Oh the Cows...and all of the Fabulous Billboards!

I have realized over the years that I am in love with Chick Fil A cow signs.  However, I only eat the grilled chicken sandwiches there and the waffle fries are pretty awesome.  How crazy is it for me to love the signs but not the food.  Lots of people find that they like something in particular and I just want the signs.  I am not interested in the nic knacks, calendars, cups or other collectibles.  I do not have one cow thing in my home, but over the last few years I have snapped a photo of every single cow sign I have passed.  If I missed the sign due to a truck obstructing my view or it was raining too hard, I would catch it on my next trip by.  You may see one here and there, but no city has as many cow signs as Atlanta, GA.  I am not talking about the regular flat billboards, but the ones with the cow statues.  They just brighten my day.  I hope they will make your Monday brighter.

You probably was not expecting that.  So far those are all of the cow billboards we have passed.  Mostly in Georgia and the others were in NC and MS.  These billboards and the giant peach water tower in Gaffeney, SC make traveling less painful. 

The Best Things in Life are Free

 

 I have said many times...simple things make me happy. The kind of happy that if you could see my heart it would be smiling.  Yeah, I know that's kinda weird but I don't know how else to say it.  I always know what I want to say, but I am not too sure in how to say it the right way.  I wanted to share something with ya'll on a more personal level.

Silhouette Paintings from Local Art Students

I love silhouettes; they are just so pretty.  It was only natural to want to snap a few pictures of all my favorites. These silhouette portraits that local high school art students painted and displayed throughout the mall. This is a wonderful way to show the talent of all of these students and open your eyes to the way some else views are and what their inspiration led to them painting.

This one is my favorite...it just reminds me of a romantic date night.

This one would be really pretty in my little girls room ad I love the sunset colors.

Could possibly be a big brother cheering up a little sister.  I think this would have been so much prettier with a little orange or pink in the back ground and the little boy and little girl a little further apart...just my take on it.

This would be a really great man den portrait for a man that hunts.  My husband doesn't hunt, but I really like this photo. It wants me to get an Autori and shoot some ducks. Yes, I am an 80's child and the duck shooting game, Mario and Pac Man were bomb games! 

I really like all kinds of silhouettes, how about you?

Mommy Brain Picnic

So this past weekend we went in search for Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah National Forest that is not very far away from where we live.   We had the hopes of going on a picnic by the waterfall.  WELLLLL, we failed to grab the gps in all of our excitement to finally go on a trip to see a waterfall.  

Mommy brain moment 1: I packed all of the picnic stuff & didn't pack any water, because we normally ALWAYS stop at the store before we get anywhere to get cold drinks for our outings.

Mommy brain moment 2: I did not print or write out the directions like I normally do just in case.  In the mountains there is normally no signal of any kind for cell use.  We drove in the general direction of Pisgah National Forest in hopes of such a known area being on signs the closer we got.

Mommy brain moment 3:  I see the first sign for Pisgah National Forest and I am like YES!  We go down the road a little a then see a Picnic Area sign.  This was supposed to be a short little detour to sight see.  We went ahead and took a right onto this rocky dirt road.  Needless to say this road was extremely small...about 2 feet on either side of the car. It was in the middle of the forest foliage....we were above the height of many of the full grown trees on the right and not many on the left with a mountain view in the distance. 

This was the road on a spot where there was trees right on side of us for a short distance:

As we are about 15 minutes into our dirt road travel with hope of getting to the picnic area, we decided we would try to turn around because it was the longest dirt road we had ever been on.  Welp, that didn't happen because it was too small to turn around on without the possibility of falling off the side of the road into the forest abyss. 

We ended up being on this road for 18 miles(going about 20 mph).  40 minutes on a scary dirt road was definitely Mommy Brain Moment worthy moment #4; considering I failed to comprehend the 18 miles part on the picnic sign at the end of the road actually meant 13 miles away. 

