Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

The purpose of this post is to show a few cute pictures and tell a couple of assorted anecdotes. There's really no theme, except for the fact that we had a minimum of 10.5 hours of driving to cover between Memphis and Austin. Story #1: The Best Restaurant in Benton, Arkansas. The children with Anjelica, mother of their nanny and owner of Riviera Maya Having decided to cover the distance in three days, we arranged our first day so that we would have dinner in the restaurant owned by the mother of our former nanny. The excellent food aside, the kids got a tour of the kitchen, various toys/treats and infinite hugs. Story #2: We lost Cate in the most beautiful campground. The Catherine Lake RV Park near Hot Springs National Park is an extraordinary facility. The pads are concrete and perfectly level. The bathrooms are immaculate. The pool, is warm and clean. The roadways are seamless asphalt. The lighting is just enough without disturbing the starry night. In other words, w...

There's a lot of fatigue going around. This day is a Monday. We wake up in a KOA surrounded by farm fields about 20 miles west of Memphis, in Marion, Arkansas. One of our travel skills is to look at a campground with Google Earth before we book it. We look to see how closely the campground sites are packed together. We look for evidence of a good (or bad) playground. We check out the pool. This one doesn't look promising. We execute breakfast. I can't think of a more appropriate verb. The KOA has a renowned restaurant. We got pulled pork sandwiches from them the night before and they were great. This morning the line is long and the food looks mediocre. School. This is a big day for Lily because we have withdrawn her from her online charter school and now we're going with a more traditional homeschooling approach. We got her new math curriculum from an Amazon Locker in Birmingham on Saturday and today we're diving in. It goes well and we feel encouraged. Honestl...