Jennifer Groft

1. I wasn’t around last week because we took a little vacation! Just three days, but for once all the kids had Spring break at the same time. We piled into the van with our six youngest kids, and went for an Arizona Road Trip.

Montezuma’s Castle was our first stop. There isn’t a ton to see there but the kids were relatively interested and it was a pretty walk.

Then on to Tuzigoot, which is more fun because you can walk in the ruins.

The next day we hit the Grand Canyon. Both days of driving, every time the kids would see a mountain they would ask, “Is that the Grand Canyon?” and every time we would tell them that the canyon was more like a hole than a mountain. They were very impressed when they finally saw it. Tessa (age 12) said she expected it to be like 20 feet across. There was a lot of fighting over the binoculars, and a little bit of Gus trying to get through the fence, but we had a nice time. The kids lasted a whole hour there before they were saying, “Is there anything else to do here?”

2. Staying in a hotel, is always kind of treat for me. It’s just so nice to have a clean room, with very little clutter (just what I bring with me) and a made bed, it’s just a different scene that is cozy and comfortable. I think I could go on a vacation and never leave the hotel room, except when there are a whole bunch of kids along. They liked it too, and although we were split up into two rooms, it worked out very well. We took a lot of walks around the halls, though. Lily said that the hotel was the best part of the vacation. I guess the Grand Canyon isn’t all the grand when you are six.

3. What to do? On our second evening at the hotel, we were trying to figure out an activity that we could do that wouldn’t make us crazy trying to corral Gus and Molly, but that the bigger kids could enjoy. There was nothing worth seeing in the local theater, and we ruled out the local observatory which sounded really cool, but we just didn’t want to bring our already squirrely kids into a place where there was expensive, fragile stuff. The pioneer museum was unanimously voted down, so we hung out in McDonalds for a while to let the little guys run off some steam and then went to Target. We bought some yummy snacks, and a couple of games we don’t have at home (Apples to Apples Junior, and Don’t Spill the Beans) and went back to the hotel to order pizza and have a game night. Aside from a little drama from some sore losers, this was a huge hit.

4. Changes ahead. We have been planning to move closer to the kids school, which is about 20 miles away, but our timetable has been about two years. We figured that it would take us that long to save up a down payment, clean up and fix our house, and then sell it. But just the other day I talked to my favorite realtor, who is also a wonderful friend, and she suggested we rent for a year or two while we do those other things. This will get us closer to the school, and save me a lot of time in the car, and allow us to sell the house while not being in it. I about have a heart attack while thinking about living in the house with all these monkeys while trying to keep it clean enough to sell. And it turns out there are a lot of houses that fit our criteria for renting that I had not seen on my own web searches. Yay for realtors! So I think that we will be moving in June.

5. Which means I have to declutter. Hardcore. I have to look at every last thing in the house and ask myself if I want to move it. Twice. It makes me tired just thinking about it. I wanted to declutter, but this adds a deadline and a purpose to it that I didn’t have before. I am optimistic. I think this will be very good for our family, but I’m also a little stressed. Every time I open a cabinet right now I think about how many boxes the contents will fill.

6. To encourage myself to use my creativity, I signed up for Adobe Creative Cloud. This has also inspired me to take more pictures on my real DSLR camera instead of just whipping out my phone for snap shots. Phone pictures are great, and I will still take a lot of those, but I’ve been really lazy about relying only on those for events and times when I could use my real camera. I am having fun learning photoshop and lightroom, although I am sure I am making tons of mistakes. But this is how I learned how to use the computer – punching buttons, changing settings, finding out what things do. I like doing these things, and I feel challenged by them. If you know of any good sites or guides for these programs, feel free to send them along.

7. While I was in my fit of creativity, I redesigned the blog here. What do you think? Even when I made the old design I didn’t like it a whole lot, it just felt too much like a 90’s website. Maybe I was retro or something. But the new design feels cleaner and lighter and less distracting to me. Do you think it’s too pastel-ish baby colors?

Head on over and see Jen @ Conversion Diary for more 7 Quick Takes!