, to arrive from Alpine to pick us up for the night and drive us back to her house. Everyone at Denny’s was super nice, especially our server, Jake, who was always on top of things and made great recommendations! It made the wait go by much faster.

It was a long day, and we actually ran out of data on our phone one day prior to the start of our unlimited month… Boo… While at a rest stop on the way up to Alpine, Ryan called Verizon to see if they would waive the $15 overage fee, and rather than waive the fee, they told us about an offer we had on our account for being long time customers, where rather than paying the extra $30 for one month of unlimited data, they could offer us unlimited data for $2 extra a month… every month! And they would prorate it to the current month, so not only did they waive the $15 fee, and not bill us $30 extra for July, they billed us $2 for the month for June so we didn’t have an overage, and now we have unlimited data for only $2 a month, rather than $30 a month. So that $45 we would have spent, will not buy us almost 2 years worth of unlimited data. Auntie Jen was singing the Daniel Tiger song about when something seems bad ,turn it around, and find something good, but the kids didn’t hear it. And when we walked out of the rest stop bathroom, Bobby started singing it… so… the break down, and the running out of data, actually turned into something good.

So, it was a long, exhausting day, but… we scored on the Verizon offer, and we got to sleep in a super comfy bed, in a dark dark room, and wake up the next morning to spend time with the family.

Tips for Day 2:

  • Get AAA if you own a car.
  • Get AAA Premier RV if you own, or are going to be using an RV.
  • Get Gas Buddy for any road trip… or even if you just randomly choose where you get your gas in town. We usually go to Costco because it’s generally the cheapest in town. Speaking of Costco, upgrade to the Executive membership if you don’t already have it, it pays for itself. If you don’t make enough back in the rewards to cover the price difference between the regular and executive membership, they’ll refund you the difference!
  • Verizon is pretty awesome…. sure we didn’t have service in some locations, but overall, we had pretty good service as we went through 16 states. And that unlimited offer came at the perfect time, it even allowed me to jump on a company Zoom and and watch it live, rather than calling in and just listening to it (did you know you can call into zooms when you don’t have data/wifi?)
  • If you are ever break down in Cedar City, Utah call All Ways Towing or Bracken Auto Tech, they are both awesome! And if you want a place to eat and hang out for a few hours… Denny’s is the place to go!

The Superhero Family RV Trip – Day 1

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We woke at 4:00 am to get dressed, and get the last things packed up. I sent my hubby outside as soon as he woke to see if the fridge was cold, and it was! All the praise hands 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼!!! I had planned to leave at 5:00 am, which really meant I wanted to leave by 6:00 am… I gave us an hour buffer… we didn’t end up leaving until 6:30 am and then we had to make a stop (at a Flying J) shortly after we left (probably within 30 minutes) because I was already getting nauseous. I would later discover how cool the RV spot we pulled into was because you could get up, get water, and dump all at the same spot!

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RV Trip Planning – What I’ve learned so far…

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I’ve been in planning mode for the last couple months. And we leave in around 57 hours and I am still trying to book the last couple nights of our trip. Now, it is a 3 week trip, so I still have some time, but I hoped to get everything booked before we left so we’d have a plan. Not that that means anything, since this is our first RV trip, we may find that we can’t do everything as fast as we had anticipated, so… we plan, but know that things may actually change, and we’ll roll with it.

A big bummer was when I was looking into where we could park/drive at Monument Valley and I found out that we can’t actually drive the RV through Monument Valley… To get there and back to the Grand Canyon from Scottsdale, AZ adds about 6 hours to the trip. So rather than drive all the way there to see what we can see before we can go no further, we are going to skip Monument Valley this trip and spend extra time at the Grand Canyon. We had originally planned to stop in Chicago for a night, but the Memorial Day murder rate helped me decide we could skip it this trip, and plan for that when the kids are older. We also planned for a stop in St Louis to see the Arch, but the 2 RV parking areas around there sounded like they weren’t in the best neighborhood, then there was the whole flooding, so… we’ll just pass by the Arch on the freeway… I think… (I haven’t actually solidified the exact routes yet, but we do have apps for that) and keep moving on to our next stop, and plan the actual visit to the Arch for when the kids are older as well. Part of the hesitation for just getting an RV site and Ubering is that we have 3 kids in car seats still, so if we were to Uber, we’d have 3 car seats to contend with wherever we are Ubering to. Thankfully, my parents are renting a minivan for while we are in Michigan for the wedding so that we can get around and leave the seats in the car while we go to the wedding and reception.

