Unlike every other family I know, we don’t really take “beach vacations.” Before our Little Raccoon Key weekend, we hadn’t taken a non-work-conference beach trip since we met family in Cape Cod in July 2011. Since we’ve had 27 Delta flights cancelled for The Sickness, however, short trips to the […]
I submitted my application to retire from the Air Force Reserves on January 12, during my training weekend at Dobbins Air Reserve Base. I knew that on May 13, I’d meet my 4-year commitment to pass on my post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to the children, and that on May 16, […]
After we returned from our trip to the northern California national parks last summer, we spoke with a representative from the National Parks channel on Roku about creating a short film from our footage while hiking and climbing at Yosemite. Now that we’ve been back for a bit (10 months), […]
We needed to leave our house for Mother’s Day weekend. We were supposed to be at Disneyland with our newly minted 10-year-old after the Mom 2.0 Summit in L.A., but those plans were made before the sickness started, of course. I burned a couple hundred thousand Amex points and a […]
Summer 1995, I went to Lackland Air Force Base, Texas for 4 weeks of “Field Training,” which is like Basic Training, but for kids who are in ROTC. I was on a 4-year Air Force ROTC scholarship, and now I had to pay my pittance: we’d get hazed instructed by […]
My 13-year-old named our makeshift Spring Break trip to Saluda, NC Friday afternoon with the above moniker, as the Governor of Georgia signed an order on Thursday saying our entire state had to “shelter in place” starting at 6pm Friday evening. At 3:15pm, we drove for 3 hours without stopping, […]
Back when we were allowed to go places, we flew to our nation’s capital for my 9th Dad 2.0 Summit, where I was slated to listen, and my bride was slated to speak. We lucked into a corner suite upgrade at our host hotel, the Madarin Oriental, which meant every […]
It happened when we were standing in line to see Pee-wee Herman. My mother-in-law’s Christmas present was VIP tickets to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure on its 35th anniversary plus a photo opportunity with Paul Reubens at Atlanta’s Tabernacle. The push notifications started: Fulton County schools, cancelled; the NCAA basketball tournament (that […]
Months ago, we realized Columbus Day weekend meant the children had a few days out of school and that it coincided with my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday, and she wanted her daughters and their families to get together somewhere for a weekend of fun, but we also realized we’d miss seeing […]
We left San Francisco and headed south to one of our county’s newest National Parks, Pinnacles. Pinnacles is small in terms of acreage but offers some great hiking trails and rock climbing. It’s also home to endangered condors and bats, among other wildlife, and the trails offer views over the […]