 this idea for taking a family road trip that wouldn’t leave my mind. So before I knew it we were planning our route, booking our overnight stays and packing up our car. All told we were to be gone for 8 days and 7 nights and spend about 32 hours in the car driving. With a 14 and 4 year old and both of us adults who had always proclaimed we would much rather fly than drive anywhere. But you know what? It was actually pretty great!

But first things first! We headed out early last Sunday morning and first stop was St. Louis for lunch at Schlafly Bottleworks. Because you know….food. And a good portion of our trip did happen to revolve around places we (ok fine, I) wanted to eat. A delicious lunch on the patio and we were once again on our way to our first official leg of the tour, Nashville!
There are so many things to do in Nashville and with really only one evening plus a day to experience them we tried to hit the big highlights. Country Music Hall of Fame, walking around on music row, and Lasagna Pizza at DeSano Pizza Bakery. And we even found an unexpected treasure when we were stuck inside after our tour of the Hall of Fame due to a massive downpour and found a place with some awesome tacos and nachos for lunch!
And of course, no trip to Nashville is complete without a visit to The Bluebird Cafe! Okay, fine, we just drove into the parking lot at 9am, snapped a quick photo, and headed out to Alabama. But we promised ourselves we would come back sometime (without the kids!) so that we could actually see a show.
Another 7 hours(ish) and we were finally crossing the bridge to our final destination….Dauphin Island, Alabama! And by bridge I mean an 3 mile long scary bridge over Mobile Bay that made me hold my breath for record time. Beautiful, but scary. I was too distracted to even get a pic.
But I did get this photo of our morning view. I think my favorite part of the whole trip just may have been sipping my morning coffee on the balcony listening to the waves crash and seeing this! If you happen to live by the water I hope you do that every morning! What an amazing way to start the day!
Can I just say how beautiful this island is? What a treasure!! And we were super lucky to find the most beautiful condo to rent for 4 nights that made it feel just like home! The owners were amazing and not only did they think of everything that should be included in the home they also called with recommendations of places to shop and things to do while on the island. This will be something we will do again, no doubt. What a great experience!
That being said, we ended up spending most of our time on the beach!! I mean, we spend so much of the year landlocked how could we resist?! Given more time (when we go back, fingers crossed!) we will check out the Estuarium and the bird sanctuary as well as all the great things to do in Mobile and Gulf Shores. I recommend at least a whole week!
A great little stop on the island for the world’s best cinnamon rolls and some coffee at Lighthouse Bakery!
If you’ve made it this far into my barrage of photos and ramblings on…thanks so much for following along my families journey! It was a wonderful time and a great break from daily life. But it’s also great to be home and I’m excited to get back to working on some new recipes that I hope to share with you all soon! Hooray for summer!
Good times with family! That is what life is all about. Your kids are adorable.
Isn’t Dauphin Island lovely? I also love St. George in Florida … so serene, so soothing … absolute heaven!!
The ultimate best chocolate covered goodie at Trader Joe's is these speculoos cups. They take it a step further than the traditional peanut butter cup by giving you the deliciousness of cookie butter combined with rich dark chocolate. Yum!
These Joe Joe's are everything you want in a holiday cookie. For these oreo cookies with peppermint creme, coated in chocolate, and topped with candy cane bits, every bite is heaven.
 The combination of salty and sweet goes perfectly with the almond flavor. They're ridiculously addicting.
These little bites of frozen banana and chocolate make the perfect dessert. The bananas taste like they were just frozen yesterday and the chocolate melts in your mouth. 
These little jolts of energy are perfect for an afternoon pick-me-up. You get the caffeine from the espresso beans and chocolatey goodness to satisfy your taste buds.
Trader Joe's never fails to think outside the box, especially with their dark chocolate covered edamame. They're surprisingly salty and delicious and technically have some nutritional value!
The only bad thing about these mini peanut butter cups is the amount you can fit in your mouth at once. Tip: Put them in banana bread instead of chocolate chips!
Most chocolate covered pomegranate seeds you'll find are filled with jelly, but these little guys have dried pomegranate seeds, giving them the real flavor you've always dreamed of.
 The sweetness of butterscotch combined with sea salt is an addicting combination.
In a stroke of brilliance, the s'more was made into a bite size treat. Complete with marshmallow, graham cracker and chocolate, the Smashing S'more is perfect. Tip: Microwave them for a few seconds!
Graham crackers are a little plain on their own, so Trader Joe's decided to cover them in chocolate and add some sea salt, because why not?
Bringing together two favorite snacks, chocolate and chips, is a dream come true. And Trader Joe's sells them in this huge bag that you're sure to finish in one sitting.
While we've seen chocolate covered pretzels before, Trader Joe's does it better because they use flat pretzels, upping the chocolate to pretzel ratio in your favor.
Chocolate covered orange sticks are unique and delicious. You definitely cannot find them anywhere else.March 2021 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club.
Little Snow Landscape opens in 1905 with an encomium to Robert Walser’s homeland and concludes in 1933 with a meditation on his childhood in Biel, the town of his birth, published in the last of his four years in the cantonal mental hospital in Waldau outside Bern. Between these two poles, the book maps Walser’s outer and inner wanderings in various narrative modes. Here you find him writing in the persona of a girl composing an essay on the seasons, of Don Juan at the moment he senses he’s outplayed his role, and of Turkey’s last sultan shortly after he’s deposed. In other stories, a man falls in love with the heroine of the penny dreadful he’s reading (and she with him?), and the lady of a house catches her servant spread out on the divan casually reading a classic. Three longer autobiographical stories—“Wenzel,” “Würzburg,” and “Louise”—brace the whole. In addition to a representative offering of Walser’s short prose, of which he was one of literature’s most original, multifarious, and lucid practitioners, Little Snow Landscape forms a kind of novel, however apparently plotless, from the vast unfinishable one he was constantly writing.budget buy - contrast vs panel vs Refresh

so I have a budget of about 400-500usd to get me a new monitor. I want 1440p and most likely 27" (toying with the idea of 32") however I'm at loss how important are other parameters in that price range. 

Intended use is gaming (not competitive) and sofa movie watching. I want nice colors and deep black.

With that in mind how to prioritise TN/VA/IPS panels over 3000:1 contrast over maybe 75Hz over short response times? What's my biggest gain in quality here - is it the panel type or perhaps refresh rate?This week’s Big Race Showdown races are: the 153rd edition of the Runhappy Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course; the Resorts World Casino Sword Dancer Stakes, a “Win and You’re In” Challenge Series qualifier at Saratoga for the Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf; and the Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar, a “Win and You’re In” qualifier for the Big Ass Fans Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile. Known as the “Mid-Summer Derby,” the Travers features a rematch between the top three finishers of the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve – Rich Strike, Epicenter, and Zandon. The Travers Stakes will be shown live nationwide on FOX as part of an hour and a half telecast carved out from NYRA’s “Saratoga Live” show presented by America’s Best Racing.
A picture of a 13-year-old Hausa boy, Musa Sani, who designed a flyover prototype trended social media platforms with many comments about the magic hand and brain of the young child.
“Yes, it is true. I have spoken to one Ali Usman from Borno, who said he’ll speak to the guy’s parents. We gonna move him to Abuja. I’m gonna put him in one of the best schools in Abuja. A private school. When he’s done from there, I’m gonna