Since we will now have over 24 hours at the Grand Canyon, I found out we can take a train ride (https://www.thetrain.com/) to the Grand Canyon, so that saves me from trying to figure out where we should stay and how best to get to and park at the Grand Canyon with an RV, plus it means we can stay put for 2 nights. And, the train actually has an RV parking area so we can pull in for the night, wake up early, head to the train, spend a few hours at the Grand Canyon, then ride the train back to the RV, and wake up early on the 31st for our long drive home. They actually give a AAA discount too, so that’s a perk. However… you do get charged $35 for entry into the Grand Canyon unless you have and NPS Annual Pass.

What’s an NPS Annual Pass??? It’s a pass you can get for $80 that will allow you into all the parks on the list for an entire year. And you can buy it online… however… you can’t print your pass, they have to mail it to you, and since I am just looking into this 2 days before our trip… I don’t think that’s enough time to order our pass and have it arrive. You can pick up a pass from any of the parks though, so I am going to have Ryan try to run out to Lake Kaweah tomorrow to grab a pass, then hope that we can enter our pass online to save the $35 on the train tickets. If you are planning a trip to several parks this year, look into getting the America The Beautiful annual pass to save you some money https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm#CP_JUMP_5088574

Here’s the locations you can visit with the pass: https://store.usgs.gov/s3fs-public/PassIssuanceList.pdf

I’m sure I’ll learn more as we go, but for now I need to figure out how we can do a tour of Hoover Dam since… that is actually our first stop on day 1… so I better get to figuring that one out sooner, rather than later. https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/service/DamTour.html Looks like we won’t be taking the tour since you can’t go on the tour if you are under 8, and our kids are only 2.5, 4.5, and 6.5. Guess that will have to wait for another trip as well!

And what time are we actually leaving on Thursday morning? I don’t know yet… depends how late we are up on Wednesday night loading up the RV. I do have boxes all over the house right now with things I have already packed. And I’m praying that the kids aren’t taking things out and leaving them where I can’t see them because I am mentally checking them off the list as I put them into the boxes… Worst case… we can buy what we need on the road, thought I’d rather not spend money on something we already have… but the most important things for me to remember are… my grandma’s China that I am taking across the country for my sister, and our wedding attire… since we kinda need that for the wedding. Everything else… can be replaced… but I’m going to try to remember much as I possibly can so we can limit the amount of stops we have to make to buy what we forgot.

3 Week Cross Country RV Trip

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The Superhero family is getting ready for an adventure…

We’ve done road trips in California and once to Las Vegas to visit family, but it’s always been in our old Kia Sorento, or our Superheromobile, Toyota Sienna.

Trips with kids take SO MUCH LONGER than they did before we had kids.

All three of our kids have vomited on the road. So between vomit cleanups, stopping to nurse, stopping for bathroom breaks, stopping to change diapers, and stopping for food, our trips just take a lot longer now.

We’ve done some flights with kids too. Victoria’s first flight was to Maui when we went for our 2nd and my parent’s 30th wedding anniversary. They watched Victoria while we went snorkeling at Molokini. Bobby was technically there too… because I was about 5 weeks pregnant at the time. We took our baby announcement pictures there too!

Our second flight was to Cabo San Lucas, my mom and sister came to help this time because we had both Victoria and Bobby and had a wedding to attend where children weren’t allowed. It would have been easier to leave the kids at home with grandma, but I was still nursing Bobby, because he was only 6 months old at the time.

Alexandria has not been on a flight yet… and when we found out my sister was getting married in Michigan, I wasn’t too excited at the thought of taking 3 kids on flights to Michigan and back, especially since all 5 of us are in the wedding. So, I thought… maybe we can finally do our road trip…

We’ve been wanting to do a cross country RV trip for a while, but we just haven’t made it happen.

So, when this opportunity came up, we were super excited about the idea of making it happen. Our trip is scheduled to start 7/11/2019, and we’re scheduled to return back home on 7/31/2019. I’ve never done an RV trip (that I can remember, but I have seen a picture of me in an RV when I was a teenager, so… maybe I did, but if so my mom and dad did all the work, so I don’t remember it at all) so this is all new to me, and I’ll absolutely be using Google and YouTube, as well as all of my friends on Facebook to gather as much information as possible before we leave on our adventure.

I’m super excited to have a bathroom on board since that should allow us to eliminate some of our stops, we’ll have food and drink on board, so that’ll allow us to eliminate more stops, hopefully the kids are over their vomiting stage, they haven’t actually thrown up since we moved to Visalia in February 2018 (Alexandria was the last to vomit, and she did it twice in the last 30 minutes on our move here), and I’m really excited to get to explore our country, and see some pretty amazing landmarks, and get to do this with our kids.

This is our planned route… Stop #9 is the purpose of the trip, everything else is just an adventure! ❤️

So, now the real fun begins where we figure out how to use an RV, all the tips, and tricks, and where to stay. We plan to park on the street if possible when we stop to visit friends/family, but the big touristy sites, we’d like to find an RV park close to the tour site so we can get there easily since we aren’t towing a car.