*While on this extremely long dirt road my husband and I both happen to notice this old model white truck coming up pretty fast behind us and we kind of didn't say anything but watched curiously. Then my husband states, "Where did that truck come from?"  My reply was, " I am probably thinking the same thing you are thinking and I think we have watched a few too many scary woods movies."   Then all of a sudden the truck disappeared....not sure how or where it would have turned unless there was some kind of secret spot we missed.  Very laughable moment on both of our parts.

Okay so then we FINALLY get to this picnic area and go venturing out around the area.  We ended up driving to an area with a mountain called TABLE ROCK. 

South Side:

Photo taken on the opposite side of a parking lot, in the picnic area.  Was much taller than it actually looks.

I snapped a picture in the hopes of just having our picnic and there being some chance there was another way out besides the way we came in.  The parking lot was full of cars, and surely not everyone was able to get in that quickly on the same 13 mile dirt road we got there on.  My husband then decides he wanted to climb the mountain instead of having a picnic.  I was not prepared for mountain climbing but picnicking by a waterfall.   Being that I had a mommy brain moment previously and failed to pack waters just in case like I normally do but juice boxes and Yoo-Hoo's (known as Yahoo's by the kids)for the kids. 

We went up the mountain and the kids loved every moment of it.  This was our 2nd "hiking" trip so far as a family. 

  

In the end we took a left and the other side was not as bad at the right side and only was 8.7 miles out.  Not to mention all of the other scenic stops was that way too.  We ended up entering on the wrong side.  Lesson learned:  No matter how silly my husband thinks it is to bring everything but the kitchen sink; I will do it anyway just in case. 

So this concludes my most recent major mommy brain moment. 

What is your most recent mommy brain moment??

Traveling Tips with Kids

Traveling with kids is what we do every year. We take about a 12-14 hours drive from North Carolina to see my family on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the Louisiana bayou area. It is really hard on us as adults, much less on our kids. Our kids have done pretty well over the years. I have found they were actually easier to deal with when they were really littler. As they get older, they seem to get harder to deal with during the drive. They were 3 and 7 plus a 9 year old during our last trip and they did pretty well. It is so hard being stuck in the car for that long. You try to save money by making and packing food, but then you just have to stop and stretch your legs and go to the bathroom. We drive straight down and try to stop as little as possible so we can hurry up and get there. Now on the way back we always stop at the half point, which is around the Atlanta, Georgia area. 

Here are a few things we took on our trip along with toys and coloring books to keep the kids busy.

Puzzles and a Letter Foam Cube Builder

Mad Libs for the Girls

They read us their funny stories while we were traveling!

Lego's a big WINNER!

I  packed the kids a few snacks so we didn't have to stop as many times.  They were happy to have their own little snacks and drinks.  I choose as mess free stuff as possible.  Pull top drinks, Apple sauce pouches, Fruit Loops, Teddy Grahams and Nutter Butter Bites. They only issue was they wanted to snack on all of it at the same time, so their little lunch packs emptied quickly. These were just their snack packs, we had sandwiches and other things in the ice chest.

The Kids Snack Packs for the Trip

Snack Pack on the Go

 Car Bucks for Good Behavior While Traveling

 I got the idea from another site about car bucks, but I didn't have much colored ink left in my printer. This was alright, because it let us make our own creation. I picked 3 colors of construction paper due to having 3 kids and no one could say so and so took my dollar because they each had their very own special color.  With that being said I found the happy smileys, printed them out and let my 6 year old cut them out.  I found a smiley stamper and stamped the corners for the "Corner Symbols."  Kaylei(6) had fun helping make them.

 Girl Good Car Buck 1

Girl Good Car Buck 2 

 Boy Good Car Buck

 Cat Dollr : )

Kaylei's version of a Car Buck



DIY Coloring Desk for the Car

I grabbed a flat from a 24 pack of water and let the kids decorate away.  I cut poster board to fit inside of the flat for more stability.

WHY??

Well....I was thinking the kids are always having to color crooked in the car so I made them their own little coloring desk!  They were able to put their book and colors in it without any falling on the floor! 

This past year....I have to admit we resorted to electronics, reading books and notebooks with crayons. It worked just fine as well. The only problem we ran into was the batteries dying and them not wanting to be done playing yet. What kind of tips or tricks do you go for when going on a long trip?